Discipline: Poetry
Based In: Brooklyn, NY
Year at Millay: 2025
Awards/Honors: Award Winner, Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender Variant Literature, The Publishing Triangle, New York, NY (2023); Finalist, Poetry, CLMP Firecracker Awards, Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, New York, NY (2023); Prize Winner, Nightboat Poetry Prize, Nightboat Books, Brooklyn, NY (2021); Fellow, MacDowell, Peterborough, NH (2020).
Website: https://www.instagram.com/theillustriouspearl/?hl=en
Wo Chan (they/them), who performs as The Illustrious Pearl, is a poet and drag artist. They are a winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize and the author of Togetherness (2022). Their poems appear in Poetry, WUSSY, Mass Review, No Tokens, The Margins, and elsewhere. As a member of the Brooklyn-based drag/burlesque collective Switch N’ Play, Wo has performed at venues including The Whitney Museum of American Art, National Sawdust, New York Live Arts, and the Architectural Digest Expo.