Ching-In Chen

Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American poet and multi-genre writer.^[1]

They graduated from Tufts University, University of California, Riverside, and the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

They are the author of recombinant,^[2] The Heart's Traffic,^[3] and to make black paper sing. Chen is also the co-editor of the anthologies The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities and Here Is a Pen: An Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets. They are a Callaloo, Kundiman, and Lambda Fellow.^[4]

Chen has taught in Sam Houston State University's English department,^[5] and currently teaches in the English and creative writing programs at the University of Washington Bothell. They presently serve as the staff advisor for Clamor, the Bothell campus's literary magazine, alongside Amaranth Borsuk.^[6][7]

Career

Chen's first book, The Heart's Traffic (2009), is a "novel-in-poems" that employs multiple poetic forms, including the sestina, villanelle, haibun, and pantoum. The book focuses on the experiences of Xiaomei, a young immigrant from China to the United States.^[8]

Chen's second book, recombinant (2017), received the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry.^[9]

In 2024, Chen was selected as the city of Redmond, Washington's Poet Laureate.^[10]

Works

• to make black paper sing (speCt! books, 2019).
• recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2017). ISBN 9780932716866, OCLC 1035945370
• The Heart's Traffic (Arktoi/Red Ren Press, 2009). ISBN 9780980040722, OCLC 641749078

co-editor

• The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities 2011; Ak Press, 2016, ISBN 9781849352628, OCLC 1023351920
• Here Is a Pen: An Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets Achiote Press, 2009. OCLC 775595869