Descended from ocean dwellers, Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American writer, community organizer and teacher. They are author of The Heart's Traffic: a novel in poems (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press, 2009) and recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry winner) as well as chapbooks to make black paper sing (speCt! Books) and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, Leslie Scalapino Finalist). Chen is co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press, 1st edition; AK Press, 2nd edition) and Here Is a Pen: an Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets (Achiote Press). They have received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Can Serrat, Imagining America, Jack Straw Cultural Center and the Intercultural Leadership Institute as well as the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers. A community organizer, they have worked in Asian American communities in San Francisco, Oakland, Riverside, Boston, Milwaukee, Houston and Seattle and are currently a core member of the Massage Parlor Outreach Project. They currently teach at University of Washington Bothell in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the MFA program in Creative Writing and Poetics. www.chinginchen.com

Website: www.chinginchen.com

Twitter Username: @chinginchen

Publications

• recombinant , Kelsey Street Press (2017)
• The Heart's Traffic , Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press (February 2009)
• The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence within Activist Communities , South End Press (2011)

Awards

• Lambda Literary Award for Best Transgender Poetry for 'recombinant'(2018)
• Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional LGBTQ New Writers(2022)

Employment

• editor-in-chief at cream city review (June 2012 - )
• Assistant Professor at University of Washington Bothell (August 2019 - )

Degrees

• Bachelor of Arts in English, International Relations from Tufts University (June 1999)
• Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from University of California at Riverside (June 2010)
• Doctoral Degree in Creative Writing; Contemporary Diasporic Literatures; Queer and Transgender Literature; Women's and Gender Studies from University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee (May 2015)

Genres of Interest

Fiction, Creative nonfiction, Playwriting, Screenwriting, Children's literature , Poetry