Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, which won the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize, Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, and the GLCA New Writers Award. His work has been translated into French, Greek, Spanish, and Russian.
In an interview with NPR, Chen explained, “I felt like I couldn’t be Chinese and American and gay all at the same time. I felt like the world I was in was telling me that these had to be very separate things.” As someone who was struggling with his sexuality and thinking about identity— with immigrant parents and wondering how to come out, “Poems were a way for those different experiences to come together, for them to be in the same room.”
Chen earned his MFA from Syracuse University and is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing as an off-site Texas Tech University student. He lives in frequently snowy Rochester, NY with his partner, Jeff Gilbert and their pug dog, Mr. Rupert Giles. Chen is the 2018-2020 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University.
This event will be held on Tuesday, March 12th at 7:00pm at the Lexington Depot. The cost of this event is $10.
Pre-registration is strongly recommended. Registration is available on our website: https://lexingtoncommunityed.org/class/when-i-grow-up-i-want-to-be-a-list-of-further-possibilities-a-poetry-reading/ or by contacting Lexington Community Education at 781 862 8043.