Kay Ulanday Barrett

Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet and essayist. They are the author of two poetry collections: More than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020), recipient of a 2021 Stonewall Barbara Gittings Literature Honor Award from the American Library Association and a finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry, and When the Chant Comes (Topside Press, 2016). 

Ulanday Barrett has published work in numerous outlets, including the New York Times, Colorlines, Asian American Literary Review, Poetry, Vogue, The Rumpus, and The Advocate. They have also contributed work to numerous anthologies, including Every Place on the Map Is Disabled (Northwestern University, 2026), edited by Camisha L. Jones, Michael Northen, Naomi Ortiz, and Travis Chi Wing Lau; We Gathered the Heat: Asian American and Pacific Islander Poetry, Performance, and Spoken Word (Haymarket Books, 2024), edited by Franny Choi, Bao Phi, Noʻu Revilla, and Terisa Siagatonu; and Q&A: Voices from Queer Asian North America (Temple University, 2021), edited by Martin F. Manalansan IV, Alice Y. Hom, and Kale Bantigue Fajardo. 

In 2022, Ulanday Barrett received the Cy Twombly Award for Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts. They have also been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from VONA Voices, Monson Arts, Tin House, Millay Arts, Macondo, Lambda Literary, Baldwin for the Arts, and MacDowell.

Ulanday Barrett is the Collaboratory for Black Poesis’s 2026 Artist-in-Residence in Disability Poetics and Community Activism. They are a 2024 Disabled Futures Fellow by United States Artists and the Ford Foundation + Mellon Foundation. In addition to their literary work, they currently serve as a disability justice and trans justice advocate. Ulanday Barrett lives in the unceded and occupied territory of the Lenape and Munsee people in New Jersey.