Tina Chang

Tina Chang was born in 1969 in Oklahoma to Chinese immigrants. She and her family moved to Queens, New York, a year later. Chang attended Binghamton University and received her MFA in poetry from Columbia University.

Chang is the author of Lion (W. W. Norton, 2026); Hybrida (W. W. Norton, 2019); Of Gods and Strangers (Four Way Books, 2011); and Half-Lit Houses (Four Way Books, 2004), which was a finalist for an Asian American Literary Award from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She is the coeditor, with Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar, of Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry From the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (W. W. Norton, 2008).

Chang has held residencies at MacDowell, Djerassi Artist’s Residency, Vermont Studio Center, Fundacion Valparaiso, Constance Saltonstall Foundation, Blue Mountain Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has received awards from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, Poets & Writers, and the Van Lier Foundation. In 2020, she was the recipient of a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.

Chang was elected Brooklyn poet laureate in 2010. A professor of English at SUNY Binghamton, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Read about Tina Chang’s 2020 Poets Laureate Fellowship project.