Ching-In Chen

Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American writer, community organizer, and teacher. He is the author of recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2017) and The Heart’s Traffic (Arktoi/Red Hen Press, 2009).

A Kundiman and Lambda Fellow, they have also been awarded residencies and fellowships from Callaloo, The Watering Hole, Can Serrat, Jack Straw Cultural Center, Fine Arts Work Center, the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Norman Mailer Center, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Selected to be part of artEquity’s BIPOC Leadership Circle, Chen serves as a core member of the Massage Parlor Outreach Project, a Seattle City of Literature board member, and a Cultural Space Agency Governing Council member. They have served as a mentor both at Alphabet Alliance of Color’s Leadership Institute and at Creature Conserve. They also organize with the Reorienting Reads collective to amplify diasporic Asian and Pacific Islander transgender, intersex, nonbinary and gender-expansive voices through community events, educational resources, and publishing projects. 

Chen is currently an assistant professor in both the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and in the MFA program in creative writing and poetics at the University of Washington Bothell. They currently serve as writer in residence at Hugo House through 2024.

In 2023, Chen was appointed poet laureate of Redmond, Washington, through 2025. They live in the Seattle area.