Staceyann Chin

Performer, writer, and activist Staceyann Chin is the author of the poetry collection Crossfire: A Litany for Survival (2019), winner of the American Book Award, and the memoir The Other Side of Paradise (2009). She received a 2003 Drama Desk Award for her performance in Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, which she cowrote with Russell Simmons. Chin is the author of the one-woman shows MotherStruck! (2015), Border/Clash (2005), Unspeakable Things (2001), and Hands Afire (2000). Her poems have been included in several anthologies, including Bullets & Butterflies: Queer Spoken Word Poetry (2005) and Skyscrapers, Taxis, & Tampons (1999). Chin has also performed in both the stage and film versions of Howard Zinn’s Voices of a People’s History of the United States, at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and at numerous universities, including Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and the University of the West Indies. She has appeared widely on television and radio.

Chin’s honors include the 2009 New York State Senate Award, the 2008 Safe Haven Award from Immigration Equality, and the 2007 Power of the Voice Award from the Human Rights Campaign. In 2007, she was selected by the Center for Women and Gender at Dartmouth College as the Visionary in Residence.

She lives in New York City.