Chen Chen

Chen Chen is the author of the poetry collections Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions, 2022), selected as a 2023 notable book by the American Library Association, and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award and winner of the 2018 Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. Bloodaxe Books published UK editions of both books in 2022 and 2019. Chen is also the author of five chapbooks, including Explodingly Yours (Ghost City Press, 2023). His work appears in three editions of The Best American Poetry (2015, 2019, and 2021). He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman, the National Endowment for the Arts, and United States Artists. 

Chen Chen earned an MFA from Syracuse University and a PhD from Texas Tech University. He has taught in the University of Massachusetts Boston MFA program and at Brandeis University as the 2018 to 2022 Jacob Ziskind poet-in-residence. He teaches in the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. Chen edits the journals Underblong and the lickety~split.