Ching-In Chen

Thank you to everyone who came out to see @kwheat09 , @solidaddecosta , @mari__resiste , @_koomah_ , @chinginchen and me at @friendsgalleryhtx on Monday. It was special to see so much talent come together in my barrio. I hope you enjoyed it

✨Seattle friendlies! I'll be back in town briefly to read at a new books showcase at Open Books: a Poetry Emporium (108 Cherry St), Saturday, May 9, 5:45-6:45p! ✨Please join us to celebrate new poetry books: Ching-In Chen's SHINY CITY (@airliepress ), Laura Da’'s SEVERALTY (@azpress ), & Jami Macarty's THE LONG NOW CONDITIONS PERMIT (@universitynevadapress ) ✨Chen's SHINY CITY examines the "real" and imagined history of Riverside, California's Chinatown, juxtaposed with a speculative shiny city of the global future which reconstructs its own kind of history with beauty that emerges from between the cracks. ✨ ✨From powerfully compressed lyrical fragments to pulsing narrative sequences, Da’s SEVERALTY shifts perspectives to examine devastation and healing, transience and seasonality, loss and resurrection. ✨ ✨Macarty’s THE LONG NOW CONDITIONS PERMIT offers an ecofeminist ethic of care as an antidote to extractive capitalism and patriarchal norms. ✨ ✨ Open Books is still masking for all public events ✨ #openbookspoetry #seattlepoetry #shinycity #severalty #thelongnowconditionspermit #poetsofinstagram #newpoetrybooks [image description: 1: black text on white background with pink, red and black designs reads: "Open Books: A Poem Emporium | Ching-In Chen | Laura Da' | Jami Macarty | Poetry Reading | May 9, 2026 @ 5:45PM | 108 Cherry St, Seattle, WA | openpoetrybooks.com 2: cover of Ching-In Chen's Shiny City - white text of title and author on black background with white bubbles 3. cover of Laura Da''s Severalty - white & black text of title and author on gray background with a blue, gold, tan amd gray image of bird and plants 4. cover of Jami Macarty's The Long Now Conditions permit - black text of title and "poems" against an image of a tree trunk with branches

Excited to be returning to Riverside, California to share work from SHINY CITY, which I started writing almost 20 years ago when I got involved with the Save Our Chinatown Committee. Please join us if you're in the area! ✨ THURSDAY, May 7, 3:45-5:15p, Riverside, CA ✨ Our Chinatown, Our Legacy: A Community-Led Approach Panel, California Preservation Conference, Riverside Convention Center, 3637 5th St, MR5. Join the Save Our Chinatown Committee to learn how they’ve blended advocacy, history, and creative practice to transform a threatened site into an active, community-led legacy with M. Rosalind Sagara & Jeffrey Yoo Warren ✨ FRIDAY, May 8, 7p, Riverside, CA ✨ Save Our Chinatown Committee Shiny City Reading, Heritage House, 8193 Magnolia Ave, with Daniel Kuo & Chris Santiago, co-sponsored by @kundimanforever , @museumrma , @ucriverside_mfa & @inlandia_institute [image descriptions: 1) Horse-drawn vehicles in Chinatown, Riverside, California, ca. 1900. Photo courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, UCR Libraries, University of California, Riverside. 2) Black text reads: "Literary Reading Celebrating Ching-In Chen's new book, SHINY CITY, inspired by work with Save Our Chinatown Committee with special guests Daniel Kuo and Chris Santiago | Friday, May 8, 7PM | Heritage House | 8193 Magnolia Avenue | Riverside, CA 92504 | Free and open to the public | Light refreshment | Logos of co-sponsors Kundiman, Museum of Riverside, UC Riverside MFA in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts & Inlandia Institute] #riversidechinatown #saveourchinatowncommittee #shinycity

Come on out Monday, May 4th at 7pm to Friends Gallery (7040 Harrisburg Blvd) for a night of readings featuring poet Ching-In Chen, celebrating the release of their recent book, SHINY CITY. Rejoined by many of the poets from their last HTX, multimedia project, Breathing in a Time of Disaster (with Cassie Mira) More about the book: “Shiny City examines the “real” and imagined history of Riverside, California’s Chinatown, juxtaposed with a speculative shiny city of the global future … Shiny City reconstructs its own kind of history with beauty that emerges from between the cracks.” Featuring local trans & gender-expansive poets Koomah, solidad decosta, Keagan Wheat, Mariposa Tejada, Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal! There will be books for sale, a donation bar &, of course, community!

dear friendlies! i'll be doing some upcoming readings for shiny city in new orleans; houston; riverside, ca; seattle & oakland! hope to see you! ✨ Shiny City Spring 2026 Book Tour ✨ ✨ WEDNESDAY, April 29, 8p, New Orleans ✨ Unlikely Saints Poetry Reading, @barreduxnola , 801 Poland Ave, with Bill Lavender (@lavender.ink.dialogos ), Rachel Zavecz (@russetwolf ), & the late Belle Brock Adelman-Cannon as read by their father, C.W. Cannon (@c.w.cannon ), organized by Jonathan Penton (@unlikely.stories ) ✨ MONDAY, May 4, 7p, Houston ✨ Shiny City Reading, @friendsgalleryhtx , 7040 Harrisburg Blvd, with @_koomah_ , @solidaddecosta , Keagan Wheat (@kwheat09 ), Mariposa Tejada (@mari__resiste ), & Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal (@profstalina ) ✨ THURSDAY, May 7, 3:45-5:15p, Riverside, CA ✨ Our Chinatown, Our Legacy: A Community-Led Approach Panel, California Preservation Conference, Riverside Convention Center, 3637 5th St, MR5, with M. Rosalind Sagara (@place_cadet ) & Jeffrey Yoo Warren (@unterbahn ) ✨ FRIDAY, May 8, 7p, Riverside, CA ✨ Save Our Chinatown Committee (@saveourchinatowncommittee Shiny City Reading, Heritage House, 8193 Magnolia Ave, with Dan Kuo & @chrissantiago , co-sponsored by @kundimanforever , @museumrma , @ucriverside_mfa & @inlandia_institute ✨ SATURDAY, May 9, 5:45-6:45p, Seattle ✨ New Books Showcase, @openpoetrybooks , 108 Cherry St, with Laura Da' (@lauralouiseda ) & Jami Macarty (@jmacarty2026 ) ✨ THURSDAY, May 14, 6-7:30p, Seattle ✨ It’s About Time Writers Reading Series, Ballard Branch of @seattlepubliclibrary , 5614 22nd Ave NW, with @jikleinberg , @kalehuakim & Raul Sanchez (@pico_pico55 ) ✨ MONDAY, June 1, 8-10p, Oakland ✨ Open Mic Night, @melokavabar , 3264 Grand Ave, organized by Tijanna O. Eaton (@thatsbennett2u ) #shinycity #airliepress #poetsofinstagram #neworleanspoetry #houstonpoetry #riversidepoetry #seattlepoetry #oaklandpoetry #saveourchinatowncommittee #riversidechinatown

New Orleans/Bulbancha friendlies! Excited to be reading this upcoming Wednesday, April 29, 8p for Unlikely Saints: a Night of Poetry, with Rachel Zavecz, Bill Lavender, & the late Belle Brock Adelman-Cannon (as read by their father, C.w. Cannon)! 8pm at Bar Redux (801 Poland Ave)! Thank you to Jonathan Penton for organizing & cupcakes! #rachelzavecz #billlavender #bellebrockadelman-cannon #shinycity

★⋆. Come on out Monday, May 4th at 7 pm to Friends Gallery (7040 Harrisburg Blvd) for a night of readings featuring poet Ching-In Chen @chinginchen , celebrating the release of their recent book Shiny City. Rejoined by many of the poets from their last HTX, multimedia project, Breathing in a Time of Disaster with Cassie Mira. More about the book: “Shiny City examines the “real” and imagined history of Riverside, California’s Chinatown, juxtaposed with a speculative shiny city of the global future. . . Shiny City reconstructs its own kind of history with beauty that emerges from between the cracks.“ Featuring local poets: Koomah @_koomah_ solidad decosta @solidaddecosta Keagan Wheat  @kwheat09 Mariposa Tejada @mari__resiste Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal @profstalina There will be books for sale, a donation bar and of course community!

Join us at the store on Saturday, May 9th at 5:45pm for this fabulous reading! Ching-In Chen is author of Shiny City, recombinant (2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry) and The Heart’s Traffic: a novel in poems as well as chapbooks to make black paper sing and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (Leslie Scalapino Finalist). Chen is co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities. They are a Kelsey Street Press collective member, Airlie Press editor and Nonfiction Coordinator for Best of the Net. They received fellowships from Lambda, Watering Hole, Can Serrat, Imagining America, Jack Straw Cultural Center, EmergeNYC, Intercultural Leadership Institute and the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship as well as the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers. They collaborate on Breathing in a Time of Disaster, a performance, installation and speculative writing project exploring breath through meditation and environmental justice.  Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher who studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is the author of Tributaries, American Book Award winner, Instruments of the True Measure, Washington State Book Award winner, and Severalty. Da’ is Eastern Shawnee and she lives in Washington with her family. Jami Macarty is the author of the 2025 collection, The Long Now Conditions Permit, which offers an ecofeminist ethic of care as an antidote to extractive capitalism and patriarchal norms. Macarty’s previous collections include, The Minuses, winner of the 2020 New Mexico Arizona Book Award-Poetry Arizona, and four chapbooks, including The Whole Catastrophe, finalist for the 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award, and Mind Of Spring, winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Macarty supports writers as an independent mentor, editor, and reviewer, and as a creative writing teacher at Simon Fraser University. Macarty lives in and learns from the arborescent desert around Tucson, Arizona, and the rain coast of Vancouver, British Columbia.

🍄 new beginner’s mind interview up today with writer, community organizer, and teacher Ching-In Chen (@chinginchen ) on the power of writing within community, continually changing up our process, and what we need to learn from fungi 🍄 ⚡If you’ve been struggling on your own in your writing life and longing for community, or feeling stuck in a rut writing the same thing over and over, Ching-In’s wisdom & prompt will help you light the spark to change it up.⚡️ ⚡️Click through for some gems and you can read the whole thing at Be Where You Are ⚡ 📚Order your copy of Ching-In’s most recent book, SHINY CITY (@airliepress ) from Airlie Press! “Shiny City examines the “real” and imagined history of Riverside, California’s Chinatown, juxtaposed with a speculative shiny city of the global future. Word by word, syntax by syntax, Chen projects the essential and unrecorded voices of the Chinese immigrants who picked and packed fruit in Riverside’s citrus groves and worked as house servants in the late 1800’s through the 1930’s, as well as the travelers and inhabitants of “shiny city” as they navigate its accelerated process of growth and decay.” 📚 💬comment “SHINY” and I’ll message you the link to the interview! 💬 ✨Aaaaand if you subscribe to the newsletter (for free!), you won’t miss any future interviews or posts coming up! ✨ We’ve got interviews coming up with @tess.barry88 @writing_and_donuts @rachelmiranda66 @adrianawrites @mamadanger @cecilycecilyparks @lekasugar

Monday, April 13, at 7 PM Central, @chinginchen and I will be presenting (virtually) our docupoetics at the Traveling Mollys Reading Series. The livestream is a link in my bio.

🌿 New Orleans friendlies, I’ll be at @astudiointhewoods (3401 Patterson Rd) until May 3 for a Self as Universe Artist Residency! Please join @cassie.mira & me for an artist salon & dinner starting at 6:30p tonight March 25, 2026 about our project ‘Breathing in a Time of Disaster'! 🌿 Excited to be reading in two events as part of the Saints & Sinners LGBTQ+ Festival @sasfest this Saturday, March 28 at Hotel Monteleone (214 Royal St) 🌿 10-11:15a, Saints & Sinners: Writers Read, with Christian Baines (@xtianbaines ), Andy Barrow (@andy_barrow_books ), Tom Cardamone (tomcardamonewrites), Donna Minkowitz (donnaminkowitz ), Sean Patrick Mulroy (@thevanishingman ) & Douglas Sadownick (@douglassadownick ) @ Lobby Level, Royal D 🌿 4-5:15p, The Human Signature: Poetry as the Antidote to Autopilot, with Ally Ang (@theoceanisgay ), Allison Blevins (@blevinsallisonm ) & Liza Flum, with moderator Margot Douaihy (@neonmargot ) @ Lobby Level, Royal C #breathinginatimeofdisaster #selfasuniverseresidency #neworleanspoetry #queerpoetry #transpoetry #sasfest2026 [IMAGE DESCRIPTIONS: 1: Text reads: "A Studio in the Woods Artist Salon | March 25, 2026 at 6:30pm | Headshot of genderqueer Chinese American smiling against brick wall 2: Text: "A Studio in the Woods Artist Salon | March 25, 2026 at 6:30pm | Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American writers, community organizer and teacher. They teach in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the MFA program in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington Bothell and is the poet laureate of Redmond, Washington. Project collaborator Cassie Mira will also be joining. They are currently working on "Breathing in a Time of Disaster, a community-based performance, installation and speculative writing project exploring breath through meditation, health and environmental justice. 3: Text: "Saints + Sinners LGBTQ+ Literary Festival | New Orleans | March 27-29, 2026" | Portrait of Jewelle Gomez Slide 4: Text: "Reading Series Speakers | Laurinda D Brown, Rob Byrnes, Gerard Cabrera, Tom Cardamone, Christopher Castellani, Yoseli Castillo Fuertes, Ching-In Chen, Richard Compson Sater | March 27-29, 2026"

Thrilled to be part of a recent Pen Parentis Salon - a panel of writers who are also parents! ——————————— How do working writers manage parenthood? Successful authors address issues of work-life balance, writing craft, current publishing landscape, and read excerpts from their works. @penparentis Spring 2026 Season Opener “FLUID BOUNDARIES” features: ✨Ching-In Chen, Winner of Judith A. Markowitz Award, Lambda Literary ✨Priya Hutner, Co-Founder of the Tahoe Literary Festival ✨Lane Igoudin, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, EPIC / UCLA Humanities ✨Terese Svoboda, Guggenheim Fellow and the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize Winner ✨Moderators: M. M. De Voe and Marina Aris Taped: February 10, 2026 🎥: https://youtu.be/JnZGuUMiEqo Funded by generous support from Poets & Writers, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, The de Groot Foundation, and the episode sponsor Studiolo Secondari - THANK YOU! All Pen Parentis programs help writers who have kids. We build and support in-person and online writer-parent communities to encourage the production of new, high-quality written work, and we offer individual aid to these writers whenever possible. 🎥: https://youtu.be/JnZGuUMiEqo @femmekafka @priyahutner @chinginchen #penparentis #ooliganpress #parentwriter #literarysalon writinglif