Marilyn Chin was born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland, Oregon. She received a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Chinese Literature and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. Her books have become Asian American classics and are taught in classrooms internationally. Presently, Chin is Professor Emerita at San Diego State University and serves as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Her most recent book is A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems (W.W. Norton, 2018). Chin’s other books of poems include Hard Love Province, Rhapsody in Plain Yellow, Dwarf Bamboo, and the Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty. Her book of wild girl fiction is called Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen.

She has won numerous awards, including the distinguished Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement in poetry from the Poetry Foundation, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the United States Artist Foundation Award, the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, two NEAs, the United Artist Foundation Award, the Stegner Fellowship, the PEN/Josephine Miles Award, five Pushcart Prizes, a Fulbright Fellowship to Taiwan, a Lannan Residency and others. In 2017, she was honored by the Asian Pacific Islander Caucus and the California Assembly for her activism and excellence in education.

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Read poems by Marilyn Chin

Poetry Foundation

Academy of American Poets