Join us for the launch of Chen Chen’s debut poetry collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. With readings from Chen Chen, Jennifer Whalen, Tomás Morin, and Katelin Kelly.
What does Millennial poetry look like? One answer might be this wild debut from Chen Chen. He seems to run at the mouth, free-associating wildly, switching between lingo and ‘higher’ forms of diction. Nothing’s out of bounds or off limits, no culture too ‘pop’ to find its place in poetry . . . nor anything too silly to point the way toward serious aims. And yet this is a deeply serious and moving book about Chinese-American experience, young love, poetry, family, and the family one makes amongst friends. —NPR Books
Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and out now from BOA Editions. His work has appeared in two chapbooks and in publications such as Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, and The Best American Poetry. He has been featured on the PBS Newshour and Out.com. A Kundiman and Lambda Literary fellow, he is currently pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University.
Jennifer Whalen’s poems can be found or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Southern Indiana Review, Fugue, New South, Grist, and elsewhere. She was the 2015-2016 L.D. & LaVerne Harrell Clark House writer-in-residence at Texas State University. Residing in San Marcos, Texas, she currently teaches college writing.
Tomás Q. Morín is the author of Patient Zero and A Larger Country. He translated Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu and with Mari L’Esperance co-edited Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine. He teaches at Texas State University and in the low residency MFA program of Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Katelin Kelly was born in Lexington, Kentucky. She migrated to Austin three years ago where she earned her MFA in Poetry at The New Writers Project. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Katelin serves as the Managing Editor for Bat City Review. Her work can be found in Sonora Review, Misadventures Magazine, Wounwapi Literary Journal, and Narrative.