Joy Keys chats with Poet 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.