Marilyn Chin

Marilyn Chin

Marilyn Chin was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Portland, Oregon. She earned a BA in Chinese literature from the University of Massachusetts and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. A noted anthologist, translator, and educator, as well as a poet and novelist, Chin’s work distills her experiences as a feminist and Asian American woman. Her poetry is noted for its direct and often confrontational attitude. “The pains of cultural assimilation infuse her … poems,” wrote Contemporary Women Poets essayist Anne-Elizabeth Green, noting that in the collections Dwarf Bamboo (1987) and The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty (1994) “Chin struggles passionately and eloquently in the pull between the country left behind and America—the troubled landscape that is now home.” Chin is also the author of the poetry collections Rhapsody in Plain Yellow (2002), Hard Love Province (2014), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems (2018). In 2020 she was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

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