2:00 - 3:00
United States
Poets Chen Chen and Sam Herschel Wein discuss Chen’s most recent book, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency. In his highly anticipated second collection, Chen continues his investigation of family—both blood and chosen, examining what one inherits and what one invents, life as a queer Asian American living through an era of Trump, mass shootings, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chen Chen is the author of two books of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions, 2022) and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), which was long-listed for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. His work appears in many publications, including Poetry and three editions of The Best American Poetry. He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman, the National Endowment for the Arts and United States Artists. He was the 2018-2022 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University and currently teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast. He lives with his partner, Jeff Gilbert, and their pug, Mr. Rupert Giles.
Sam Herschel Wein (he/they) is a 2022 Pushcart Prize winning poet and writer. Their third poetry chapbook, Butt Stuff Flower Bush, is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. They are an MFA student in poetry at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. In his spare time, he edits the journals Underblong and Grist Journal. Their poems are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, Diode Editions and elsewhere.
Connect