Kirsten Shu-ying Chen is a poet and writer born and raised on the Jersey Shore. Her writing and multimedia work centers life as a boundless experience of celebration and grief, and has been supported by the New York Public Library, Best American Poetry, and the Museum of the Moving Image. Her poetry can be found in Adroit Journal, Bear Review, Hanging Loose and elsewhere.
Her debut, full-length poetry collection, Light Waves (Terrapin Books, 2022) honors her relationship with her mother as a young caregiver. It was a finalist for the Autumn House Press Chapbook Prize and Tomaz Salamun Chapbook Prize by Factory Hollow Press. Chen has also been shortlisted for the PANK book prize, was a semi-finalist for the GRIST Pro Forma contest, and was a semi-finalist for the Disquiet International Literary Prize. Her screenplays have scored an '8' on the blacklist and have been finalists for the ISA Fast Track and WeScreenplay competitions.
While at MacDowell, she worked on her second book of poetry, thematically addressing the intersection of grief and desire as well as the practice of facing ancestral fears. Her process while in residence included wandering the woods, taking long bubble baths, cozying into the reading nook of the James Baldwin library, and being the unofficial firekeeper-in-residence.
