I want to keep digging into the messiness that is my relationship to race, as well as sexuality, as well as the napping rhino at the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester, New York. I’m working toward a language that’s accurate about and embracing of the kinds of joy I feel, the kinds of sorrow, the kinds of emotion not visible to the white gaze. 

—from “I’m Not Here to Play the Suffering Minority for White Readers”

Essays

Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Books: Featured Blogger on Poetry & Humor - “On Being a ‘Serious’ Poet”

Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Books: Featured Blogger on Poetry & Humor - “The Face of a Poem”

Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Books: Featured Blogger on Poetry & Humor - “Cracking Up, Breaking Down”

Variety’s Writers on Writers 2022 - on Everything Everywhere All At Once by the Daniels

Why I Wrote This Poem: 62 Poets on Creating Their Works - “Telling the Truth About Love” (process piece on my poem “The School of Night & Hyphens)

Catapult's Don't Write Alone series - “疼: a bilingual writing prompt”

Poets & Writers Craft Capsules - “Against Universality, in Praise of Anger”

Poets & Writers Craft Capsules - “On Nightmares”

Poets & Writers Craft Capsules - “On Becoming a Pop Star, I Mean, a Poet”

The New York Times - contribution to “The Poems That Poets Turn to in a Time of Strife” (ed. Andrew LaVallee)

Stay Home Diary (Bitter Melon Press) - “[I have a pinned note in my notes app…]”

The Rumpus in partnership with Foglifter - “The Queer Syllabus: Threshold by Joseph O. Legaspi”

McSweeney's - “A Tired Sadness, a Fresh Rage” (as part of the “One Small Blow Against Encroaching Totalitarianism” series) 

Electric Literature - “I’m Not Here to Play the Suffering Minority for White Readers"

Lambda Literary - “Navigating Poetry Readings and the L.A. Food Scene: A Week in the Life of Poet Chen Chen” (as part of “The Banal and the Profane” series)

Salt Hill - “Dinner" 

Fogged Clarity - “Limits” 

Klepto - “How are you feeling right now?” 

Hampshire College's Inside Magazine - excerpt from “Hall of Whose Language(s)?” (pp. 17-18) 

Stories

The Margins (Asian American Writer's’ Workshop) Summer Flash Fiction Series - “Summer”

Reviews

Gabby Journal - Against Empire, For Watermelon: On Nico Amador’s Flower Wars (2017)

Gabby Journal - I Have Never Wanted To Garden, Eat Fruit, & Talk Openly About Our Shared Mortality More: On Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (2015)

Interviews

Electric Literature - “Truth Not as a Set of Answers but a Field of Openings”: Interview with Charif Shanahan

Electric Literature - “Creating a World in Which Everything That Dies Is Mourned”: Interview with Victoria Chang

Underblong - Interview with Muriel Leung

Iron Horse Literary Review - Mini-Interview Series Continued: With Saadia Faruqi

Iron Horse Literary Review - “Would I like for it to be a bouquet of dreams?”: Interview with Aracelis Girmay

Iron Horse Literary Review - Mini-Interview Series Continued: With Monica Sok 

Iron Horse Literary Review - Looking Back, Moving Ethically: With Swati Khurana (Mini-Interview)

Blogs

Lit Hub - “Five Asian Diasporic Writers on the Pandemic Present and the Possibilities of Flash Fiction” (A Conversation with Sadia Quraeshi Shepard, Jireh Deng, Jemimah Wei, Chen Chen, & Jefferson Lee; moderated by Swati Khurana and Yi Wei)

Lambda Literary - contribution to “Songs in Isolation: 17 LGBTQ Writers on What They are Listening to Right Now”

The Reading Lists - contribution to “The Best Poetry Books for Beginners”

Tarpaulin Sky - “What I’m Reading Now…” 

Verse - poetry playlist, “Comedy and Asian American Poets”

Poetry Foundation blog - Poetry Magazine’s July/August 2017 “Reading List

Iron Horse Literary Review - Gates Open: IHLR Trifecta Issue

Iron Horse Literary Review - Announcing the Winner of Our 2016 Chapbook Competition

Iron Horse Literary Review - Gates Open: 2017 National Poetry Month Issue

Howlarium - contributions to discussions: “When is songwriting poetry?“ and "Beyond Ideology? Creative writing’s (new?) political imperatives” 

The Kenyon Review blog - contribution to “28 Days Later and Other Nightmares: On What Frightens Us”

Poetry Foundation blog - Poetry Magazine‘s June 2015 Reading List