Ken Chen

Poet and attorney Ken Chen earned his BA from the University of California, Berkeley and JD from Yale Law School. His debut collection of poetry, Juvenilia (2010), won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. The book traces the development of a poet from child to adulthood and is marked by “the inability to communicate, an affliction that spans across generations for this Chinese American family,” according to poet Rigoberto González. Judge Louise Glück noted that Chen’s book is “exhilaratingly modern … while at the same time never losing his attachment to voice, and the implicit claims of voice: these are poems of intense feeling.”

Chen’s poetry and nonfiction essays have appeared in journals such as Fence, Boston Review, Best American Essays, and elsewhere. He lives and works in New York City, where he directs the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and founded CultureStrike, a national organization seeking to bring artists into the migrant justice movement.