Staceyann Chin is a poet, actor, performing artist and the author of the critically acclaimed memoir The Other Side of Paradise. She is also the cowriter and original performer in the Tony Award–winning Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, and author of the one-woman shows Hands Afire, Unspeakable Things, Border/Clash, and MotherStruck. Her poetry been featured in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Crossfire (Haymarket Books) offers more than 50 of Staceyann Chin’s empowering, feminist-LGBTQ-Caribbean, activist-driven poetry for the first time in a single book. The collection includes verses about the intersection of love, sex, race, gender, trauma, queerness, motherhood, and oppression and offers reflections from the #MeToo movement to 9/11. According to The New York Times, Chin is “sassy, rageful and sometimes softly self-mocking.” The Advocate says that her poems, “combine hilarious one-liners with a refusal to conform” and note “Chin is out to confront more than just the straight world.”
