Do you have a bird story or favorite feathered friend?

I love Eureka, the parrot who becomes a key character in Sigrid Nunez’s novel The Vulnerables. He is so charming and so melancholic. For example, he learned how to meow from his human’s cat, and then after that cat died, he still meowed from time to time, as though still waiting for the cat to come in from the other room again.

I also love the word bird. All those consonants and just one vowel! So much happening in four letters, in a single syllable.

What is your most memorable reading experience?

Either Anna Karenina or the first time I read “Lick My Butt,” a poem by Justin Chin.

Or Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.

Or Victoria Chang’s OBIT. 

Or . . . so many.

What made you most excited about Explodingly Yours and Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency that recently hatched?

Honestly? The cover art for both collections! No, I don’t think books should be judged by their covers (or do I), but why wouldn’t you want a gorgeous one?? It just makes me so happy every time I pick up my books, hold them in my hands, every time I read from them. And the fact that both cover art pieces come from queer Asian artists! A dream come dizzyingly true. The dreaminess of their work. Deej Amago (for Explodingly Yours) and Vincent Chong (for Your Emergency Contact)—I cannot thank them enough.

I mean, I was also excited to share the poems in collected form, where they get to have conversations with each other, and the themes are (I hope) strengthened across poems, blah blah blah. But yes, the cover art. Which I still need to eat—in book cake form. I have yet to have a book cake. Isn’t that just too terribly sad?

To tweet or not to tweet?

For now, for better or worse, I am continuing to tweet. And yes, the app is still called Twitter. I refuse to call it anything else! I’m trying to spend less time on that app, though. More time directly talking with the people in my life—and one-on-one, always my preference.

What book(s) do you have in your bag right now?

Allison Titus’s gorgeous new poetry collection, High Lonesome.

Can you tell us your favorite rejection story?

Oh, just any time I’ve been solicited and then rejected. I mean, I get that a solicitation is not a guarantee of publication. It’s just a funny rollercoaster of emotion to ride—so happy and grateful, and then confused and sad. And I’ve been on the other side of the interaction, so I also get that it’s a tricky dynamic for editors to navigate, when you decide to decline on a solicitation. The funniest/saddest experience is when I’ve received a form rejection after a “please send more” rejection. It happens!

What literary journals do you love?

At the moment, I’m obsessed with & Change, edited by the very wonderful Kevin Bertolero, who was my former student at New England College (and who also published Explodingly Yours through his press, Ghost City Press). So many beautiful (and often horny!) gay poems. And deliciously gay cover art for each issue, too.

I also love Couplet Poetry, which publishes pairs of poems. I was over the moon when they accepted and published my pair—“i love you” and (of course) “i hate you.”

What shakes your tail feathers?

Remembering I’m alive. 

Also, Fever Ray’s song “Carbon Dioxide.” And the original is great but the remix by Avalon Emerson is especially danceable. 

What advice do you have for fledgling writers?

Don’t be afraid to write like you (rather than someone else you think is talented, smart, cool). Or, be afraid and write anyway. I write through a lot, like a LOT, of fear and anxiety and self-doubt. Don’t wait for those feelings to disappear or diminish; you’ll likely be waiting for a long time. Plus, what often feels scary in the writing is exactly where you need to go. 

What other eggs do you have in your basket right now? 

I need to get back to working on essays! I need to find ways to make essay-writing as fun as poetry is for me. Anyone with hot tips on how to do so, please find me online (chenchenwrites on Twitter and Instagram) or out in the world (probably an H Mart), flailing and yet at the same time frolicking.