Chin grew up in
Portland, Oregon, after her family emigrated from
Hong Kong. She received an M.F.A. from the
University of Iowa and a B.A. from
University of Massachusetts Her poetry focuses on social issues, especially those related to Asian American feminism and bi-cultural identity. Chin has won numerous awards for her poetry, including the United Artists Foundation Fellowship, the
Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard, the
Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at Bellagio, the SeaChange fellowship from the Gaia Foundation, two
National Endowment for the Arts grants, the
Stegner Fellowship, the
PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, five
Pushcart Prizes, a
Fulbright Fellowship to Taiwan and the
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. She is featured in several authoritative anthologies, including
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, The
Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, The Norton Introduction to Poetry, The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Unsettling America, The Open Boat and The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry. She was interviewed by
Bill Moyers and featured in his PBS series "The Language of Life." Her poem “The Floral Apron” was introduced by Garrison Keillor on the PBS special “Poetry Everywhere."” It was also chosen by the BBC to represent the region of Hong Kong during the 2012 Olympics in London. Chin is professor emerita at the Department of English and Comparative Literature at
San Diego State University. In January 2018, she was elected a Chancellor of the
Academy of American Poets. ==Awards and honors==