Wo Chan

Photo: Jocelyn Yan

Wo Chan is a poet and drag performer. They are a storyteller whose interdisciplinary art comes to life through their love of high-camp ballads, meticulous vintage costuming, and DIY lyric supertitles. Wo’s poetry and performance evoke an operatic sense of play that brings together the high emotions of childhood, queer identity, memory, (un)documentation, and migration. Their chaplet ORDER THE WORLD, MOM was published by Belladonna* in 2016. Wo’s poems also appear in Mass Review, No Tokens, The Margins, and are anthologized in Vinegar & Char (University of Georgia Press), Go Home! (Feminist Press), and Bettering American Poetry (Bettering Books). As a standing member of the Brooklyn based drag/burlesque collective Switch N’ Play, Wo has performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, Joe’s Pub, National Sawdust, New York Live Arts, and BAM Fisher. They are a regular guest on Sasha Velour’s Nightgowns and have performed in operas, music videos, cabarets, and short films. Wo was born in Macau, China, and currently lives in New York where they teach poetry workshops and perform drag shows for queer and POC communities. They hold an MFA in Poetry from NYU.

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