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Justin Chin (1969-2015) was a Malaysian-American poet, essayist and performer. In his work he often dealt with queer Asian-American identity and interrogated this category's personal and political circumstances.

Biography
Justin Chin was born in Malaysia by a Christian physisian. He was raised in Singapore and after graduating from college in there he left home and enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. As a freshman he signed up for Intro to Creative Writing. Faye Kicknosway was teaching this class and she became an important figure in Chin's early career. She encouraged him to write and introduced him to R. Zamora Linmark and Lisa Asagi, who remained important supporters throughout his life. In 1990, with economic support from the faculty advisor to the university's gay and lesbian group, Justin chin attended the first Outwrite Conference in San Francisco. About this experience Justin Chin wrote: "Being at that conference showed me what was possible, that I could find myself in a continuum, a lineage that was grad and literary, that needed no elucidation or defense, no vindication or apologia." .

In 1991 he moved to San Francisco and transferred to the journalistic program at San Francisco State University. . Shortly after moving to San Francisco he started writing poems, essays, fiction and performance pieces to express his opinions in a less limited media. In 1995 and 1996 he became a member of the San Francisco National Poetry Slam team. In 1996 he was also awarded a "Goldie" "for the distinction of his spoken word performances". Chin took residence in San Francisco for the rest of his life which tragically ended on December 24 2015 with a stroke

"Other than his published work Chin has created eight full-length solo performance works and several shorter works that he has performed around the United States"- Hout, Nikolas. Contemporary Gay American Poets and Playwrights: An A-to-Z Guide. Ed. Emmanuel Sampath Nelson. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003. Print. P. 82.

Authorship - Themes
In his authorship Justin Chin dealt with identity categories such as Asian American, Gay writer and Queer. These categories of 'radicalized desire', and their intersections, are categories that have formed his own life (see Biography). His "performance pieces and writings articulate a lot of pains and angers at how queer Asians are invisibilized by gay white men and despised by straight Asian circles and communities". As for many other queer writers Chin included experiences from his own life and everyday in his writings. Not only things and happenings are included from the actual world Chin lived in, but "attitudes, values and desires". In the book Mongrel Chin is carefully describing the identity navigation in school: “The stigma of being associated with the queens who were so resoundingly ribbed and teased and tormented made me nestle in my comfy closet: I was on the swim team, I participated in sports – something the queens never dreamed of doing”. In the same book he expresses a similar questioning of identification and confirmation to the categories as he writes: "I’ve given up the dream of the Queer Nation. Race, class, gender, ideologies, and values will always divide us. . . . I am so over being queer these days, and I don’t care what I call myself these days or what anyone else calls me; it’s all a matter of convenience these days".

Awards, Fellowships and Grants

 * California Arts Counsil
 * Djerassi Artist Residency
 * Frankling Furnace Fund for Performance Art Awards
 * PEN American Center
 * PEN Center USA West

Novels and Poetry

 * Bite Hard (1997) - First collection of poetry. Nominated for the Firecracker Alternative Book Awards and the Lambda Literary Awards.
 * Mongrel (1999) - Collection of biographical and opinionated essays (1994-1997).
 * Harmless Medicine (2001) - Collection of poetry Nominated for the Firecracker Alternative Book Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards and the [[Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Awards.
 * Burden of Ashes (2002) - Collection of biographical and opinionated essays
 * Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms (2005)
 * Gutted (2006)
 * 98 Wounds (2011)

Contributions and appearances

 * The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (1999)
 * American Poetry: The next generation (2000)
 * The World i Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave (2000)
 * Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian Pacific America (2001)
 * Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners (2012)