Chun Yu
From 4 June to 1 July 2026

The Chinese-American bilingual poet, graphic novelist, and translator Chun Yu was born in China in 1966. A graduate of the University of Beijing with a BS and Master’s in chemistry, she continued her studies in the United States, earning a PhD at Rutgers University and completing a postdoctoral fellowship at a Harvard-MIT program. Alongside her career in science, she has written short stories and poetry that often focus on questions of modernization in societies where tradition is a very strong presence. Her work has appeared in a number of reviews, including Poetry, Orion, Poetry Northwest, and Arion Press. She authored the award-winning memoir in verse Little Green (Simon & Schuster, 2015), detailing her childhood during Mao’s totalitarian regime. She is a San Francisco Public Library Laureate, a YBCA 100 awardee, and a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. She has received numerous grants and fellowships around the world.