Qin Qin
Filed under: Authors
Qin Qin (Xavier Qin Youngdale) is a Chinese-American adoptee currently studying towards their bachelor's degree in Creative Writing and Critical Identity Studies at Beloit College. Being queer, trans/nonbinary, and disabled, the arts have been the only constant that has allowed Qin Qin to synthesize and imagine different ways of being.
While doing Chinese Classical dance and playing the cello helped them learn what it means to be a part of something greater, creating slam poetry gave them back power and consent over how to tell their life experiences.
Qin Qin has always been dedicated to integrating art with social justice activism; chronicling issues of grief, gratitude, asymmetry, and erasure. In 2018, their poem "A Thank-you, an Apology, a Deliverance" was published on the now-deleted website Not Your Mother's Breast Milk. In their more recent work, they've been inquiring about the urgency and violence of beauty, joy, pathologization, and the theory of whiteness.
Photo by Le Ngoc Giang My, 2022
Winning Entry: Bastards’ Tongue
Contest Won: Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest 2021, First Prize, Tom Howard
