Bates welcomes slam poet Kit Yan

A queer, transgender Asian American slam poet from Hawaii, Kit Yan performs at Bates College at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 8, at the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St.

Yan also facilitates a poetry workshop for writers and performers at all levels at 3 p.m. that day in the Mays Center. Sponsored by the Bates student organization OUTfront, these events are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact eponeman@bates.edu.

Hailed by New York Magazine as “knockout spoken-word,” Yan’s poetry can range from sweet and nostalgic to shockingly raunchy. His anecdotes on heartbreak and love convey his unconventional views on sexuality and identity politics.

Yan’s work has been reviewed in New York Magazine, Bitch, Curve and Hyphen. His poetry has been taught all over the world and he has performed at the San Francisco Pride Celebration, the National Equality March and numerous international poetry slams.

Yan has been commissioned by the Census Bureau and national queer visibility campaigns such as OUTmedia and Campus Pride’s joint “Be Queer Buy Queer” and “Queer It Up” campaigns.

He has toured internationally with Sister Spit, The Tranny Roadshow and Good Asian Drivers, and was featured in the HBO documentary “Asians Aloud.” His work appears in Flickr and Spark and Troubling the Line, two new queer and transgender anthologies.

Based in Brooklyn, Yan spends most of his year traveling the country. His forthcoming book will appear through Trans-Genre Press.