Paul Tran

Research

History of prosody in English, mapping vexed interiority, Asian American poetry and poetics since 1890, the American novel since 1945, queer and nonbinary literature and literary forms, comparative race and ethnic studies, the pursuit of happiness, migration, mothers and mothering, beauty and monstrosity, Asian American bitches since 1565, the love poem, forms of formal invention, decoloniality, poetics of exile and return, radical friendship.

Current Projects

Paul is completing a second book of poems, a collection of essays on poetics, a novel, and with the encouragement of Penguin Random House, a reintroduction of a Penguin Classic.

Affiliations

• Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry, Stanford University, 2022
• Senior Poetry Fellow, Washington University in St. Louis, 2020
• M.F.A., Poetry, Washington University in St. Louis, 2019
• B.A., History, Africana, Ethnic Studies, Brown University, 2014

Biography

Paul Tran is the author of the internationally acclaimed debut poetry collection, All the Flowers Kneeling (Penguin, 2022). Their work appears in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere, including the Lionsgate movie Love Beats Rhymes with Azealia Banks, Common, and Jill Scott. Paul is the first transgender poet, and the first Asian American since 1993, to be the Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam Champion. They placed top 10 at the Individual World Poetry Slam, and top 2 at the National Poetry Slam, and coached the back-to-back Brave New Voices Champions from St. Louis. Winner of the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize, as well as distinctions from the Poetry Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Library of Congress Mary Oliver Memorial Fund, Paul has taught at Barnard College, Washington University in St. Louis, Pacific University Low Residency MFA Program, Stanford University, and now is an Assistant Professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Select Publications

Books

All the Flowers Kneeling (Penguin, 2022), winner of the California Independent Booksellers Alliance Golden Poppy Award and Wisconsin Library Association Poetry Award, finalist for the PEN Open Book Award, Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Lambda Literary Foundation Transgender Poetry Award, and Association for Asian American Studies Poetry Award, and named an NPR “Books We Love,” The New Yorker “Best Books of 2022,” and The New York Times “Editor’s Choice”

Film

Love Beats Rhymes, RZA dir. (Lionsgate, 2017)

Documentary

Brooklyn Slams, Christopher Radditz dir. (BRIC, 2017), winner of the New York City Regional Emmy Award

Poems

• “Second Nature,” The New Yorker, 2024
• “The Three Graces,” The New Yorker, 2023
• “Taurus Sun, Cancer Moon, Scorpio Rising,” Academy of American Poets, 2023
• “Lipstick Elegy,” The New York Times, 2022
• “Window Shopping,” Harper’s Bazaar, February 2022
• “Bioluminescence,” The New Yorker, 2021
• “Galileo,” Academy of American Poets, 2020
• “Copernicus,” The New Yorker, 2020
• “Incident Report,” Poetry Magazine, 2019
• “The Nightmare,” Poetry Magazine 2018
• “Judith Slaying Holofernes,” Poetry Magazine, 2018
• “Endosymbiosis,” Poetry Magazine, 2018
• “Scientific Method,” Poetry Magazine, 2018
• “Chrome,” The New Yorker, 2017

Anthologies

“Terroir,” You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, an anthology and signature project selected by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, 2024

Installations

• “Twenty-Nine Palms,” Unhidden: After C.P. Cavafy, National Sawdust & Onassis Foundation, 2023
• “Why I Reach For You When I Know I Can’t Touch You,” Together/Apart, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, 2020

Teaching

In their first four semesters at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Paul Tran has been the instructor of record for Asian American Poetry Since 1890, Intermediate Poetry Writing Workshop, Queer and Nonbinary Asian American Literature, Graduate Poetry Writing Workshop, Intermediate Poetry Writing Workshop: First Books, The Pursuit of (Asian American) Happiness, Other Mothers, and The Love Poem Since 600 BCE, and has directed three tutorials on The Poetics and Life of Agha Shahid Ali, Desire and Devotion, and Nonbinary Somatics. For the 2025-26 academic year, Paul will teach Asian American Beauty and Asian American Bitches Since 1565, as well as advanced level courses in English and Creative Writing.

Using project-based learning and community-engaged scholarship, Paul believes we write better when we read better, and we learn best by doing, and we do our best work when we work together. Their students have not only engaged closely with poetry, novels, short stories, memoirs, essay collections, movies, television, music, and comics, but students have also collaboratively written novels, assembled poetry chapbooks and anthologies, embroidered short story collections onto Hmong storytelling cloth, conducted oral histories to create original cookbooks, and organized public events such as a reading at A Room of One’s Own with poets Diana Khoi Nguyen and Cindy Ok, an entirely student-run comedy showcase in honor of Margaret Cho, and an upcoming symposium for the fiftieth anniversary of the Vietnam War.

As a teacher, Paul introduces students to language arts. As a language artist, Paul introduces students to self-determination and the determination of their own selves. We practice agency and authority by making intentional decisions, assessing their efficacy, and revising not for deficit but for brilliance, genius, wonder, and astonishment. The writing and editing process is not unlike life. When we write, we right our lives. When we revise, we revise ourselves. The poem is no different from the person. Therefore, across all their classes, and their work as a member of the Creative Writing Program Steering Committee and Asian American Studies Program Advisory Committee, and their service contributing faculty for First Wave in the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiative and the APIDA Student Center and the Born Digital Initiative with the Washington University in St. Louis Library and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Paul seeks to model for students the integrity, dignity, and power of the daring imagination.