21 American poets of Asian descent

Ai Ogawa was an American poet and educator who won the 1999 National Book Award for Poetry for Vice: New and Selected Poems. Ai is known for her mastery of the dramatic monologue as a poetic form, as well as for taking on dark, controversial topics in her work. About writing in the dramatic monologue form, she's said: "I want to take the narrative 'persona' poem as far as I can, and I've never been one to do things in halves. All the way or nothing. I won't abandon that desire."

Tina Chang is an American poet, teacher, and editor. In 2010, she was named Poet Laureate of Brooklyn.

Tsering Wangmo Dhompa is the first Tibetan female poet to be published in English. She was raised in India and Nepal. Tsering received her BA from Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi. She pursued her MA from University of Massachusetts Amherst and her MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She has a Ph.D. in literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz and is currently an assistant professor in the English Department at Villanova University. Her first book of poems, Rules of the House, published by Apogee Press in 2002, was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Awards in 2003. Other publications include My Rice Tastes Like the Lake, In the Absent Everyday, and two chapbooks: In Writing the Names and Recurring Gestures. In Letter For Love she delivered her first short story. In 2013, Penguin India published Tsering's first full-length book, A Home in Tibet, in which she chronicles her successive journeys to Tibet and provides ethnographic details of ordinary Tibetans inside Tibet.

Trinidad Escobar is an author, poet, and cartoonist active in the San Francisco Bay Area, and an educator at the California College of the Arts.

Vince Gotera is an American poet and writer, best known as Editor of the North American Review. In 1996, Nick Carbó called him a "leading Filipino-American poet of this generation"; later, in 2004, Carbó described him as "one of the leading Asian American poets ... willing to take a stance against American imperialism."

Kimiko Hahn is an American poet and distinguished professor in the MFA program of Queens College, CUNY. Her work frequently deals with the reinvention of poetic forms and the intersecting of conflicting identities.

Carl Sadakichi Hartmann was an American art and photography critic, notable anarchist and poet of German and Japanese descent.

Garrett Kaoru Hongo is a Yonsei, fourth-generation Japanese American academic and poet. The work of this Pulitzer-nominated writer draws on Japanese American history and own experiences.

Luisa A. Igloria is a Filipina American poet and author of various award-winning collections, and is the current Poet Laureate of Virginia.

Lawson Fusao Inada is a Japanese American poet. He was the fifth poet laureate of the state of Oregon.

Janine Joseph is a Filipino-American poet and author.

Sarah Kay is an American poet. Known for her spoken word poetry, Kay is the founder and co-director of Project V.O.I.C.E., founded in 2004, a group dedicated to using spoken word an educational and inspirational tool.

Dr. Kyo Koike was a Japanese-American poet, physician and photographer.

Shirley Geok-lin Lim was born in Malacca Malaysia. She is an American writer of poetry, fiction, and criticism. Her first collection of poems, Crossing The Peninsula, published in 1980, won her the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, a first both for an Asian and for a woman. Among several other awards that she has received, her memoir, Among the White Moon Faces, received the 1997 American Book Award.

Janice Mirikitani is an American Sansei poet and activist.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is an American poet. Nezhukumatathil draws upon her Filipina and Malayali Indian background to give her perspective on love, loss, and land.

Barbara Jane Reyes is an American poet whose work "explores the translatable and untranslatable collisions of writing, self and culture."

Alfred A. Robles was a Filipino American poet and community activist in San Francisco. Born in 1930, he was the second eldest in a family of ten brothers and sisters and grew up in the Fillmore district of San Francisco. A community character, he was instrumental in the political fight against the city to stop the demolition of the International Hotel on Kearny Street. He was also a prominent member of the San Francisco-based Asian American writers' collective Kearny Street Workshop.

Purvi Shah is a writer and social justice activist known for her work to enable language access and advocacy for immigrant survivors of violence.

Brenda Shaughnessy is an American poet.

Jason Tom is an American musician, math teacher, blogger, performance poet, and motivational speaker known for beatboxing in music, dance, and poetry slams. As the founder of the Human Beatbox Academy, he does outreach with performances, workshops and events for people of all ages. Tom has toured China and collaborated with groups such as Hawaii Meth Project and Music with a Message. His Hawaii beatbox class at the Art Smith was included in "Our Favorite Things" in the April 2012 issue of Hawaii Business Magazine. Tom has opened for Michael Winslow, Jabbawockeez, and Quest Crew. He also is a part of the newly formed Hawaii Hip-Hop Collective.