Chin was born in Jamaica but now lives in New York City. She is of Chinese-Jamaican and Afro-Jamaican decent.

Openly lesbian, she has been an "out poet and political activist" since 1998. In addition to performing in and co-writing the Tony-nominated Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Chin has appeared in Off-Broadway one-woman shows and at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. She has also held poetry workshops worldwide. Chin credits her accomplishments to her hard-working grandmother's and the pain of her mother's absence.

Chin's poetry can be found in her first chapbook, Wildcat Woman, the one she now carries on her back, Stories Surrounding My Coming, and numerous anthologies, including Skyscrapers, Taxis and Tampons, Poetry Slam, Role Call, Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies. Chin's voice can be heard on CD compilations out of Bar 13- Union Square and Pow Wow productions.

She is a host on Logo's After Ellen Internet show, "She Said What?" and a co-host of Centric's My Two Cents.

In 2009, Chin performed in The People Speak a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States”.

Chin's "activist driven" work has garnered praise in various publications. Of her one-woman show Border/Clash, The New York Times wrote that Chin "is sassy, rageful and sometimes softly self-mocking." The Advocate wrote, "With poems that combine hilarious one-liners ("I told her I liked the way she made that pink push-up bra look intellectual") with a refusal to conform ("I want to be the dyke who likes to fuck men"), Chin is out to confront more than just the straight world." And in the book, Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, author Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz referred to Chin as "definitely the prize to win" among the three New York City Poetry Slam venues during the years she competed, adding:

Chin was the winner of the 1999 Chicago People of Color Slam; first runner- up in the 1999 Outright Poetry Slam; winner of the 1998 Lambda Poetry Slam; a finalist in the 1999 Nuyorican Grand Slam; winner of the 1998 and 2000 Slam This!; and winner of WORD: The First Slam for Television. She has also been featured by cable access programs in Brooklyn and Manhattan as well as many local radio stations including, WHCR and WBAI. The Joseph Pap Public Theatre has featured her on more than one occasion, and Staceyann has toured internationally, with performances in London, Denmark, Germany, and New York's own Central Park Summer Stage.

Books

Performances

• Staceyann Chin: Performed Poems in Trikster - Nordic Queer Journal #3, 2009.

Interviews

• Staceyann Chin & Ulrika Dahl: Articulating Honesty: A Conversation on Literature and Activism in Trikster - Nordic Queer Journal #3, 2009