Kay Ulanday Barrett

Kay Ulanday Barrett
Born
Mackinaw City, Michigan, U.S.
Alma materDePaul University
Websitekaybarrett.net

Kay Ulanday Barrett is an American poet, performer, educator, food writer, cultural strategist, and disability advocate based in New York and New Jersey. Their second book, More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020) received a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book Award by the American Library Association and was a 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature Finalist. They are a 2020 James Baldwin Fellowship recipient, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and a two-time Best of the Net nominee. Barrett's writing and performance centers on the experience of queer, transgender, people of color, mixed race people, Asian, and Filipino/a/x community. The focus of their artistic work navigates multiple systems of oppression in the context of the United States.

Early life and education

Ulanday Barrett was born in Mackinaw City, Michigan and grew up in a low-income and working class household. Their father was a merchant marine and their mother was a Filipina[1] migrant domestic worker. Barrett began writing and poetry as a task to help their mother during her shifts cleaning motel rooms and other people's homes. After their parents' divorce, Barrett moved with their mother to Chicago, where they lived in the Albany Park and Logan Square neighborhoods.[2] Barrett attended Lane Tech High School.[3] They attended undergraduate studies at DePaul University and studied Women's & Gender Studies along with Political Science with a minor in English. Barrett's early work is informed by the 1990s spoken word, community theater, hip-hop, and slam poetry movements that arose in Chicago among marginalized communities of that time.[4] They frequented open-mics, poetry slams, and community theatre spaces as well as organized in POC and migrant solidarity networks as a means to create queer and people of color community.

Performance and speaking work

Barrett has been performing poetry, spoken word, and interdisciplinary theatre professionally since 2004. Their artistic influences were through touring, teaching, and collaborative work with Mango Tribe, Women Outloud!, Young Chicago Authors, The Chicago Freedom School, and Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School. Trained by community poets and theater artists, much of their work was centered in the practices of Theatre of The Oppressed and Popular Education as shown by ensemble residencies he attended by theHemispheric Institute, namely New World Theater and Asian Arts Initiative. Recent writing and poetry have centered on the praxis of disability justice,[5] specifically elaborating on intersectionality of multiple communities including transgender people of color and the chronically ill and disabled community.

Writing

Poetry

In 2020, Barrett said of their poetry, "There are elements of traditional form in my poetry but then there’s also super contemporary modern form — list poems, blues poems, and then I’ll use a pantoum”.[4] In the 2014 anthology Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, Barrett's work is described as “alternatively admonishing, encouraging, and elevating the queer and trans communities".[6]

Barrett is the author of two poetry collections: When The Chant Comes (published 2016) and More Than Organs (published 2020 by Sibling Rivalry Press). The latter was a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist[7] and an American Library Association Stonewall Book Award Honor Book.[8]

Publications

Books

  • When The Chant Comes. Topside Press. 2016.[9]
  • More Than Organs. Sibling Rivalry Press. 2020. ISBN 9781943977741.[1][4][10][11]

Essays

Poems

Career

They have received fellowships & residencies from Millay Arts (2023), Tin House (2022), MacDowell (2020),[14] Lambda Literary (2017, 2018), VONA Voices (2018), and Macondo (2018). In 2018 they were guest faculty at the Poetry Foundation. They have featured and given keynotes at venues such as The United Nations, The Whitney, The Museum of Modern Art, The Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, Brooklyn Museum, Hemispheric Institute, Queens Museum, and the Chicago Historical Society.

Teaching

Barrett has been an educator teaching poetry, spoken word, theatre, slam poetry, and cultural work at various high schools and youth arts organizations nationwide. They also lead workshops on intersectionality, social justice, disability and chronic illness.[15]

Personal life

Barrett is mixed race and of Filipino descent.[16] They are queer, genderqueer, and gender non-conforming trans non-binary,[4][16] and have used the pronouns they, he, k, ne, and pogi (a Tagalog term).[16][17] They have undergone elective top surgery and an emergency hysterectomy.[18] Barrett is disabled and experiences chronic pain, which influences their work.[4][18] As of 2020, Barrett is based in New York City.[1]

Honors and awards

Barrett has received the following awards:[19]

  • 2021 ALA Stonewall Book Award Barbara Gittings Honor Book (Poetry & Literature), for More Than Organs
  • 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist in Transgender Poetry, for More Than Organs
  • MacDowell Artist-In-Residence (2020 Poetry, Literature)
  • James Baldwin Fellowship (2020, MacDowell)
  • Best of the Net Nominee, Split This Rock (2019)
  • F(r)iction Magazine, Guest Judge, Poetry (2019)
  • 9 Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Writers You Should Know: VOGUE (2018)
  • The Leeway Foundation, Funding Panelist & Judge (2018)
  • Lambda Literary Review, Writer-In-Residence: Poetry (2018)
  • Pushcart Prize, Nomination: Poetry (2017)
  • Pushcart Prize, Nomination: Poetry (2016)
  • Trans 100, Curator (2014)
  • 18 Million Rising Filipino American History Month Hero (2013)
  • Trans 100: 100 Most Amazing Transgender People in the U.S. (2013)
  • Trans Justice Funding Panel (2013)
  • Trans 100 Honoree (2013)
  • QWOC Media Wire's Top 5 LGBT People of Color POETS (2013)
  • Transgender Leadership Summit Advisory Board (2012)
  • Filipino American Historical Society Feature (2011)
  • Campus PRIDE HOT List Artist (2009–2010)
  • Crossroads Foundation Individual Activist Award (2005)
  • Gwendolyn Brooks Open-Mic Award, Finalist (2005)
  • Windy City Times "30 Under 30" Award (2005)
  • Windy City Times PRIDE Poetry 1st Prize (2009)

References

  1. 1 2 3 Betts, Tara (2020-03-19). "Review: Kay Ulanday Barrett's More Than Organs". Newcity Lit. Retrieved 2026-04-27.
  2. ↑ Melt, H. (2017-01-10). "Kay Ulanday Barrett: On Dancing it Out, Revising Masculinity, and Poetry as Testimony". Lambda Literary Review. Retrieved 2026-04-27.
  3. ↑ Wong, Alice (2020-03-29). "Q&A with Kay Ulanday Barrett". Disability Visibility Project. Retrieved 2026-04-27.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Factora, James (2020-03-13). ""More Than Organs" Envisions Queer, Disabled, BIPOC Futures". Them. Retrieved 2026-04-27.
  5. ↑ headsetoptions (10 June 2015). "Disability Justice – a working draft by Patty Berne". Sins Invalid. Archived from the original on 2016-03-15. Retrieved 2016-03-15.
  6. ↑ Erickson-Schroth, Laura (2014-05-12). Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community. Oxford University Press. p. 565. ISBN 978-0-19-932536-8.
  7. ↑ "2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalists Announced". Lambda Literary. 2021-03-15. Retrieved 2026-04-27.
  8. ↑ "Stonewall Book Awards List". Round Tables. American Library Association. 2009-09-09. Retrieved 2023-07-23.
  9. ↑ Maisonet, Eddie. "When The Chant Comes, Kay Ulanday Barrett". Winter Tangerine. Retrieved 2026-04-27.
  10. ↑ Alvarado, Jo (2022-12-09). "Cartography of Sound: Body-Mapping and Border-Crossings in Kay Ulanday Barrett's More Than Organs and Aldrin Valdez's ESL, or You Weren't Here". The Columbia Journal of Asia. 1 (2): 78–90. doi:10.52214/cja.v1i2.10002. ISSN 2832-8558.
  11. ↑ Perry, Eleanor (2022-04-21). Radical Elegies: White Violence, Patriarchy, and Necropoetics. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 165. ISBN 978-1-350-23607-3.
  12. ↑ Barrett, Kay Ulanday (2022). "To Hold the Grief & the Growth: On Crip Ecologies". Poetry. 219 (4): 310–322. ISSN 0032-2032.
  13. ↑ DelaRosa, Tony (2023-10-24). Teaching the Invisible Race: Embodying a Pro-Asian American Lens in Schools. John Wiley & Sons. p. 112. ISBN 978-1-119-93023-5.
  14. ↑ "Kay Ulanday Barrett - MacDowell Fellow in Literature". MacDowell. Retrieved 2026-04-27.
  15. ↑ Whelan, Nora (2018-05-14). "Why the LGBTQ+ Community Must Fight for Disability Rights". Them. Retrieved 2026-04-27.
  16. 1 2 3 "Kay Ulanday Barrett | New York". Visibility Project.
  17. ↑ "What racial, disability and LGBTQ justice have in common". PBS News. 2015-10-12. Retrieved 2026-04-27.
  18. 1 2 Barrett, Kay Ulanday (2022-08-18). "My Hysterectomy Wasn't about Gender Euphoria. It Was about Survival". Them. Retrieved 2026-04-27.
  19. ↑ "Kay Barrett CV & Recognition". kaybarrett.net. Archived from the original on 2015-01-10.
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