About Cai

Cai (he/him) is a black trans poet, teaching artist, and archivist with roots in Boston, Massachusetts.

He received his undergraduate degree from Smith College, where he helped establish the Weaving Voices Archives, documenting the history of student activism on campus. It was during this time that he found his passion for poetry & youth work as a poetry instructor with local elementary school students.

Upon graduation, he was the recipient of both the Ida B. Wells Prize for Distinguished Work in Africana Studies and the Emily Babcock Poetry Prize.

Cai is a two-time Pushcart Prize, 2021 Winter Fellow with The Watering Hole, and 2023 Brooklyn Poets Summer Fellow. His work is published or forthcoming in Best New Poets 2022, Brooklyn Review, Crazyhorse, and Peach Mag among others, as well as My Loves: A Digital Anthology of Queer Love Poems from Ghost City Press.

In 2022 Cai completed an MFA in creative writing at New York University. He is currently working on his first book and is based in Chicago.