Staceyann Chin is a full time artist. A resident of New York City and a Jamaican National, she has been an “out poet and political activist” since 1998. From the Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe to one-woman shows Off-Broadway to acting in Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe and performing in both the stage and film versions of Howard Zinn’s Voices of a People's History of the United States, to starring in the Tony-nominated, Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Chin credits the long list of “things she has done” to her grandmother's hard-working history and the pain of her mother's absence. She is the author of her memoir The Other Side of Paradise and Crossfire, a collection of her poetry.