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Kay Ulanday Barrett

He // They // Siya

Poet, Essayist, and Cultural Strategist

Rahway, New Jersey

Kay, a brown, round queer, performs at a microphone with transgender and rainbow flags in the background. They wear a gray blazer and glasses.

Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, performer, essayist, and cultural strategist. Ulanday Barrett is the winner of the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry. They have attended residences at Tin House, Millay Arts, Baldwin For the Arts, Macondo, and MacDowell. Their second book, More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020), received a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book Award by the American Library Association and is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. They have received fellowships from VONA Voices, Macondo, and The Lambda Literary Review. 

Ulanday Barrett has served on boards, panels, and committees for the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Leeway Foundation, Disability Justice Collective, Trans Justice Funding Project, Transgender Law Center, and on the Advisory Committee for the documentary Crip Camp. They have been featured at the United Nations, Lincoln Center, Hemispheric Institute, Symphony Space, the Ford Foundation, Brooklyn Museum, Princeton, Columbia University, Yale, Manchester Pride, Sesame Street, and more.

Their contributions are found in The New York Times, Al Jazeera, NYLON, Vogue, Brevity, Bitch Media, Academy of American Poets, Colorlines, Lit Hub, The Lily, Split This Rock, The Massachusetts Review, The Hopkins Review, Asian American Literary Review, F(r)iction, Cura Magazine, The Margins, The Advocate, Poetry Magazine, The Rumpus, Them., Disability Visibility, Disability Arts, and PBS News Hour. Currently, Ulanday Barrett remixes their mama’s recipes and lives in New Jersey with their jowly dog.

Donor -Disability Futures is supported by Ford Foundation and Mellon Foundation.

This artist page was last updated on: 08.20.2024