Aimy Tien (she/they) is a Colorado transplant who fell into storytelling due to a combination of an irrational childhood fear of lions, a Val Kilmer film, and an overactive imagination. Now a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist, producer, and educator, Aimy focuses on bringing the stories of people of color and marginalized groups to the page, stage, and screen. They are a proud company member of 2nd Story and the Co-Director of Operations and President of the Board of Women of the Now, a womxn-run film collective. She makes art with Free Street Theater, About Face Theatre, and other organizations.

They received a creative writing fellowship from the Luminarts Cultural Foundation, and her collection, Mosaic, was one of the top entries for the Vine Leaves Vignette Collection Award. She is currently at work on a new collection, The Queer Joy Project, which will comprise of essays, poetry, personal narrative, and multimedia live performance. Previous work can be found in The Manifest-Station, WirehouseCo, The Wheel, The Character Project, and other publications.

Aimy’s work is driven by Viet Thanh Nguyen’s concept of narrative plenitude — the belief that there should be an abundance of stories so that no single story has to stand as monolith for an entire culture, group, or community. Aimy believes we are in need of stories that cover the range of our lived experiences, and, most importantly, that these stories already exist. We just need to tell them and to listen.

aimytien.com, @aimytien