Beau Sia

February 6, 1976

Beau Sia is a Tony Award-winning slam poet. Born to Chinese immigrants from the Philippines in Ohio and raised in Oklahoma City, he moved to New York City for college, earning a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. In New York, he began performing at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which led to his joining the 1996 Nuyorican National Poetry Slam team and being featured in the influential slam poetry documentary SlamNation. Sia is a two-time National Poetry Slam champion and the author of Well Played (2020), The Undisputed Greatest Writer of All Time (2010), and A Night Without Armor II: The Revenge (1998), a satiric response to Jewel’s poetry collection A Night Without Armor (1999). Sia’s poetry and performances often challenge Asian American stereotypes. Sia’s work has been anthologized in How to Make a Living as a Poet (2005), Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry (2000), and Poetry Nation: The North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry (1998), among other collections. He has appeared in films, including Rachel Getting Married (2008), Hitch (2005), and The Manchurian Candidate (2004), and appeared on Broadway in Def Poetry Jam (2003), for which he won a Tony Award. Sia’s work has been covered by publications including Salon.com and the New York Daily News. He has performed all over the world and facilitated workshops for Urban Word NYC and Youth Speaks. He lives in Los Angeles, California.