Trinh Lê is a Creative Writing MFA candidate at San Francisco State University whose work spans poetry, visual art, archival research, and interdisciplinary collaboration. They are a Marcus Recruitment Award recipient and the 2025-26 Poetry Coalition Fellow at the SF State Poetry Center, one of nine emerging literary leaders selected nationwide through the Academy of American Poets.

Across SF State, Trinh has collaborated with multiple disciplines, exhibiting concrete poetry and text-based art in the Art Department and appearing in an experimental documentary through the School of Cinema featuring their original poetry. They have been a featured poet at readings across the Bay Area and have taught The Craft of Poetry and The Art of Revision to Creative Writing majors.

Trinh received the 2025 Black Mountain College Award from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics for a concrete poem honoring the wire sculptures of San Francisco artist Ruth Asawa. They were nominated for the 2024 Pushcart Prize Anthology and were a finalist for the Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize. In 2023, their work was featured at the Asian Art Museum for Bernice Bing: Open Call.

Trinh is also a core volunteer and community archivist at the Bay Area Lesbian Archives in Oakland. Their research with the archives of Bernice Bing, Etel Adnan, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha explores Bay Area women’s art and poetry of the 1970s.

A lesbian poet, artist, educator, and eldest daughter, Trinh was born in Berkeley to Vietnamese immigrant parents who came to the East Bay following the American War in Vietnam. They earned a BA in Political Science from UC Berkeley and continue to live and work in Oakland today.