Tina Chang was born in Oklahoma, in 1969, to Chinese immigrants, who had met in Montreal, where her mother was working as a nurse and her father was earning his doctorate in physics. Chang moved with her family to New York City when she was a year old. As a child, Chang and her brother were sent to live with family in Taiwan for two years before returning to New York. She earned a BA at SUNY-Binghamton and an MFA at Columbia University.

Chang is the author of the poetry collections Half-Lit Houses (2004) and Of Gods & Strangers (2011). Her work has been featured in the anthologies Asian American Poetry: THE NEXT GENERATION (2004) and From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (2009). She co-edited the anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (2008).

The first woman to be named poet laureate of Brooklyn, New York, Chang discussed her appointment with the New York Times: “The ultimate goal is to break down the wall between people and poetry,” Chang noted. “Somewhere along the way, we have felt intimidated by it, or we have felt we have to be well-educated in order to be able to access it or walk into that world.”

She currently teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and is an international faculty member at the City University at Hong Kong