This book began as an answer to power. In the face of the undeniable, it became a reckoning. Of the lies that are lived to feel belonging. Of the lies that are told to hide shame. Of the lies that are believed to remain within illusions. Well Played is a warning to the present, a welcoming of the truth, and a poet working to earn a way beyond power. "The poetry in Beau Sia's Well Played are fearless, hard-hitting, uncompromising. His own unflinching self-reflection on race, colonialism, assimilation, representation, white supremacy, identity is a ever-shifting kaleidoscope of words, timelines, and layers of being that spin into something like a survival guide, a trickster's song, a call to action, an incantation for a kinder and more just world." —Yumi Sakugawa, author of Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One with the Universe "There's a radical love running through these sometimes seemingly disparate poems, a heart that won't shut up, that I think of as pure Beau. There were so many times I saw myself or others in this collection, a hundred hundred moments he pulled out of the wind, or the dark, or that heart of his. A new collection from him is an occasion." —Alexander Chee, Author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel Beau Sia was born in Toledo, Ohio, raised in Oklahoma City, OK, and is the son of Chinese immigrants from the Philippines. He is a Tony Award winning poet, the author of The Undisputed Greatest Writer Of All Time, and is featured on all seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry. His work has been to harness the power of poetry in his life beyond what is possible with poems.