Chelsey Minnis lives in Boulder, Colorado, and also writes screenplays under the name Merrit Schmidt. She has an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, and her books of poetry include Baby, I Don’t Care, Poemland, Bad Bad, and Zirconia. Two of her drama screenplay features placed in the semifinals in the Austin Film Festival in 2024: opera biopic Baritone and contained magical drama Autobiography of a Very Normal Person. A New York Times review for Baby, I Don't Care called her “a provocative thinker about gender and poetry and the erotics of dislike.”