Meiling Cheng is an Earth-based poet, thinker, and theorist interested in using words as a visual-sonic medium. She was a published poet, an award-winning essayist and short-story writer in Taipei, Taiwan, before she moved to the United States to attend Yale University, School of Drama, for her MFA and DFA degrees in Theatre Arts. She is currently teaching at School of Dramatic Arts, University of Southern California. Her first book IN OTHER LOS ANGELESES: MULTICENTRIC PERFORMANCE ART (2002) deals with minoritarian subject formation and the links between visuality and theatricality in live art. Supported by a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship, her second book BEIJING XINGWEI: CONTEMPORARY CHINESE TIME-BASED ART (2013) probes a variety of transient artworks created in response to China's rapid transformations in its post-Deng period. The book positions those encountering performance and installation via reading and writing in a conceptual dialogue with selected Chinese artists to explore the use and awareness of time in art. With her co-editor Gabrielle Cody and their huge team of authors, Cheng is working on a critical anthology entitled READING CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE: THEATRICALITY ACROSS GENRES (2015). With Claudia Bucher and Rolf Hoefer, Meiling Cheng cofounded the Museum of Ommmmm in 2010. The Museum existed for two months and vanished before any cobwebs formed. Undaunted, Cheng tries to practice yoga three times a week--as if it matters.