Chelsey Minnis  Chelsey Minnis (born 1970 in Dallas, Texas)  is an American poet. Her collections of poetry include "Zirconia", "Bad Bad" and "Poemland". "Zirconia" won the 2001 Alberta Prize for Poetry. She received a B. A. in English from the University of Colorado Boulder and studied at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Minnis's work was described as expressing a "gurlesque" aesthetic by Arielle Greenberg, which she described as "a feminine, feminist incorporating of the grotesque and cruel with the spangled and dreamy."