Fred Wah studied music and English literature at the University of British Columbia in the early 1960s, where he was one of the founding editors of the poetry newsletter TISH.

He has published books of poetry, fiction, and criticism. His book of prose poems, Waiting For Saskatchewan, received the Governor General¿s Award in 1986, and So Far was awarded the Stephanson Award for Poetry in 1992. Diamond Grill, a biofiction about hybridity and growing up in a small-town Chinese Canadian cafe was published in 1996 and won the Howard O¿Hagan Award for Short Fiction. Faking It: Poetics and Hybridity was awarded the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Writing on Canadian literature in 2000, and is a door won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 2009.

Wah was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2012. He served as Canadäs Parliamentary Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2013.

Life-long poem project from the Governor General's Award-winning former parliamentary poet laureate.