Fred Wah

Born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan in 1939, celebrated Canadian poet Fred Wah was raised in the interior of British Columbia. He is the author of over 20 published works of poetry and prose-poetry, including the award-winning creative non-fiction Diamond Grill, the tenth anniversary edition of which was re-released in the fall of 2006. Diamond Grill currently sits on NeWest's bestseller list. Other notable titles by Wah include his book of poetry Waiting For Saskatchewan  (Turnstone Press), winner of a Governor General’s Award in 1985, and  Faking it: Poetics and Hybridity , winner of the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Writing in Canadian literature.

Wah was one of the founding editors of the poetry journal TISH. After graduate work in literature and linguistics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and the State University of New York in Buffalo where he worked with Robert Creeley and Charles Olson, he returned to Canada, where he has been involved in teaching internationally in poetry and poetics since the early 1960s. Fred Wah currently works and lives in Vancouver.