Fred Wah is one of the most important and innovative writers and critics to have emerged from western Canada in the second half of the twentieth century. Since 1965, Wah has published twenty-four books of poetry, the first entitled

Lardeau

(1965), the most recent,

Sentenced to Light

(2008).

Waiting For Saskatchewan

(1985) won him a Governor-General’s Literary Award in 1986 and

So Far

was awarded the Stephanson Award for Poetry in 1992.

Diamond Grill

(1996), his “biotext” about hybridity and growing up in a small-town Chinese-Canadian café, was published in 1996 and won the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Fiction. His most recent work involves image-text collaborations with visual artists. His book of essays, published under the title

Faking It:

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Citation: Rudy, Susan. "Fred Wah". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 April 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4571, accessed 14 December 2024.]

4571 Fred Wah 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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