Fred Wah

Fred Wah approaches poetry, criticism, and memoir through questions of language and cultural belonging. Diamond Grill blends family history, poetry, and documentary fragments while returning to the Chinese Canadian restaurant operated by his family in Nelson, British Columbia. That busy social space lets the book explore food, work, memory, and mixed heritage. Wah has described his approach as a biotext, a form that resists a smooth autobiographical narrative and lets gaps, recipes, anecdotes, and linguistic shifts carry meaning. NeWest Press first published Diamond Grill in 1996, and the book received the Howard O'Hagan Award for Short Fiction. Its attention to hyphenated identity connects closely with Wah's wider writing, where form becomes part of the inquiry into belonging. He later served as Canada's Parliamentary Poet Laureate and taught for many years, with the University of Calgary among his appointments. Diamond Grill remains one of his best-known works because its experimentation stays rooted in a vivid family workplace, presenting identity through everyday speech, movement, and meals.