Fiona Tinwei Lam

Fiona Tinwei Lam is the author of two books of poetry, Intimate Distances (finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award) and Enter the Chrysanthemum.  Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have been published in over 20 anthologies (in Canada, Hong Kong, and the US), including In Fine Form: The Anthology of Canadian Form Poetry and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2010, as well as Force Field: An Anthology of 77 BC Women Poets.  

Her work has also been featured twice on local transit as part of B.C.’s Poetry in Transit, and it has aired on CBC Radio. She is a co-editor of and contributor to a literary non-fiction anthology, Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2008.

She edited The Bright Well, a collection of contemporary Canadian poetry about facing cancer, which was published by Leaf Press in 2011. Oolichan Books will be publishing The Rainbow Rocket, her first book for children (about a boy dealing with his grandparent’s struggle with Alzheimer’s), in 2013.

Born in Scotland, she emigrated to Canada at a young age with her family. She has studied political science and law, earning a BA from UBC, an LLB  from Queen’s University, and an LLM from the University of Toronto. She articled and worked as an associate in a Vancouver law firm, and later as a staff lawyer at the Law Society of British Columbia. After a term as a sessional instructor at Carleton University in Ottawa, she returned to Vancouver to obtain an MFA in creative writing at UBC. 

In the past, she was involved in a variety of non-profits, community and volunteer committees, as well as boards and projects dealing with issues of diversity and social justice.