Wing Tek Lum

Born in Honolulu in 1946, Wing Tek Lum is the author of two books of poetry: Expounding the Doubtful Points (Bamboo Ridge Press, 1987), and The Nanjing Massacre: Poems (Bamboo Ridge Press, 2013), a book inspired by Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking (Basic Books,1997). Lum’s writing method is primarily visual. In an interview with Honolulu Magazine, he described his process: “I like to look at a moment in time and reflect on that. A lot of my poems are related to or inspired by photographs. I look at a photograph and I try to write something down—a description of what I see. I look at it again and write something more.”

While studying engineering and art at Brown University in the late 1960s, Lum edited the school's literary magazine. He also became involved in the Vietnam War protest movement and was arrested at the Pentagon during a march on Washington. After graduating from Brown, Lum attended the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, from which he graduated with a master's degree in divinity in 1973. Before moving back to Honolulu in 1976, Lum made a living as a social worker in New York City's Chinatown.

Lum received an American Book Award in 1988 and an Elliot Cades Award for Literature in 2013. His poem “Before the Fire,” which describes the 1899 bubonic plague outbreak in Honolulu's Chinatown, was featured in the 2022 PBS short film, My Chinatown, with Aloha.

Lum lives in Honolulu, where he is an executive at his family's real estate company, Lum Yip Kee Ltd., and the business manager for a long-running local publisher, Bamboo Ridge Press.