Genny Lim

Genny Lim was born on December 15, 1946, in San Francisco. She translated nearly one hundred poems by Chinese immigrants detained on Angel Island under the Chinese Exclusion Act in Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940 (University of Washington Press, 2014), edited alongside Him Mark Lai and Judy Yung, which received the American Book Award in 1980 and the 2024 Spirit of Angel Island Award from the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation.

Lim is the recipient of two lifetime achievement awards from PEN Oakland and the city of Berkeley, California, as well as a Certificate of Honor from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in recognition of fifty years of public service to the Bay Area arts. A 2024 San Francisco State University Hall of Fame Alumnus, she participated in the 1968 San Francisco State College strike that led to the establishment of ethnic studies programs in colleges and universities throughout the United States. 

In 2025, Lim helped inaugurate San Francisco’s first youth poet laureate cohort program with the San Francisco Public Library, Youth Speaks, and 826 Valencia. She curates the Living Poets Society Reading Series throughout the city’s branch libraries. In 2024, Lim was appointed the ninth poet laureate of San Francisco.