 |
In 2024, Genny Lim was appointed the ninth poet laureate of San Francisco.
“It is truly a great honor to have been selected as the first Chinese American to serve as San Francisco Poet Laureate. My appointment comes with a sense of profound pride. Growing up in postwar San Francisco Chinatown, as the seventh child of Chinese immigrants once detained at the Angel Island Immigration Detention Center, I have an acute awareness of city residents who function dually as both insiders and outsiders,” said Poet Laureate Genny Lim. “This is the city where people, such as my immigrant parents, come to dream, explore and reinvent themselves. My vision is to help reinvigorate the city through the healing vehicle of poetry. Poetry is a way to better understand the world.”
The Living Poets Society
In 2025, Genny Lim helped to inaugurate San Francisco’s first youth poet laureate cohort program with San Francisco Public Library, Youth Speaks, and 826 Valencia. She curates the Living Poets Society Reading Series throughout the city’s branch libraries. The series highlights poets from the first Youth Poet Laureates Cohort of San Francisco, in an intergenerational presentation with established local poets.
Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship
In 2026, Genny Lim was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. The Academy’s Poet Laureate Fellowships recognize laureates’ literary excellence while enabling them to undertake meaningful and innovative projects that enrich the lives of community members, including youth, through responsive and interactive poetry activities. “Poet laureates bring poetry out into public life, where language can help people feel less alone and more connected to one another,” said Robert Casper, president and executive director of the Academy of American Poets.
Words Without Walls
Genny’s Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship project, “Words Without Walls,” a multi-generational, community-building project, explores cross-disciplinary responses to poetry. These workshops, calendared in response to civic and cultural observances, will be free and open to the public. Participants will discover how the languages of the arts can help free the written word beyond the page in six workshops that will culminate in a performance at the San Francisco Main Public Library featuring Lim, intergenerational poets, and collaborating artists.
Words Without Walls #1 – Chinatown/Him Mark Lai Branch
Sunday, Sept. 27, 2pm -4pm, Chinatown Branch meeting room, with Del Sol Quartet and youth poets Katelyn Wong & Naia Chien, in celebration of the Chinese Moon Festival.
Words Without Walls #2 – Branch location to be confirmed
Saturday, Dec. 19, 2pm – 4pm, with Adrian Arias, in celebration of Las Posadas.
Words Without Walls #3 – Bayview / Linda Brooks-Burton Branch, date to be confirmed, with Sandra Poindexter, in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
Words Without Walls #4 – Sunset Branch, Saturday February 6, 2pm – 4pm, with Sifu Young Wong in celebration of Lunar New Year.
Words Without Walls #5 – Sunset Branch, Saturday March 6, 2pm – 4pm, Latino/Hispanic Community Room, Main San Francisco Public Library, with Claudia Naganuma of d’Naga Dance in celebration of Women’s History Month.
Words Without Walls #6 – Free Saturdays @ de Young Museum, Saturday, April 3, 11am – 2:30pm, National Poetry Month Reading in the Galleries.
Words Without Walls Culminating Event
Tuesday, April 6, 2027, Koret Auditorium, Main Library, San Francisco Public Library, in celebration of National Poetry Month.
Words Without Walls is made possible by the generous support of the Academy of American Poets and the Mellon Foundation.
Music Without Walls: San Francisco Poet Laureate Series No. 8
Forthcoming in April 2027, Music Without Walls, a new collection of poetry by San Francisco’s Poet Laureate Genny Lim published by City Lights, offers an impassioned insider’s personal homage to America’s indigenous music, jazz.