In September, Genevieve Lim, who writes under her pen name Genny, became San Francisco's ninth poet laureate. Lim is the first Chinese American recipient of the honor. Her parents, originally from Taishan in China's Guangdong province, were first-generation immigrants to the United States. Lim was born in San Francisco in 1946 and grew up in the city's Chinatown.

The poet, playwright and performer sees her new honor as a "significant and profound" milestone for Chinese Americans, especially since "historically our community has been marginalized even though we are a large percentage of the population in the San Francisco Bay Area". Her hope is that the current focus on her role as a literary figure will eventually be extended to recognize the cultural contributions made by some of her fellow artists from the Chinese American community, which remains "drastically underrepresented in the arts".

"My community puts so much hope in me, and I want to do my best," she says.