According to Fred Wah, the act of thinking critically is one of exploration and discovery. In this book, Wah demonstrates how writing poetry is writing critically. This scrapbook of Wah's work -- collected from fifteen years of his writing -- contains essays, reviews, journals, notes and, most importantly, poetic improvisations on contemporary poetry and identity. Faking It was written between 1984 and 1999 -- during major shifts in critical thinking and cultural production -- and the hybrid style of the book is an apt reflection of these changing times, as well as a reflection and study of Wah's own hybrid identity.
Fred Wah has been involved with a number of literary magazines over the years, such as Open Letter and West Coast Line. Recent books are the biofiction Diamond Grill (1996), Faking It: Poetics and Hybridity (2000), a collection of essays, and Sentenced to Light (2008), a collection of poetic image/text projects. He splits his time between the Kootenays in southeastern B.C. and Vancouver.