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Sean Gunn was born in Vernon, BC, in August 1948. He is a descendant of Chinese railway workers and Chinese head taxpayers. Gunn studied at the University of British Columbia in the late 1960s and 1970s, during the heart of the Asian Canadian movement when Chinese and Japanese Canadians explored their shared Asian history and identity together. Over his lifetime, he has been active in Vancouver’s Chinatown as a political and cultural organizer.
Gunn is a former director of the Chinese Benevolent Association and a founding member of the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop. His poetry is published in the pioneering anthologies Inalienable Rice and Many Mouthed Birds. He is also known for his career in music, performing in the house bands of Vancouver’s Chinatown (at the Kublai Khan strip joint and Marco Polo night club) and with Asian Canadian alternative folk-rock bands (Number One Son and Raw Silk). Gunn composed the music for the feature-length films Moving the Mountain and Fishbones.
He resides in Vancouver.
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Created by Alston So, March 2026.