Pam Chun's Biography

Born and raised in Hawaii in a family of storytellers, Pam Chun attended Punahou, the University of Hawaii, and graduated with honors from the University of California, Berkeley.  Recent publications include works on Asian Pacific Americans and Hawaii.

Pam has been interviewed and featured on National Public Radio, at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C., at the National Archives and Records Administration's Conference on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and in the 2004 documentary, Hawaii's Chinatown, which premiered on Hawaii PBS.  Pam has been a speaker at Alameda's first Literary Festival for readers, San Francisco's first Litquake, the San Francisco Writer's Conference, the Bamboo Ridge Writer's Workshop, and many universities. Multi-page interviews of Pam and her publications appear in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Honolulu Advertiser, The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the Seattle International Examiner, the South China News (China) and Alameda Magazine.  Reviews of her novels have appeared in national publications and internationally (Asia Review of Books and South China News).

THE MONEY DRAGON, Pam's first novel, named one of 2002's Best Books in Hawaii, topped the Best Sellers charts for months upon its hardback and paperback release.  In 2003, her novel received the Kapalapala Po`okela Award for excellence in literature from the Hawaii Book Publisher's Association.  THE MONEY DRAGON, a tale of Old Hawaii, is the saga of Pam's great-grandfather, Lau Ah Leong, one of the legends of Hawaii and founder of Honolulu's Chinatown who, despite his immense power and wealth, is not mentioned in any history of Hawaii or of the Chinese in Hawaii.  It is a tale of cultures, empowered women, the conflict of Hawaiian, Territorial, and Federal laws, and the power of love.  The anthology Honolulu Stories (2006) includes an excerpt from THE MONEY DRAGON.

 Pam Chun's second novel, WHEN STRANGE GODS CALL, which expands on one of the scandals of her infamous family, focuses on the contemporary clash of cultures in Hawaii and received the 2005 Ka Palapala Po`okela Award for excellence in literature.

            Pam Chun is on the Executive Advisory Board for the University of San Francisco Center for the Pacific Rim, chair of its Women's Roundtable, recently on the Board of Directors for the California Alumni Association at the University of California, Berkeley, and has been an officer for 30 years on CAL's Chinese Chapter Board.  She is one of the veteran Storytellers at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.  Pam was honored as one of 2004's four Outstanding Overseas Chinese by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association.  She served as a fiction judge for the 2007 and 2008 Kiriyama Prize for Pacific Rim Literature. 

She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Transpac sailor Fred J. Joyce III.  She has one son, a U.S. diplomat stationed overseas.

Visit her on the web at www.pamchun.com