Koon Woon, a well-known Seattle poet who lived for several decades in Chinatown hotels and documented his harrowing struggles with homelessness and mental illness, passed on August 13 at the age of 77.
Woon had resided for the past nine years in Alaska House, a low-income senior facility in West Seattle. In late 2025, he had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer.
Koon published a memoir, Paper-son Poet: When Rails Were Young in 2016; He also wrote several collections of poetry, including Payment in Memories, (2015), The Truth in Rented Rooms (1998), and Rice Bowls (2018). He won the 2014 American Book award from the Before Columbus Foundation for his 2013 collection Water Chasing Water, issued by Kaya Press.
Woon reached out to me through Facebook shortly after his cancer diagnosis. We had had many long phone conversations in the 1980s during my tenure as editor of the International Examiner and later when I was director of the Wing Luke Museum. He lived for seven years in the Republic Hotel, a dilapidated historic structure in the heart of Chinatown, and later at International Terrace, a Seattle Housing Authority facility in Nihonmachi.
When I was at the Museum, then located in a refurbished auto garage across the street from the Republic Hotel, he often called and came to see me, first chatting with the front desk volunteers while he waited for me to come down from my upstairs office. He complained about the poor conditions experienced by the non-English-speaking elderly residents, living in poverty, beset by crime.
On one occasion, though, he went on a surprise rampage, wielding a long stick and breaking out a glass pane at the Museum. International Emergency Center (IDEC) medic Donnie Chin, who had tracked Koon’s movements, told me what happened.
Poet Alan Lau, who edits Pacific Reader for the International Examiner, also recalled seeing Koon at the Uwajimaya store in Chinatown. Lau worked in the produce department.
“One day he came into Uwajimaya with a big, long pole,” Lau said. “He said, ‘Do you want me to be your bodyguard? I can be your bodyguard.’ Another time, he picked up a ceramic stool—the kind of stool that you might use in a garden. He put a bunch of them in the steps leading up a staircase, kind of like setting up an obstacle course.
“Once, he sent me a shoebox filled with copies of his poems and a check for $500. He said, ‘Edit this for me.’ I gave him back his $500 and the poems, but he accused me of stealing some of his poems.”
“Another time, he came from the bus stop where someone had broken his glasses. At some point, he was in a halfway house downtown. He found it kind of a harrowing experience living there.”
When Koon contacted me last year, I had not heard from him in over a decade. I had enjoyed our many rambling conversations punctuated by Hoisan-wah, the language of Chinatown, which I spoke, though much less fluently than Koon.
With a bit of trepidation and much curiosity, I visited him on December 13. He came down to the lobby of the Alaska House to greet me and guided me up to his tiny unit. It was cluttered with foodstuffs and several shelves of books. He poured tea. I listened to him talk for a long time about his early life in Aberdeen, the Lock clan—his real surname was Lock— and the challenges of living on the streets and in run-down hotels on the margins of society.
At the outset, he said, “I want to apologize for my behavior in Chinatown when I was mentally ill.”
Because of his schizoaffective disorder—undiagnosed, misdiagnosed and untreated for decades—community members had been puzzled by his strange and sometimes destructive behaviors. They struggled to understand the bright enigmatic individual who spoke in riddles and sometimes smashed windows with a pole and set fires.
Decades ago, Koon had reportedly set fire to the Lock Association when it was headquartered on Eighth Avenue in Seattle’s Chinatown. The Association papers and exterior sign were not salvageable.
Koon said his anxiety and depression—exacerbated by alcohol and drugs—eventually led to his involuntary hospitalization at age 27. “I was in San Francisco, California,” he said. “I had been living in a tenement in Chinatown by myself. Three times I had been homeless. I spent four months at a Napa state hospital, and I was treated with medication.
“I had five brothers and two sisters. One brother passed away. One sister has schizoaffective disorder like me.”
Koon said that about a month ago, he had been diagnosed with stage four esophageal cancer. He told me he would start chemotherapy on Thursday.
“I started having stomach aches,” he said. “I thought I had pulled a muscle. I’ve lost 35 pounds in three and a half months. I can’t eat. I’ve started eating yogurt, peanut butter, liquid foods. But I can’t taste anything.”
When Koon first messaged me, it was obvious that he wanted to come to terms with his past. “I just feel better when people call me,” he said. “If no one calls me for a while, I want to die. We’re social animals.”
Koon pointed with pride to his deep roots in Washington state. His grandfather, Lock Li, came to Hoquiam around 1880, established a laundry and restaurant, and helped the Mayor recruit other Lock village clansman to come work on the railroads. One of the new arrivals was the grandfather of former Washington governor Gary Locke. Lock Li, who died in 1929, is buried in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery on Queen Anne.
Koon Woon told me that his real name was Lock Kuo Koon (駱國權).In the garbling process of translating names—abetted by the Chinese Exclusion Act–he became Koon Woon. He was born in February 1949 in the village of Nam On (南安)ancestral home of many of the Locks who settled near Olympia. His parents were Bill and Kim Woon, both of whom preceded him to America.
Growing up in Nam On, he was left in the care of his maternal grandmother. At four, he grieved the absence of his mother, nearly drowning three times in the village pond. In his memoir, Koon wrote “my village years, though harsh and unforgiving, was what enabled me to survive my prolonged illness,” referring to the schizoaffective disorder which plagued him for two-thirds of his life.
In 1960, Koon immigrated to Washington state to join his parents, leaving China on Halloween night. He worked long hours in the family restaurant, the Hong Kong Café, a popular establishment on Simpson Avenue which catered to the blue-collar residents of the logging community.
“I began cooking there from age 12,” Koon said. “I had five brothers and two sisters. One brother has passed away. One sister has schizoaffective disorder like me.”
Koon attended junior high and high school in Aberdeen. “In high school, I was a top student,” he said. “I enjoyed mathematics. I got a science scholarship from the University of Washington and University of Oregon. I chose the UW.”
He credited a 1985 poetry workshop by UW professor Nelson Bentley with unleashing his passion for poetry. “I started seriously writing poetry when I was 35 years old,” Koon said.
At the end of my visit, I asked Koon if he remembered my good friend Dean Wong,
“Sure, I know Dean,” Koon said. “How is he doing?
He said that Dean and Donnie Chin once cornered him in Chinatown. Koon had been contributing to the International Examiner and Northwest Asian Weekly. “They said, ‘If you write nonsense, we’re going to get you.’ They thought I was a threat to Chinatown.
“At the time, I was living in the Republic Hotel. I was trying to get the owners to remodel the hotel. The conditions were terrible. Cockroaches and mice. No elevator. There were a lot of old ladies living there. Dean and Donnie—they pushed me against the wall and said, ‘Don’t write nonsense. Don’t write about Chinatown.’”
I returned to visit Koon on December 22, coaxing Dean to join me. At first, he was reluctant. Dean and Donnie Chin were best friends.
“One time, Koon bought a staff from the Seattle Kung Fu Club store and broke out the window at the Sun May Company, Donnie’s family shop,” Wong explained. “He also went through this period of writing letters, saying that Donnie and I were suspicious people. For what it’s worth, he could write, and you could see that he was trying to process the world around him. He had a lot of things going on in his head. But I wonder what his obsession was with fire and breaking windows.”
For a time, Koon lived in the basement of a house on Beacon Hill near Wong’s family home. Wong also saw Koon at Wong’s workplace, Asian Counseling and Referral Service. He made a point of ignoring him when they crossed paths.
“Make peace with him, Dean,” I advised. “Do it now. He’s different. He wants to see you.”
I explained that Koon had carved out a career as a distinguished poet and author. I informed him that Koon had a terminal illness and was living in West Seattle.
On December 22, when Koon greeted me and Dean at his door, I could tell that he was happy to see us. Dean was wary but quickly dropped his guard. They talked music. Koon was a fan of the Mississippi Delta Blues. Koon offered lunch: macaroni and fried chicken from the neighborhood QFC. He played the guitar and sang a few mournful tunes. As we rose to leave—I had another engagement—Koon packed leftover chicken and macaroni for Dean. He gave me copies of his books.
I promised to bring Dean back again so that the two—both guitar afficionados—could share a spontaneous jam session. It would have been fun. It never happened. That was the last time I saw Koon alive.
In the past month, I have feasted nightly on the heart-felt poems and mini-stories in Koon’s books. I am mesmerized by the originality and power of his prose. It’s like listening to someone talk to you in slightly broken English, retelling of the same stories, but discovering something slightly new in the phrasing of each retelling.
“What is really important was that he was a rare authentic voice for people we don’t often hear from,” Alan Lau explained. “He was a first-generation Chinese American who spent time in the Chinatown ghetto where the old Chinese ladies were trapped. He struggled with mental illness. He gave voice to issues that are often swept under the rug.”
As I read Koon Woon’s work, I was also startled by the eerie similarities in our lives.
Although I was a hoo-gee-how (土紙頭) (American-born Chinese) and he was a hong-san-doy (唐山仔) (China-born Chinese), we both worked in a restaurant called the Hong Kong Café. His was in Aberdeen; mine was in Seattle. We both attended the University of Washington and explored creative expression through poetry.
During our time at the UW, we both wandered up and down the Ave in the U-District alone at night, looking at window displays and making stops at the Coffee Corral and the greasy spoon called Hasty Tasty. We both frequented the Last Exit, the popular hippie hangout of the 1970s. Like me, he bought a copy of Writers Market and daydreamed about becoming a writer. We both ate cheap meals in the café in the back of the Goodwill store on Dearborn Street.
When the Hong Kong Café in Aberdeen closed during the Thanksgiving and Christmas season, Koon was so lonely that he turned to reading Silas Marner alone in his room. I did the same thing during a bout of college-age depression. Koon said the first book that made him cry was Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Same for me. The paperback editions of both books—still in pristine condition from the 1960s—sit prominently on my bookshelf today.
Olympia resident Ron Locke attended the same Aberdeen junior high and high schools as Koon but was two years behind him. He said he felt sympathy for Koon. “He wasn’t wearing a jacket,” Locke said. “He didn’t eat well. His father was a gambler. It was not a good family life.”
In the late 1980s or early 1990s, Locke said, he learned that Koon had become a nationally recognized poet. “I was at a bookstore in downtown Olympia, and quite by accident I picked up a poetry collection Chrysanthemum, and there was a poem by Koon Woon. One of the poems was about his dad Bill. I realized that he had turned his life around.”
Shin Yu Pai, poet and host of the Asian American podcast “Ten Thousand Things,” met Koon in 2012 when she reviewed his collection Water Chasing Water for the International Examiner. They became friends. Koon sent red envelopes to Pai’s young son Tomo during Chinese holidays.
“Koon was revered and beloved among Seattle poets and beyond,” Pai said. “He launched many literary careers through his publishing imprint Goldfish Press and worked tirelessly to give new voices a platform to find their audiences. He himself was a nationally celebrated and venerated poet who was once blurbed by Beat legend Lawrence Ferlinghetti.”
Koon Woon posted one final poem on Facebook on July 29,2026:
Here I am alone with my death
to be …
It will not hesitate to say hello and just as quickly, good-bye…
It will not come from the left or from the right,
only thing is: it is never quite
what you expected…
Brief, brief, precarious candle,
wavering in the night,
burning, burning still giving light…
But lightly She will come,
more alluring than anything I’ve seen with
my eyes…
And just as mesmerizing, I see my soul begin
to take flight…
But where, where, can I find safe harbor?
(unfinished…)
