Andrew Lam was born Lâm Quang Dũng in 1964 in South Vietnam.

[1] He was the son of General Lâm Quang Thi of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.

He soon abandoned plans for medical school and entered a creative writing program at San Francisco State University.

Birds of Paradise Lost, his third book, is a collection of short stories about Vietnamese newcomers struggling to remake their lives in the San Francisco Bay after a long, painful exodus from Vietnam.

Though reticent about speaking about his sexuality, in 2009 Lam gave an interview for a collection of portraits of homosexual Americans.