The rational design and fabrication of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowire (NW) lateral field electron emission device and the possible application as a display pixel structure are reported. In the device, the cathode and anode are ranked side-by-side on the same panel. The NW-clusters were controlled to locally grow on the edges of the electrodes with different tilted status, i.e., in angle range of 75°-110°, 0°-110°, and 0°-57°, respectively. The devices with NWs at different tilt-angle showed distinct field electron emission properties. The device with 0°-57° tilted NWs possess the best performance, i.e., an emission current of 9.3 μA (current density: 6.22 A/cm2) was obtained at a low cathode-anode (50 μm in separation) bias of 477 V. Stable cathodoluminescence was observed from the indium titanic oxide anode, suggests a possibility for display application. Mechanisms responsible for the enhanced field electron emission and the related device physics are proposed. Significantly, the low temperature (~ 80°C) solution-phase growth of ZnO NWs enables the fabrication of the devices on flexible polyimide substrate, which has also been demonstrated here. This paper opens up possibilities on developing NW-based lateral field electron emission device for vacuum micro/nanoelectronics applications.