Words and Wine Hali'a Aloha Series Author Event

Words and Wine Hali'a Aloha Series Author Event

Each month Kona Stories hosts an event with local and traveling authors. This event happens the First Tuesday evening of the month starting at 6 PM. Authors are available to talk story while you are getting your plate of appetizers and glass of complimentary wine. Authors then give a 15-minute talk about their book and themselves, the writing and publishing process or a short reading from the book. After all the authors presentations there is a time for individual questions and book signings.

In January 2023 we celebrate four women who have contributed books to the Hali’a Aloha Series.  These books celebrate the moments big and small, harnessing the power of short forms to preserve the lived experiences of the storytellers.  Watermark Publishing based in Honolulu, Hawai’i is dedicated to telling Hawai’i’s stories through memories, corporate biographies, family histories and other books.

Kathy Clarke was born in Utah and raised in Northern California.  She lived on Maui for eleven years before moving to Hawaii Island thirty-three years ago.  Since 1980, Clarke has built a successful event and destination management company, operating on all Hawaiian Islands.  She has been a fixture on the local fundraising scene in her Waimea hometown, coordinating several cultural and community events for years.  In addition to raising her seven children, Clarke has been a foster parent and involved in foster advocacy.  She also enjoys sustainable gardening and cooking the literal fruits of her labors.

In lively and humorous prose, Clarke invites readers of My Life Is a Road Atlas along for the ride as she recalls her nomadic childhood, a roster of not-so-forgotten lovers and the controlled chaos of being a mother of seven “decent and imperfect human beings”- oh, yes, and that time that she got shot.

Valdeane Uchima Odachi divides her time between a number of fulfilling endeavors as a Life Skills and Financial Literacy Educator at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo for different programs and populations; as a Certified Zentangle Teacher (CZT) sharing the art of Zentangle; and working with families in the process of wedding planning and facilitation. Valdeane’s favorite activities include spending time with her family and close friends, reading, listening to podcasts, and exploring new places. She is currently working to recalibrate her life compass after her husband's prolonged illness and unexpected passing in May of 2022.

A fragmented childhood filled with heartbreak and disappointment left Odachi feeling lost at sea, at the mercy of unseen currents. In this moving collection of personal reflections and whimsical poetry, Navigating Change follows Odachi as she discovers moments of grace and synchronicity while struggling to reconcile her multiple roles as daughter, sister, wife, mother, teacher and caregiver. Her journey's unexpected reward is a renewed self-identity and the realization that she has always had everything she needs to live the life she wants.

Darien Hsu Gee is the author of five novels published by Penguin Random House that have been translated into 11 languages.  She won the 2019 Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship award for Other Small Histories and the 2015 Hawai’i Book Publishers’ Ka Palapala Po’okela Award of Excellence for Writing the Hawai’i Memoir.  She is the recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation grant and a Vermont Studio Center fellowship.  Gee holds a B.A. from Rice University and an M.F.A from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.  She lives with her family on the Island of Hawai’i. 

Allegiance:  Family, Longing, and a Chinese American Woman’s Search for Identity is Gee’s vivid and evocative latest work.  Gee dissects long-held beliefs and navigates the complexity of family dynamics by exploring the questions that shaped her identity.  What does it mean to be Chinese American?  How are we reflected in the people we love, and us in them?  What obligations do we have to those who share our blood, and how does a woman claim her life as her own?

Adrienne Robillard is an English lecturer at Windward Community College.  She grew up in Kailua, Hawaii and Fresno, California.  A graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, she earned her M.F.A in Creative Writing from Mills College.  After college she worked in San Francisco as an office temp and marketing professional by day, playing in indie bands Secadora and Citizens Here and Abroad at night.  She lives with her husband and their two children in Kailua on O’ahu.  In 2020 her first book The ‘Ohana Grill Cookbooks:  easy and Delicious Hawai’i-Inspired Recipes for BBQ Chicken to Kalbi Short Ribs, was published by Ulysses Press.

 In her newest book, Maps and Tapes, Robillard interweaves lyrics written for her indie-rock bands between stories of first guitar lessons, young love, adventures in studying abroad, and gigging and touring with her bands. Her poignant prose paints a vivid portrait of the ways in which music soundtracked and shaped her teen and young adult years. Her callouts of favorite bands, albums, and songs will make readers want to cue up their own nostalgic playlists – good and loud, to be felt in the bones, the way the best music and memories should.