This Is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakauwila

His photography has been featured in Narrative Magazine and his poetry film, Riding the Highline, has screened at film festivals across the country.

Kai Carlson-Wee has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and his work has appeared in Ploughshares, Best New Poets, AGNI, New England Review, Gulf Coast, and The Missouri Review. Through its penetrating and incisive exploration of the tensions between native Hawaiians, local citizens, and emigrants from (and to) the contiguous forty-eight states, This Is Paradise perfectly depicts the struggle of what it is to be between-between change and tradition, between locales, and between identities-and powerfully examines how we define ourselves and our relationships to those around us. In her stunning debut, drawing comparisons to Jamaica Kincaid (Publishers Weekly), Kahakauwila, a hapa haole (half-Hawaiian, half-Caucasian) whose childhood was split between California and Maui, poignantly captures modern Hawai'i in all of its richness and complexity-its anger, its sadness, and its sense of history reverberating into the present. Kristiana Kahakauwila’s short story collection, This Is Paradise: Stories, strikingly exposes the dangers lurking beneath Hawai'i’s myth of paradise. Part cowboy poet, part prophet, Carlson-Wee finds beauty in the grit and kinship among strangers along the road.

These poems-a “verse novella” in documentary form-build momentum as they travel across the stark landscapes of the American West: hopping trains through dusty prairie towns, swapping stories with mystics and outlaws, skirting the edges of mountains and ridges, heading ever westward to find meaning in the remnants of a ruined Romantic ideal. Set against a landscape of rail yards and skate parks, Kai Carlson-Wee’s debut collection captures a spiritual journey of wanderlust, depression, brotherhood, and survival. *Join us for this FREE Lit Live! event - meet the author and get your book signed!*

This Is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakauwila