Hawaii Book & Music Festival 2022

Roger Jellinek has been Executive Director of the Hawai‘i Book & Music Festival since 2006. A graduate of Cambridge University, and a Mellon Fellow at Yale University, he has been involved in book publishing in New York and Hawaii as a journalist, editor, publisher and literary... Read More →

Vicky Heldreich Durand graduated from Punahou High School spent her formative years in Hawaii as a young surfer—winning, in 1957, The Makaha International Surfing Championship. Wave Woman is her first book, and it is a biography of her mother, a renaissance woman who believed in... Read More →

Sydney Lehua laukea is a Native Hawaiian educator who holds a Ph.D. in Political Science, with an emphasis in Hawaiʻi Politics. Sydney was the Hawaiian Studies program manager for the Department of Education and currently works at Kamehameha Schools, Hawaiʻi, as a Senior Design... Read More →

Rajiv Mohabir is the author of three collections of poetry including Cutlish which was awarded the Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur, longlisted for the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Books Award. His memoir Antiman won the Forward Indies Award... Read More →

Don Wallace edits The Hawaii Review of Books (THROB), is contributing editor at Honolulu Magazine, received the Loretta Petrie award for outstanding service to Hawaiian literature in 2021, and is the author of Hot Water (fiction, Soho Press); One Great Game (nonfiction, Simon and... Read More →

John G. Walters (“Waltah Boy”) grew up on sugar plantations on the Big Island of Hawai‘i. John graduated from Ka‘ū High School and earned a Master of Social Work degree from UH Hawai‘i. He retired after 25 years with the State of Hawai‘i. He has also worked as a supermarket... Read More →