Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings is an American writer who was born and raised in Hawaii. She attended Colorado College and graduated in 1998. Her debut novel The Descendants was adapted by Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash into the highly acclaimed 2011 American film The Descendants, starring George Clooney...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
businesses debut kids knows priests receive songs
My seven-year-old daughter knows old songs and how the neighborhoods got their names. There are little things: Businesses receive blessings from Hawaiian priests before opening, and everyone's kids have their debut luau. You can't really get through a day without doing something Hawaiian.
call entire fred gang grocery house island knows members night soon threaten
The entire island knows our father, Fred Hemmings, Jr. - kids, adults, surfers, the governor, grocery clerks, gang members who call our house at night and threaten to kill us as soon as they get out of jail. Fred was a world-champion surfer and is now a well-known, controversial politician.
closer freely good
Writing has never been like therapy for me, but blogging comes a little closer - I can smack-talk freely and frequently, and this is good for me.
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I wasn't creative enough to imagine my first novel becoming a film directed by Alexander Payne. Nor did I consider the possibility of seeing Hollywood stars moving through my personal version of Hanalei town: going to Tahiti Nui, rehearsing a scene in front of my cousin's cottages, driving the snaky roads.
across compared encouraged remember setting teachers three
When a place comes across vividly in a novel, it's often compared to a character. I can remember writing teachers who encouraged me to treat setting as if it were a character, to give it three dimensions, to make it come alive, jump off the page.
gets grief happiness humor levity life moments naturally sadness
I just try to write what I think would really happen, and with grief and tragedy, there are these naturally occurring moments of levity and humor and absurdity. I think that's what life is really like. Sadness gets interrupted, and happiness gets interrupted.
action details dragging people plot revealing sitting
I feel like having details from their day and having a plot and action and things to do is much more revealing than having a character sitting and thinking to themselves. When I'm writing, I want people to actually have a goal, something that's dragging them forward.
depend experience might reality speak spots tourists
I can't speak for all Hawaiians, but the reality is that we depend on tourism. Locals might not want to go to the spots like Waikiki, but we do want tourists to experience more of the islands.
applied gave grad knew moved school shot took
After college, I moved to Breckenridge, Colorado, and went snowboarding every day. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew what I didn't want to do. So I applied to grad school for writing, and I just gave it a shot and took it from there.
announce
With families, no matter what kind you inherit, at some point you want to announce that you belong to it.
crave
When you're a child, you crave formal recognition; you crave ceremony, celebration, certification of proof.
great highbrow mixed teen
What's great about teen fiction is that it's all mixed up - there's highbrow and lowbrow!
collective days office san until
Two days a week, I go to my office at The Grotto, a writer's collective in San Francisco. I get there at 8:15 and write until around 1 or 2 P.M.
best fiction truth writer
The best thing about being a fiction writer is that where the truth is inconvenient, I could veer away.