Music Archives - Julia Flynn Siler

Honoring Hawaii’s Queen

July 1, 2020 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

At a time when statues are toppling across the nation, one work of public art stands tall.

It is the eight-foot-tall bronze of Hawaii’s Queen Lili’uokalani, who faces the state Capitol in Honolulu. This beautifully rendered artwork, by the American realist sculptor Marianna Pineda, is even more powerful today than it was when it was erected in the 1980s.

If anything, this regal public monument become even more beloved over time. To understand why, watch this PBS American Masters short documentary on the Queen that’s just been released. It’s a wonderful and very moving.

Finding Your Literary Community

July 18, 2018 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

At this year’s annual gathering of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, I was honored to give the opening talk. Here are my remarks.

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I’m so happy to be here… to help celebrate the rollicking and generous spirit that has infused our Community all these years.

Julia Flynn Siler

How many first-timers are here today? Raise your hands…

Well, for you newbies, you’ll see what I mean about community spirit here during the Follies later in the week. Or you may discover it while connecting with other writers over dinner or while hiking on Thursday with your fellow work-shoppers.

How Novelist Kaui Hart Hemmings landed a role opposite George Clooney in “The Descendants”

October 24, 2011 by Julia Flynn Siler 5 Comments

The statistics are daunting: less than two percent of all the books optioned for the screen ever enter production. Far fewer make it into theaters. My first book, The House of Mondavi was optioned twice, but never came close to becoming a movie.

That’s why it’s been a vicarious thrill to watch Kaui Hart Hemmings’ first novel, The Descendants, approach its release date of Nov. 18th as a movie from Fox Searchlight.

Novelist Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of "The Descendants"

The Descendants was Kaui’s debut novel. A dark comedy about a dysfunctional family, it was first published in 2007 to critical acclaim. The New York Times called it “refreshingly wry.”

Singing with the choir

September 7, 2010 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

Early on in my search to understand the last queen of Hawai‘i, I met with Corinne Chun Fujimoto, curator of Washington Place, the gracious, white-columned home in downtown Honolulu where Queen Lili‘uokalanis had spent the last years of her life.

Corinne suggested that the best place to look for the queen was not through the places she lived, nor even through the words she wrote in official documents, diaries or correspondence, but in Lili‘uokalani’s music. So I began with The Queen’s Songbook, a monumental, decades-long effort to collect and publish the queen’s compositions. The task began in 1969 and took more than twenty-five years to come to fruition.

My Dinner with Amy

September 1, 2010 by Julia Flynn Siler Leave a Comment

I knew I’d found a soul sister who also loved research when I clicked onto Amy Stillman’s blog and found her posting, “Adventures in Archives.”

For the past three years, I’ve been making trips to the treasure trove of Hawaiian historical archives located in Honolulu. Amy Ku‘uleialoha Stillman, a Harvard-educated associate professor of music and American culture at the University of Michigan, likewise had just arrived on the islands and couldn’t resist making a trek to the Hawaii State Archives, with a long list of things just to “spot check.”

Amy Stillman (photo: Honolulu Magazine)