The Writing Life
How an 1863 petition from Ni’ihau re-surfaced in San Francisco
The story begins in November of 1957. The chief photographer for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Warren Roll, climbed into the passenger seat of a small plane in Kauai. The pilot took off, heading towards a 73-square-mile privately-owned Hawaiian island of Niihau. The plane landed roughly, smashing its landing gear and splintering its propeller. Roll, carrying his…
Read MoreLunching with One of Hawaii’s Real ‘Descendants’
By Julia Flynn Siler, first published in the Wall Street Journal‘s Speakeasy blog on 3/12/2012 Julia Flynn Siler and Her Royal Highness Princess Abigail Kawananakoa. A few days before heading to Honolulu on book tour for “Lost Kingdom,” I got a phone call from the assistant to Her Royal Highness Princess Abigail Kawananakoa, the woman…
Read MoreRetracing Lili‘u’s Footsteps…
Purely by chance, I found myself in the Washington, D.C. neighborhood where Hawai‘i’s last queen, Lili‘uokalani, had once lived. I was in Washington, D.C. to deliver a talk to a group of Treasury executives about my new book, Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure. I’d booked a hotel…
Read MoreTalking Story at the Outrigger Canoe Club
On my last night in Honolulu on tour for my new book, Lost Kingdom, I was invited for drinks at the Outrigger Canoe Club, which sits at the far end of Waikiki Beach, in the shadow of Diamond Head. The club is a key setting for the novel, The Descendants, which is now an Oscar-winning…
Read MoreBook Group Pick: Lost Kingdom
Mahalo nui loa – Hawaiian for thank you very much! – to the dozen or so book groups I’ve heard from around the country that have picked Lost Kingdom as their monthly or quarterly read. I’m truly grateful to all of you – from Liz Epstein’s Literary Masters groups (10 book groups in the San…
Read More“The Descendants” at the Napa Valley Film Festival
Opening night at the inaugural Napa Valley Film Festival began with a walk along a red carpet into the city’s refurbished Napa Valley Opera House, a grand name for a frontier theater dating back to 1880. Screen actors, a few industry executives, and a good sampling of Napa locals (some dressed glamorously in boas and satin evening gowns, others…
Read MoreMy Conversion to Liking Breadfruit: “I’ve been ulu-cized!”
When I arrived at a garden near the town of Captain Cook, on the big island of Hawaii, to attend a Breadfruit Festival in late September, I was a skeptic. Beforehand, I’d talked to one of the world’s leading experts, the Breadfruit Institute’s Director, Diane Ragone PhD., who had told me she hadn’t cared for…
Read MoreHow Novelist Kaui Hart Hemmings landed a role opposite George Clooney in “The Descendants”
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’…
Read MoreImprov for Writers
I was at the bottom of a long wait list with faint hope of getting in. But just days before the start of a four-day improvisation workshop last month I got a call from BATS (Bay Area Theatre Sports) asking whether I’d like to join its intensive class led by the legendary teacher Keith Johnstone.…
Read MoreRevisiting the Mondavis
A few years back, a friend asked me to donate a unique item to a fund-raiser for a local non-profit: to lead the winning auction bidders on a bike tour of Napa Valley, showing them favorite spots I’d discovered in my research for The House of Mondavi…
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