Author and Windward Community College English instructor Janine Oshiro has been honored with the Elliott Cades Awards for Literature, the most prestigious literary award in Hawaiʻi. The nonprofit Hawaiʻi Literary Arts Council, which is charged with hosting the awards program, named Oshiro as the winner of the award for emerging artist.
She will accept her award and read a selection of poems on Saturday, May 5, 2 p.m. at the Hawaiʻi Book and Music Festival on the Civic Grounds at Honolulu Hale. She will be introduced by poet Paul Nelson.
Oshiro was born in Kahaluʻu and raised in Mililani. She is a Kundiman fellow and the recipient of a poetry fellowship from Oregon’s Literary Arts. Her first work, Pier, was published last year.
Oshiro’s work has been praised as multidimensional poems that seek to “identify the self that straddles both spiritual and physical worlds.”
The Cades Awards, given annually since 1988, were created by Charlotte and J. Russell Cades in memory of Russell’s brother, Elliott, a teacher and lover of literature. The award is given each year to honor the highest literary achievement in the state.
