Hawaiʻi writers Susan Schultz and Brenda Kwon have been named the 2015 winners of the Elliott Cades Awards for Literature, the most prestigious literary honor in Hawaiʻi. Schultz is a University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa professor and Kwon is a Honolulu Community College assistant professor.
The non-profit Hawaiʻi Literary Arts Council, which is charged with administering the awards program, selected Schultz as the recipient of the award for an established artist and Kwon was named the winner of the award for an emerging artist. They received their awards on Saturday, April 30 at the 11th annual Hawaiʻi Book and Music Festival.
Susan M. Schultz
Schultz has lived and taught in Hawaiʻi since 1990. She is the author of several books of poetry and poetic prose, including Dementia Blog, Memory Cards: 2010–2011 Series and She’s Welcome to Her Disease: Dementia Blog, Vol. 2. Her new book, Memory Cards: Thomas Traherne Series, is just out from Talisman Press.
She is also a critic, editor and publisher who founded Tinfish Press in 1995. Tinfish Press has published dozens of poets from Hawaiʻi and in and around the Pacific over the past 20 years.
Brenda Kwon
Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, Kwon received her BA from University of Southern California in English and creative writing, and her PhD from University of California, Los Angeles in American literature. She is the author of Beyond Keʻeaumoku: Koreans, Nationalism and Local Culture in Hawaiʻi; co-editor of YOBO: Korean American Writing in Hawaiʻi and The Sum of Breathing, which won Honorable Mention for the 2015 Ka Palapala Pookela awards.
A 2005 Fulbright Fellow, her work has appeared in several journals and anthologies, and she has performed her poetry both nationally and internationally.
—Story from a Hawaiʻi Literary Arts Council news release
