About the Festival

Since 1998, the English Department at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa, has celebrated the literary arts by hosting a Writers' Festival during the Fall Semester. Festival participants are drawn from a wide and diverse international and Hawai'i-based talent pool. A selection of past participants include Tammy Hailiopua Baker, Mariu Carrera, Lee Cataluna, Martin Espada, Sia Figiel, Joy Harjo, Ku‘ualoha Meyer Ho‘omanawanui, Roma Potiki, Olive Senior, Robert Sullivan, Lee Tonouchi, Haunani-Kay Trask, Lois-Ann Yamanaka.

2004, the 6th Fall Writer's Festival is a co-presentation with the East-West Center's Islands of Globalization project. The Islands of Globalization project seeks to stimulate fresh ways of thinking about globalization by focusing on islands and islandness, and by linking island regions together. In this spirit of creativity and collaboration, "Moving Islands" Fall Writer's Festival brings together writers from Oceania and the Caribbean.

Free and open to the public, "Moving Islands" Writers’ Festival will have keynote addresses, literary readings and panel discussions by George Lamming (Barbados), Albert Wendt (Samoa-Aotearoa), Michelle Cliff (Jamaica-US), Witi Ihimaera (Aotearoa), Nalo Hopkinson (Trinidad-Canada), Jully Makini (Solomon Islands), Rodney Morales (Hawai'i), Noenoe Silva (Hawai'i), and Steven Winduo (Papua New Guinea).