WE CREATE OUR OWN MONSTERS, a conversation with Amy Danzer at The Rumpus
(September 24th, 2018) "I read Rahna Reiko Rizzuto’s recently released novel, Shadow Child, in preparation for a panel I moderated at Chicago’s thirty-fourth annual Printers Row Lit Fest (PRLF). Shadow Child is a captivating mystery that centers around Lillie—a...
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Once Upon A Time in Hiroshima
"When I was growing up, I knew very little about Hiroshima, and what I did know was typical of what many Americans knew: that the bomb was a marvelous weapon that saved lives and ended the war. When I was about 30, however, I interviewed my great aunt who had been in...
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Fiction and the Chaos of Trauma
As a writer, and a woman, and a human, I've thought a lot about trauma. And in this cultural moment of #metoo, gaslighting, nationalism, disenfranchisement, and violence against just about every kind of human that is not a replica of those in power, and also our...
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Hawaii vs. Trump
Hawaii’s fight against Trump’s Muslim travel ban has long roots of resistance In 1942, as the US president moved to exclude and incarcerate 120,000 people based on race, Hawaii chose to call B.S. My article on Salon.com details how the most decorated American fighting...
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Gone Fishing
Fishing was everything to my father. It wasn’t the only thing — he was a math teacher, Dean of Studies, a college counselor and the head of the Lower and Middle schools at the Hawaii Preparatory Academy. He loved rowing and took Iolani’s crew to...
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The Thriller in the Shadows
Have you ever been writing a story that you thought was “completely made up” only to find it has absorbed details from the world around you? Or that your plot is stubborn about the path it wants to take, and that that path, on second or third look, takes you in a...
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Keeping the Faith – Tarot for Writers
I have been thinking a lot about the artists’ vision. I spent four days at the CraftBoston holiday fair with my partner, a ceramic artist, surrounded by incredibly beautiful handmade objects. Every artist had a different vision. Some found their collectors more...
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Acknowledging My Community
Last week I finished my first pass page proofs for Shadow Child, my new novel coming out in May. I started it in the year 2000. Holding those pages in my hands, with their elegant design and their printing marks, I was amazed at how much effort has gone into the...
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Getting Unstuck
Sometimes I feel like my whole year has been in Mercury retrograde. With one thing after another, there has been a lot of waiting, a lot of postponing, and a lot of loss. I have been stuck—in situations that are not my choosing, with no path forward—and in talking...
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When You Are Overwhelmed
This last month has left me reeling. My father passed away suddenly, and what spins into that (as we raced across the country to say goodbye), and out of that (in the long process of settling and celebrating his life) is a lot to do and feel. Add to that that my...
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