Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

Setting shouldn't just consist of describing nature or a landscape, or of saying where something takes place. It is the world of specific people. It's not enough for it to feel vivid or credible; it should feel necessary.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

My seven-year-old daughter knows old songs and how the neighborhoods got their names. There are little things: Businesses receive blessings from Hawaiian priests before opening, and everyone's kids have their debut luau. You can't really get through a day without doing something Hawaiian.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

I just try to write what I think would really happen, and with grief and tragedy, there are these naturally occurring moments of levity and humor and absurdity. I think that's what life is really like. Sadness gets interrupted, and happiness gets interrupted.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

After college, I moved to Breckenridge, Colorado, and went snowboarding every day. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew what I didn't want to do. So I applied to grad school for writing, and I just gave it a shot and took it from there.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

When you're a child, you crave formal recognition; you crave ceremony, celebration, certification of proof.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

I try to think of it not as writer's block, but a time where you just need to live life and experience things so you have something to write about.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

Writing has never been like therapy for me, but blogging comes a little closer - I can smack-talk freely and frequently, and this is good for me.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

I felt like I haven't had the typical experience of a novelist whose book becomes a movie.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

Two days a week, I go to my office at The Grotto, a writer's collective in San Francisco. I get there at 8:15 and write until around 1 or 2 P.M.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

The beauty of cinema is that it can do some things that novels just can't.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

I always felt a little bit of an outsider, especially because I grew up on Oahu.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

I'm proud of being from Hawaii, and I'm proud of being Hawaiian, but I'm more than that, too.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

Hawaii is so complex; there are so many points of view, and there are so many experiences to see and to find.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

I love film and have taken a stab at a screenplay. I love writing dialogue and found it highly enjoyable.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

I like to work out every day, so that takes up some time.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

I can't speak for all Hawaiians, but the reality is that we depend on tourism. Locals might not want to go to the spots like Waikiki, but we do want tourists to experience more of the islands.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

Disney's Aulani Resort has really developed the southwest coast of Oahu and led to it getting more attention.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

People go surfing before work and paddling afterward. My husband is from Wisconsin, and he goes to work in his Hawaiian shirt.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

Tragedy brings change, and that's what I'm interested in most - how people plunge into change and try to fight, then eventually move with it with grace.

Kaui Hart Hemmings
Kaui Hart Hemmings

The best thing about being a fiction writer is that where the truth is inconvenient, I could veer away.