Welcome and thanks for being here. To read any of the articles below, simply click on the image and the story will come up. If you're looking for suggestions: My favorite pieces are “Hearts of Palm,” “Tree of Plenty,” “The Channel Swimmers,“ “Runway Stories,” “The Royal Orders,“ “Land’s End,” “The People’s Museum” and “Getting the Boot.”

Nature

I love to write about nature: its complexity, its intelligence, its beauty. Two features below, “Hearts of Palm” and “Tree of Plenty,” explore the connections between humans and trees. “Hearts of Palm” offers a journey across the eastern side of Hawai‘i Island with a group of palm lovers; “Tree of Plenty“ looks at one woman’s quest to preserve and propagate breadfruit across the globe. The photo essay “Crustacea Fantastica” explores the majesty and multiplicity of hermit crabs. “The Worldly Bird" details one of the great conservation success stories of the modern age, the quest to save the nene goose from extinction. In 2018 it won the best long-form feature writing award from the Hawaiʻi Society for Professional Journalists; "Tree of Plenty" and “Hearts of Palm” won the same award in earlier years.

Change

All of the individuals profiled here are working to inspire people to live in a more conscious fashion and pay greater attention to the world around them.  “Oceania” profiles Ocean Ramsay, a fearless freediver who has swum with great whites and other species of sharks to raise awareness and try to stop their slaughter. “The Voyage of the Junk” tells of two valiant and gonzo mariners who, to draw attention to plastic in our oceans, sailed from California to Hawai‘i on a craft built from 15,000 plastic bottles and the rusted, wingless body of a Cessna C-130. “Ahead of the Game” is the story of Henk Rogers, Tetris tycoon turned clean energy champion. “The Movie Makers” tells of a pairing that led to a film on modern-day Marshallese life and the nuclear legacy that haunts it. “Through a Lens, Brilliantly“ offers a portrait of cinematographer Paul Atkins, an artist who, says Emmanuel Lubezki, “seems to understand and see things about the natural world that the rest of us cannot.“ And “Daughters of Haumea” looks at the story of women, power and the fight for suffrage in Hawai‘i.

Endurance

The best sports stories are tales of doggedness and daring, and the three pieces below have plenty of both. “The Channel Swimmers” introduces the very few souls who have swum between islands in the Hawaiian chain. As the story notes, “Leaping into dark seas, braving venomous jellyfish and the specter of sharks, getting slammed about by huge swells, fighting current, swimming mile after mile for hour after hour… it’s an utterly improbable quest.” “The Great Race” chronicles Tahiti's Hawaiki Nui, the most punishing paddling competition in the world. "A Love Extreme" offers defining images from "the hardest race you've never heard of," Bora Bora's Ironmana.

Vogue

“Runway Stories,” a piece on New York Fashion Week, offers more sociology than style; it opens with stripped-down male models in the West Village, closes in the apartment of Dr. Oliver Sacks, and in between tracks four one-time Islanders working at the upper echelons of an undertaking the story calls “a game of dress up writ very, very large.” “Scholar of Style” won the Maggie Award for best profile published in 2014. It is a portrait of Harold Koda, who, as the story notes, “grew up in the cane fields and conformity of 1950s ‘Aiea” and went on to become the curator in charge at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. "The Royal Orders" tells of one of the political world's rarest adornments: royal orders bestowed by Hawai‘i's monarchs when the kingdom was an internationally recognized sovereign nation.

Science 

All four of these stories are set in Hawai‘i, a place few people associate with science. In truth, there is all kinds of rigorous, research-based science occurring in the Islands. Much of the world’s foremost astronomy happens on Mauna Kea; “View From the Top” looks at the seven most significant discoveries made using the telescopes on the mountain. “Man of the Motu” is a profile of Dr. Yosihiko Sinoto, the Pacific’s preeminent archeologist; in 2015 it won profile of the year from the Society of Professional Journalists. “Digging Through Time” also concerns relics of the past; it explores David Burney’s ongoing dig at Makuawahi Cave. “Mapping the Hawaiian Footprint” traces the impact of man by looking at pre-human, pre-contact, and modern-day Island ecosystems.

Art

“Georgia and Patricia” is the tale of a friendship sparked in 1939 between Georgia O'Keeffe and a twelve-year-old girl named Patricia Jennings. “At the Breaking Point” explores the wave photography of surfer Clark Little who makes images, as the article notes, “in the impact zone.” “Whole Lotta Love” chronicles the rock 'n' roll odyssey of photographer Robert Knight. “Frond Embrace” tells of Sam Kama, a Hawaiian weaver who, as one of his students puts it in the story, “doesn’t just teach weaving, he teaches important things, like how to be.”  “Gardens & Goddesses” profiles Japanese painter and activist Mayumi Oda; “The Maestro” is a portrait of Semyon Bilmes, a master artist from Azerbaijan.

Place

These pieces travel across the Polynesian triangle, from Aotearoa in the south to Hawai‘i in the north and Tahiti in the east. “City of the Southern Cross” looks at the emergence of Auckland as a global metropolis, “Purity of Line” explores the architecture of mid-twentieth-century Honolulu, and “Land’s End” and “La Belle Vie” offer journeys to two remote and exquisite parts of French Polynesia: Fakarava in the Tuamotus and Maupiti in the Society Islands.

Mosaic

These articles are linked simply by the fact that the stories they tell are wonderful. “Fertile Image” is the tale of a painting and the string of pregnancies that followed its creation; “Celestine in Bloom” profiles Tahitian novelist Celestine Vaite; “Roots and Blossoms” visits the Hilo flower shop of Auntie Ann and Auntie Kay Ebesugawa; “Destiny by Design” looks at one intersection of art and fate; “The Collector” profiles an avid gatherer of Polynesian artifacts; and “The Making of a Vagabond” tells the story of a doctor whose practice area spanned three million square miles and encompassed four time zones.

Morsels

All of these pieces are short, between 350 and 400 words. Writing at this length you're working somewhere between poetry and prose, crafting little worlds in which every word is—ideally!—indispensable. I think of each piece as a sort of amuse-bouche: The goal is that it be small but satisfying, with a richness that lingers even though the portion was tiny.

Codas

These four pieces are all back-page essays; just like the shorter pieces above, they are designed to evoke an entire world in a small space. These four look at a museum dedicated to the innate creativity of every human being (“The People's Museum”), a botanist and the collection of trees he planted (“Trees of Knowledge”), a project to digitize Hawaiian newspapers (“He Kiko Hua Au”) and a community cook-off devoted to all things breadfruit (“The ‘Ulu Smackdown”). 

Weekly Days

In the early 1990s I was the founding editor of Honolulu’s first “alternative weekly.” The staff was tiny, but somehow we put out a paper every week, and we were a hit. These four stories are the ones I like best from my time there. “Getting the Boot” details a series of evictions in Waikīkī and offers a firsthand look at the housing crisis in Hawai‘i. “Is it Really Safe?” explores the defueling and refueling of nuclear submarines that goes on regularly at Pearl Harbor. “Treasure Island/The New Boss in Town/The Looting of Lanai” is a collection of three linked articles about billionaire David Murdock's purchase and development of Lāna‘i (he has since sold the island to billionaire Larry Ellison). And “Dawn of Destruction,” a piece of spot news reporting undertaken years before the web and social media came along, details the impact of Hurricane Iniki on the ground.