MEDIA RELEASE

Join Kona Stories in welcoming author Darien Gee and editor Christine Thomas as they present their newest Hawaiian book, “Don’t Look Back”. Both Gee and Thomas will be speaking Sunday, Feb. 26 about their work.

This event is 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 26 at Kona Stories Book Store in Keauhou Shopping Center. There will be time for book signing and Q & A after the presentations, free refreshments will be served.

The stories in this book are Hawaiian Myths Made New – An Anthology of Modern Moolelo, Pele in therapy, and Maui as superhero. The cannibal king Oahu Nui in a world of shady deals and political corruption as the star-crossed naupaka lovers are Honolulu high-school sweethearts.

In this one-of-a-kind anthology, old meets new as Hawaii’s best writers, including Ian MacMillan, Maxine Hong Kingston, W.S. Merwin, Victoria Kneubuhl, Alan Brennert and more, present favorite myths and legends in surprising contemporary settings.

Thomas was raised in Kailua and born in Honolulu, where she again resides, after earning a B.A. in English from the University of California of Berkeley and a master’s in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in England, as well as other stints living and working across the U.S.

She has worked for more than 15 years as a freelance features and travel writer and book critic and has taught creative writing and literature at Punahou School and to undergraduates across the country.

Her short fiction has been published in anthologies and literary magazines in the U.S. and in the United Kingdom, and her current work-in-progress, “To Lose is to Win”, features inter-generational short stories spanning the globe.

Gee is a national bestselling author of several novels written under the name Mia King. Her books have been selections of the Doubleday, Literary Guild, and Book of the Month Club bookclubs.

Her second novel, Sweet Life, was nominated for a Ka Palapala Pookela award for excellence in Hawaii books. She lives with her family in upcountry Waimea on the island of Hawaii.

For more information on this free event call Brenda or Joy at 324-0350.

Don’t Look Back: Island Myths with a Modern Twist

In Don’t Look Back: Hawaiian Myths Made New, just released by Watermark Publishing, editor Christine Thomas has collected 17 tales of old Hawaii — lovingly re-imagined and retold for the 21st century.

Old meets new in this one-of-a-kind anthology, as Hawaii’s best writers — Maxine Hong Kingston, W.S. Merwin, Victoria Kneubuhl, Alan Brennert, the late Ian MacMillan and a dozen others including Thomas herself — present favorite myths and legends in surprising contemporary settings.

Here, the reader finds Pele in therapy, Maui as a superhero, the cannibal king Oahu Nui in a world of shady deals and political corruption, the star-crossed naupaka lovers as Honolulu high-school sweethearts and other updated versions of Island legends.

“Myths ultimately serve to instruct and inspire,” Thomas notes in her introduction to the book. “They educate; they counsel. They provide palpable and relevant lessons for modern lives, whether in recognizing true love, gathering strength to abandon a route headed for destruction, garnering self-confidence, or avoiding and escaping domestic violence.”

With a foreword by noted Hawaiian language scholar Dr. M. Puakea Nogelmeier, the 176-page, soft-cover Don’t Look Back explores myths both familiar and esoteric via literary genres ranging from straight-ahead literary fiction to romance to science fiction to poetry.

Don’t Look Back (ISBN 978-1-9356901-4-6) is available for $17.95 at bookstores, other retail outlets, online booksellers or direct from the publisher at www.bookshawaii.net