Kauakanilehua Māhoe Adams w/ Keliko K. M. Adams, AN EXPANSE OF BLUE

Kauakanilehua Māhoe Adams presents her debut novel-in-verse, An Expanse of Blue, about a Native Hawaiian girl's fight to find belonging in a fracturing family, sharing a message of love with resounding emotional truth. She is joined by writer and artist Keliko K. M. Adams.

Aouli Elizabeth Smith is adrift: unheard at home and an unbeliever at church, fighting her sister and losing her best friend. Overflowing with feeling, she pours her secrets and herself into her song journal when the world threatens to sweep her away. The one place she feels tied down to earth is at her Aunty Ehu’s house. Those joyous Saturdays with her extended Native Hawaiian community living in Western Washington are precious to her. Under the maple trees, the fragments of her life fit together, if only for an afternoon.

Then, an unspeakable truth about her father shatters this one perfect corner of her life.

As Aouli’s world constricts around what others wish she could be, language fails her. But when a new boy, Nalu, turns up with eyes that seem to pierce right into her soul, maybe it’s love that can give her the words to set herself free.

Kauakanilehua Māhoe Adams is a Kanaka Maoli/Native Hawaiian, Asian, and white author and poet originally from Seattle, Washington. Today, Kaua lives in sunny southern California on a bird sanctuary with her partner, where she spends her time writing, reading, daydreaming, dancing hula, and bending to her dogs’ every wish and whim. An Expanse of Blue is her debut novel.

Keliko K. M. Adams is a writer, artist, and educator from Wahiawā, Hawai'i, now based in the Pacific Northwest. Her short story, "The Night Marchers", was published in the The Haunted States of America from Macmillan, and her personal essay, "Other, Together", is forthcoming in Mixed Roots: 30 Writers on Multiracial Both/And Belonging from Beacon Press in Fall 2026. She received her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts where she was awarded a Fellowship with the Center for Arts and Social Justice. Her writing has also been supported by Indigenous Nations Poets, We Need Diverse Books, Boyd Mills, and Hypatia-in-the-Woods. As a mixed media artist, her illustrations have been included in group exhibits at the Seattle Convention Center and as part of the Wing Luke Museum's current exhibit, DISplace, featuring Native Hawaiian artists living in the Pacific Northwest.

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