NBF Presents: The Language of Home

Through fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, National Book Award–honored author Ingrid Rojas Contreras (The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir, 2022 Nonfiction Finalist) and Hawaiʻi Poet Laureate Lee A. Tonouchi (Significant Moments in da Life of Oriental Faddah and Son: One Hawai‘i Okinawan Journal) expand the possibilities of language, place, and memory. Join Rojas Contreras and Tonouchi for readings and conversation on the relationship among family, migration, and art-making, from Colombia to Hawaiʻi. Moderated by Kristiana Kahakauwila, writer, educator, and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa.

The event will include audience Q&A and be followed by a book signing. Books will be available for sale, with thanks to University of Hawai'i Mānoa Bookstore.

Presented in partnership with the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa Creative Writing Program & Department of English and Hawaiʻi Council for the Humanities.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Bestselling novelist Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ breakout novel, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, earned the silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, an Indie Next Pick, and a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection. Rojas Contreras’ latest book The Man Who Could Move Clouds was named a “Best Book of the Year” by TIME Magazine, NPR, Vulture, People, The Boston Globe, Esquire; a Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction and the Pulitzer; and a winner of the California Book Award. She is at work on a new novel.

Lee A. Tonouchi, Okinawan Yonsei, stay known as “Da Pidgin Guerrilla” for his activism in campaigning for Pidgin a.k.a. Hawai‘i Creole for be accepted as one legitimate language. Tonouchi stay da recipient of da 2023 American Association for Applied Linguistics Distinguished Public Service Award for his work in raising public awareness of important language-related issues and promoting linguistic social justice. His Pidgin poetry collection Significant Moments in da Life of Oriental Faddah and Son: One Hawai‘i Okinawan Journal won da Association for Asian American Studies Book Award. His Pidgin children’s picture book Okinawan Princess: Da Legend of Hajichi Tattoos won one Skipping Stones Honor Award. His latest book stay Chiburu: Anthology of Hawai‘i Okinawan Literature. He going serve as the Hawaiʻi Poet Laureate from 2026–2029.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR:

Kristiana Kahakauwila is a hapa writer of Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian), Norwegian, and German descent. She is the author of This is Paradise: Stories, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and the middle-grade novel Clairboyance, a 2025 Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association’s Children’s Literature Honor title. Kristiana has served as faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Kundiman, and Western Washington University, among others. Today she is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa, where she directs their creative writing program.

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