Kirby Wright

Kirby Wright is an American writer best known for his coming of age island novel Punahou Blues and the epic novel Moloka'i Nui Ahina, which is based on the life and times of Wright's paniolo grandmother. Both novels deal with the racial tensions between haoles (whites) and the indigenous Hawaiians, and illustrate the challenge for characters who, as the product of mixed-race marriages, must try to bridge the two cultures and overcome prejudice from both camps.

Wright's work is primarily concerned with the complexities of multicultural Hawaii, Killahaole Day, prejudices against (and within) island high schools, and the tricky matter of interracial dating. He incorporates the local creole language into his novels and was the first author to document the pidgin English spoken by the paniolo cowboys on the east end of Molokai.

Wright has ventured into the arena of speculative fiction with a pair of books in 2013. The End, My Friend is a futuristic thriller set in the not-too-distant future featuring a survivalist couple roaming an apocalyptic landscape from San Diego north to Crater Lake, Oregon. Square Dancing at the Asylum is set, in part, at the former state asylum in Worcester, Mass., and is dedicated to Paul Ford Nolan, Wright's great uncle and lifelong resident of the asylum. Both books received Certificates of Excellence at the 2014 San Diego Book Awards. HOUDINI, his first play, was performed at the Secret Theatre in New York on February 20th, 2016. The Secret Theatre produced his second play, ASYLUM UNCLE, on November 4th, 2016.

Wright was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is of English-Irish-Italian-Hawaiian heritage. His European roots are in Cork, Ireland, Nelson, England, and Genoa, Italy. His father, Harold S. Wright, was a corporate attorney for the firm Smith Wild BeeBe & Cades. His mother, the former June McCormack of Boston, was a secretary at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT. Starting at the age of 4, Wright spent summers with his part-Hawaiian grandmother Julia Gilman on her ranch on the east end of Molokai. It was here that Wright met Sophie Cooke, a cattle rancher who wrote the memoir Sincerely, Sophie about her life and times on the islands. This meeting proved influential to the young Wright because Cooke wrote about his grandmother. Evidence of Wright's love for the written word surfaced at the Star of the Sea Elementary School in Honolulu, where he crafted and performed plays about vampires, pro wrestlers, and secret agents. Kirby Wright won first place in a recital competition for his reading of "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer and also won awards for his original poems.

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