Kirby
was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a graduate of Punahou
School in Honolulu and the University of California at San Diego. He
received his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State
University. Wright has been nominated for five Pushcart Prizes and is a
past recipient of theHonolulu
Weekly Nonfiction
Award, the Jodi Stutz Memorial Prize in Poetry, the Ann Fields Poetry
Prize, the Academy of American Poets Award, the Robert Browning Award
for Dramatic Monologue, and Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowships in
Poetry and The Novel. BEFORE THE
CITY,
his first poetry collection, took First Place at the 2003 San Diego
Book Awards. Wright is also the author of the companion novelsPUNAHOU
BLUES and MOLOKA’I
NUI AHINA,
both set in Hawaii. He was a Visiting Fellow at the 2009 International
Writers Conference in Hong Kong, where he represented the Pacific Rim
region of Hawaii and lectured with Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Snyder.
He was also a Visiting Writer at the 2010 Martha’s Vineyard
Residency in Edgartown, Mass., the 2011 Artist in Residence at Milkwood
International, Czech Republic, the 2014 Resident Scholar at the
Earthskin Artist Colony in New Zealand, and the 2015 Artist in
Residence at the New York Mills Cultural Center in Minnesota. His
futuristic thriller, THE END,
MY FRIEND, and
his second poetry collection, THE WIDOW
FROM LAKE BLED,
were both released in 2013. He was nominated an unprecedented three
times in three different categories at the 2013 San Diego Book Awards.
His third poetry collection, NOTES
ABOVE WATER, was
published in 2014. His Hawaiian memoir is forthcoming in 2016. Kirby's
first play was performed at the Secret Theatre's 2016 One Act Festival
in New York. He will be lecturing in Helsinki and Stockholm in
the fall of 2016.
Kirby Wright's Sweet Sixteen, first published by Storyhouse.org, is now the opening chapter of THE QUEEN OF MOLOKAI.
This is a work of creative nonfiction based on the life and times of
his part-Hawaiian grandmother. It tracks Julia Wright's wild teen years
in Roaring Twenties Waikiki and follows her over to Moloka'i, where she
pursues love and marriage with a cowboy at Moloka'i Ranch. Wright's
work has been compared to Pat Conroy (THE PRINCE OF TIDES) for family
struggles and to Frank McCourt (ANGELA'S ASHES) for women overcoming
great hardship. His book is available in both hard copy and Kindle
format.
Kindle: Click here...Books
by Kirby 