Poets win top literary awards
Poets win top literary awards
Authors Garrett Hongo and Janine Oshiro have been named this year’s winners of the Elliott Cades Awards for Literature, the most prestigious literary awards in Hawaii.
The nonprofit Hawaii Literary Arts Council, which is charged with hosting the awards program, selected Hongo to be the recipient of the award for an established artist. Oshiro was named the winner of the award for an emerging artist.
The two will receive their awards at a special ceremony at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, May 5, as part of the Honolulu Book & Music Festival.
Hongo, a poet who is a professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon, was honored for a lifetime of work that reflects his life in and out of Hawaii. Born in Volcano in 1951, he attended Pomona College and the University of Michigan and received his master of fine arts degree in English from the University of California at Irvine.
Oshiro holds degrees from Whitworth University, Portland State University and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is a Kundiman fellow and the recipient of a poetry fellowship from Oregon’s Literary Arts. She lives in Hawaii and teaches at Windward Community College.