Eric Paul Shaffer (photo courtesy Mathew Ursua)
By Staff Reports
(Honolulu)– Award-winning writer Eric Paul Shaffer will speak at Hawai’i Pacific University’s 16th Annual Ko’olau Writing Workshops. The workshops will be held on Saturday, March 2, from 8:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., in the Cooke Academic Center at HPU’s Hawaii Loa Campus in Kaneohe. Local writers are invited to listen to Shaffer speak and to take workshops in scriptwriting, fiction, poetry and non-fiction. This year’s HPU James Vaughan Award for Poetry winner, Cassandra Aoki, will also be awarded at the event.
Shaffer is author of five poetry books, including “Lâhaina Noon: Nâ Mele O Maui,” “Living At The Monastery, Working In The Kitchen,” “Portable Planet,” and “RattleSnakeRider.” He is also the author of three poetry chapbooks, and his poetry has appeared in eleven anthologies in the United States and Europe. More than 350 of his poems appear in more than 200 local, national, and international reviews, including the USA’s Slate, North American Review, The Sun Magazine, Ploughshares, RATTLE, and Threepenny Review.
Cassandra Aoki
Among Shaffer’s awards are the Lorin Tarr Gill Poetry Competition (First Place), HPU’s James M. Vaughan Award for Poetry, Ka Palapala Po’okela Book Award, and the Elliot Cades Award for Literature (Established Writer in Hawai’i). He has published a novel and two fiction chapbooks, and is an assistant professor in Literature and Compostion at Honolulu Community College.
Aoki will receive a $250 cash award and be recognized at the event. Her poem “Chinatown, Honolulu” will be published in Volume 27 of Hawai’i Pacific Review, HPU’s literary magazine. Originally from Texas, Aoki graduated from Leilehua High School and then attended the University of Hawaii at Manoa, majoring in Psychology. She has a masters’ degree in Higher Education Administration from UH-M and is retired from working in the Office of Student Affairs at UH-M.
Each year, the Ko’olau Writing Workshops features a distinguished local writer and offers writers the chance to take workshops in drama, fiction, poetry, and non-fiction to boost and inspire their own work. The keynote starts at 9:30 a.m., and workshops are scheduled at 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and 1:30 to 3 p.m. The cost is $20 ($10 for students with ID), and includes continental breakfast and drinks at lunch. Attendees must provide their own lunch.
For more information and to reserve a space at the workshop, contact Joan Ishaque at (808) 544-0228, or Patrice Wilson, Ph.D., at (808) 544-1108, or email pwilson@hpu.edu.