Marjorie Sinclair reads from her works

It’s been more than 65 years since Marjorie Sinclair arrived in Honolulu after graduating from Mills College in California. Upon her arrival and enrollment as a graduate student at the University of Hawai’i, she discovered a new passion: “I just very much wanted to write about the Hawaiian people,” she said.

Sinclair went on to do just that, writing a pair of novels (“Kona” in 1947 and “The Wild Wind” in 1950) and a biography (“Nahi’ena’ena: Sacred Daughter of Hawaii,” in 1976), along with a number of poems and short stories that reflect the Native Hawaiian experience in the early 20th century.