Julia Flynn Siler's Blog
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Jan.25.2013
Mahalo nui loa – Hawaiian for thank you very much – to the dozens of book groups I’ve spoken with from around the country that have picked Lost Kingdom as their monthly or quarterly read. I’ve met some of these groups in person and have skyped with some and phoned in to others. It’s been a...
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Aug.10.2012
The story begins in November of 1957. The chief photographer for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Warren Roll, climbed into the passenger seat of a small plane in Kauai. The pilot took off, heading towards a 73-square-mile privately-owned Hawaiian island of Niihau.
The plane landed roughly, smashing...
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Aug.02.2012
My family and I just returned from a week in Hana, on the eastern coast of Maui. Hana is probably best known for the road leading to it –a series of heart-stopping one-lane bridges and sheer vertical drops to the ocean below. But tourists who drive to Hana and back in a day from resorts on the...
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Mar.15.2012
Julia Flynn Siler and Her Royal Highness Princess Abigail Kawananakoa.
By Julia Flynn Siler
A few days before heading to Honolulu on book tour for Lost Kingdom, I got a phone call from the assistant to Her Royal Highness Princess Abigail Kawananakoa, the woman who is the most direct descendant...
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Mar.10.2012
Purely by chance, I found myself in the Washington, D.C. neighborhood where Hawai‘i’s last queen, Lili‘uokalani, had once lived.
I was in Washington, D.C. to deliver a talk to a group of Treasury executives about my new book, Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First...
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Feb.25.2012
On my last night in Honolulu on tour for my new book, Lost Kingdom, I was invited for drinks at the Outrigger Canoe Club, which sits at the far end of Waikiki Beach, in the shadow of Diamond Head. The club is a key setting for the novel, The Descendants, which is now an Oscar-nominated film...
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Jan.31.2012
The famed Mavericks Surf Contest, which takes place in Half Moon Bay, California, is called each year by its organizers only when conditions are right. Last year, the waves were never big enough for the competition to take place. This year, it began on January 3rd, 2012, the same day as the...
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Jan.28.2012
by Don Wallace
As the principals of The Descendants prepare to stroll down Oscar’s red carpet, and the 119th anniversary of Queen Liliuokalani’s overthrow is observed, a major and masterful new book about Hawaii hits the shelves. Julia Flynn Siler’s Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen,...
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Jan.25.2012
Mahalo nui loa – which in Hawaiian means thank you very much! – to the half dozen or so book groups I’ve heard from around the country that have picked Lost Kingdom as their monthly or quarterly read. I’m truly grateful to all of you – from Liz Epstein’s Literary Masters groups (10 book groups in...
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Jan.22.2012
One of the problems I've had on tour for my new book, Lost Kingdom, Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure, is figuring out how to correctly pronounce the constant-rich Hawaiian names that appear throughout my book. It's a challenge I've been...
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Oct.26.2011
The statistics are daunting: less than two percent of all the books optioned for the screen ever enter production. Far fewer make it into theaters. My first book, The House of Mondavi was optioned twice, but never came close to becoming a movie.
That’s why it’s been a vicarious thrill to watch...
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Apr.28.2011
As a reporter for more than two decades, I’ve met many remarkable people. But by far the person who I’ll never forget is our current U.S. Poet Laureate, William S. Merwin.
For decades, Merwin has lived off the grid in Hawai‘i. To reach his home, I turned off Maui’s fabled Hana Highway, down a...
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Sep.06.2010
September 2nd is the day that the last ruling monarch of Hawai‘i was born and I was invited by the trustees of the Queen Lili‘uokalani Trust to join them at a ceremony honoring her birthday at Mauna ʻAla, the Royal Mausoleum where members of both the Kamehameha and Kalākaua dynasties are buried....
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Sep.01.2010
I first came across the word kaukau in a note that the Hawaiian Princess Ka‘iulani wrote to Robert Louis Stevenson more than a century ago.
The Scottish novelist and his family had arrived in Honolulu in the afternoon of January 24, 1889, and the beautiful princess dropped them a short note,...
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Aug.30.2010
The last queen of Hawai‘i’s best known composition is Aloha Oe, which is heard in the soundtrack of everything from Elvis Presley's "Blue Hawaii" to the Disney movie "Lilo and Stitch." But the one that brought tears to my eyes this morning was “The Queen’s Prayer,” a hymn she...
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"A riveting saga...a real gem of a book"”
—Historian Douglas Brinkley
About Julia
Julia Flynn Siler is the New York Times bestselling author of The House of Mondavi. Her most recent book, Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure, hit the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list shortly after...