Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Malia Maunakea. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Malia, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
It’s been tough to teach my kids about their Hawaiian culture since we live in the middle of Colorado. When my son started reading Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson stories in elementary, I tried to tell him that we have amazing gods, goddesses, and legends as well. He obviously just wanted to be left alone to read, not lectured by his mother so I did what any mother desperate to get her point across would do: I wrote a book about our culture that would belong on a shelf next to Percy Jackson so that hopefully my son would see it in classrooms and gravitate toward it.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am so honored to have the platform to be sharing the moʻolelo—the stories and histories—that I grew up with. I I take this kuleana—privilege wrapped in responsibility—very seriously, as there currently aren’t may traditionally published middle grade stories written by kānaka authors out there. I realize I represent only one viewpoint and one lived experience, but many times folks reading my stories may not have been exposed to this authentic “behind the curtain” peek at what life in Hawaiʻi is actually like, so I try to be as honest and open as I can, sharing the beauty and reality of growing up in a tourist’s paradise.
My first series, Lei and the Legends, starts with Lei and the Fire Goddess, where a part-Hawaiian girl who is raised in Colorado realizes her Tūtū’s stories are true when she defies the fire goddess, Pele, and her best friend is kidnapped by a giant hawk. The girl must go on an epic adventure to save her friend, meeting other legends and discovering who she is along the way. It was featured on the Today show and is on many Best Of book lists. The second book, Lei and the Invisible Island, just received an elusive starred rating from Kirkus reviews and comes out this summer. It features more Hawaiian culture and legends, more friendship struggles, and a lot of great food.
My books are perfect for anyone who loves or is curious about Hawaiʻi and for fans of Rick Riordan and Disneyʻs Moana.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
In my journey to publication, I think research, curiosity, and my own STEM background have been most impactful in my journey. STEM?! In publishing?! Yes! There are so many ways that I’ve used my strengths in other backgrounds and disciplines to help me succeed in this new one. Research and curiosity were key in getting started, because I quite literally had no background in publishing or writing at all. So I talked to librarians, read books I thought I could emulate, kept curious about the process. Then I used the skills acquired in my engineering to find patterns in the stories I enjoyed to create my own. I basically reverse engineered my first story using mentor texts to show me the overall structures that I should be emulating.
If you’re on your own journey switching paths in life, don’t discard everything you’ve learned. Try to think outside the box of how to harness your strengths and skills developed in your previous career toward your new passion.
If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?
The challenge I’m currently facing is trying to figure out the marketing piece of the puzzle. I’ve written books. I’ve published books. How do I tell people about these books? Shouting about the fun resources I have for writers and teachers, or my book achieving accolades on my social media pages (@maliamaunakea on Instagram, X, and TikTok) doesn’t go far when I don’t have that big of a following. My newsletter doesn’t have that many followers either (I am just now starting to learn Substack, so feel free to follow me there as I engineer my way through. @maliamaunakea). This marketing piece of the puzzle is a big one because without book sales, I won’t be able to continue selling books to my publishers. If anyone has ideas, feel free to DM me!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.MaliaMaunakea.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maliamaunakea/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maliamaunakeawrites
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malia-maunakea-790bb46/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaliaMaunakea
- Other: Substack: https://maliamaunakea.substack.com/
Image Credits
credits are in the names of the images
