Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada

Based in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada is a writer, poet, and photographer. He uses Hawaiian traditional knowledge and stories to navigate and imagine Hawaiian futures. Kamaoli has published in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian language, and in English. His poetry appears in The Offing, Bettering American Poetry Vol. 2, and Yellow Medicine Review; his fiction in Black Marks on the White Page, Pacific Monsters, The Dark Magazine, and The Hawaiʻi Review of Books. In 2019, he was part of the grassroots media team supporting the movement against the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope atop the sacred mountain Maunakea. His work as part of that team appeared in numerous digital platforms and led to co-editing a special issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, entitled “Aloha ʻĀina Narratives of Protest, Protection, and Place,” with curated interviews, poetry, photography, and academic reflections about the struggle over the Mauna. Kuwada’s portrait work has appeared in the Ori Gallery (Portland) and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), as well as The Honolulu Star-Advertiser. His surf photography (@waterbearfoto), which tries to reintroduce Hawaiian traditions and understandings of the ocean into the surf world, can be found in Pacific Longboarder Magazine.

Projects:

• Abundant Intelligences CoLAB