This is an unprecedented joint appearance of these three remarkable authors. Among them, they have sold approximately half a billion books. What could possibly account for this? We believe it is an elegance of style, an unassuming intelligence that challenges and respects the intelligence of the reader. Our deeply knowledgeable moderator, Kevin Larimer, editor-in-chief of Poets and Writers, will invite each of them to reflect deeply upon the essential element they aim for in their prose and to shine a spotlight on where they have best achieved this.

Each of them rose from being unknown in the literary world to become dominant figures.

Scott Turow, a law student in 1977, wrote One L, an account of his experiences at Harvard Law School. It has remained a perennial best seller among first year law students to the present day. He became Assistant US Attorney in Chicago. His nine years in that position led him to write the legal thrillers Presumed Innocent, The Burden of Proof, Pleading Guilty and Personal Injuries. His deep familiarity with courtrooms and the characters who inhabit them led each book to become a best seller. Turow has since written a dozen other phenomenally successful novels. He continues to practice law on a pro bono basis for cases that have strong social importance.

Jim Grant, the man who would become Lee Child, was a crusading union representative in the studio of Britain’s Granada TV. After a run-in with management, he found  a message on his machine saying, “You’re fired. Don’t come back. Your swipe card will not work.” He was 40 years old and jobless for the first time, and furious.

Grant didn’t have a computer in 1995, so he wrote his first novel in longhand at his dining-room table. His anger leapt off the page. Killing Floor became a best seller. He realized his sacking offered him a chance for reinvention.He went on to write twenty-four other novels, every one a best seller.

John Grisham was a trial lawyer in Mississippi. He said the case that inspired his first novel came in 1984. He heard a 12-year-old girl telling a jury what had happened to her. He saw how the members of the jury cried as she told them about having been raped and beaten. “I remember staring at the defendant and wishing I had a gun.” Over the next three years he wrote his first book, A Time to Kill. The book was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press, an unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000 copy printing. It was published in June 1988.

The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on his second novel, The Firm. It remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 47 weeks. This would begin a streak of having one of the top 10 selling novels of the year for nearly the next two decades.

Four generations of the Punua family have conducted their renowned luau for over sixty years on Kauai. Their dance company has won numerous first place awards in statewide competitions. They have entertained many of the world’s biggest celebrities, going back to teaching hula to John Wayne for Donovan’s Reef in 1963. Today their performance stands above others in virtuosity and authenticity. We are fortunate to have them put on a private beachside show for the Kauai Writers Conference. The delicious menu of traditional Hawaiian dishes will match the entertainment.

Beyond this, the luau is a chance to spend time with our brilliant faculty in an event you will long remember. Don’t miss it!

Celebrated as one of the most influential na wahine alakai (women leaders) of Kauai, Sabra Kauka shares her passion for Hawaiian culture by educating youth and adults alike. She serves as kumu of Hawaiian studies and hula at Island School and as the coordinator of Hawaiian Studies on Kauai for the Department of Education. As team member of the Kulia i Ka Nuu Project at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Kumu Kapa on Kauai, she has taught hundreds of students.

She and her students will open the conference with blessings, chant and hula performance.

Sabra Kuala, a revered native Hawaiian leader and teacher,  serves as kumu of Hawaiian studies and hula at Island School and as the coordinator of Hawaiian Studies on Kauai for the Department of Education. As team member of the Kulia i Ka Nuu Project at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Kumu Kapa on Kauai, she has taught hundreds of students.

She is founding member and past-president of grassroots nonprofit, Na Pali Coast Ohana, dedicated to preserving natural and cultural resources of the Napali Coast State Park. Her work at the ancient Hawaiian village, Nualolo Kai, is considered one of the most successful curator programs in Hawaii. She still serves on the Garden Island Resource Conservation and Development board to restore cultural sites for future generations. She has also been a journalist, historian, environmentalist, anthropologist, political public information officer, dedicated activist and grandmother and she continues her work to benefit the island community and beyond.

The Story of Everything explores humanity’s rich and diverse explanations for the origins of life, and presents powerful solutions for the continued health of the planet at a time when we’re confronting the most severe crisis the earth has ever faced.  A riveting performance that presses back against climate despair, The Story of Everything incorporates poetry, dance, music, art and special effects to condense 13.7 billion years into an hour and 45 minutes that asks and answers the question challenging humans from the very beginning: “Where do we come from?” And even more important: Where do we go next?

Kealoha, born and raised in Honolulu, was the first poet laureate of Hawai‘i and the first poet in Hawai‘i’s history to perform at a governor’s inauguration. As an internationally acclaimed poet and storyteller, he has performed throughout the world — from the White House to the ‘Iolani Palace, from Brazil to Switzerland. He was selected as a master artist for a National Endowment for the Arts program, was named an American Academy of Poets Laureate Fellow, and is a teaching artist for the Hawai’i State Foundation Culture and the Arts, Artists in Schools Program. Kealoha received a Community Inspiration Program grant from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation towards the creation of his multi-media theater piece, The Story of Everything.

Kealoha is the founder of Hawai‘i Slam, which was ranked second in the nation in 2015; Youth Speaks Hawai‘i, two-time international champions; and First Thursdays, the largest registered slam poetry competition in the world with an average attendance of more than five hundred people. Kealoha graduated from Punahou School and with honors from MIT with a degree in nuclear physics and a minor in writing, served as a business consultant in San Francisco, and played around as a surf instructor prior to becoming a professional poet in 2002.

He was invited to give the commencement address for MIT’s 2020 & 2021 graduating classes. MIT President L. Rafael Reit wrote, “The classes of 2020 and 2021 faced challenges none of us could have imagined. To make it up to them, we sought a speaker who would deliver a message of hope and agency. You provided that and so much more – a call to action and a performance none of us will ever forget.”

The Story of Everything, produced and directed by Engaging the Senses Foundation, is a multimedia film that illuminates the intersection between science, the environment, the arts, and mindfulness through the storytelling of Hawaii’s first Poet Laureate, Kealoha.

The Story of Everything explores humanity’s rich and diverse explanations for the origins of life, and presents powerful solutions for the continued health of the planet at a time when we’re confronting the most severe crisis the earth has ever faced.  A riveting performance that presses back against climate despair, The Story of Everything incorporates poetry, dance, music, art and special effects to condense 13.7 billion years into an hour and 45 minutes that asks and answers the question challenging humans from the very beginning: “Where do we come from?” And even more important: Where do we go next?

Dubbed “the most popular poet in America” by Bruce Weber in the New York Times, Billy Collins is famous for conversational, witty poems that welcome readers with humor but often slip into quirky, tender, or profound observation on the everyday, reading and writing, and poetry itself. Collins’s level of fame is almost unprecedented in the world of contemporary poetry.

You can spot a Billy Collins poem immediately. The amiable voice, the light touch, the sudden turn at the end. He “puts the ‘fun’ back in profundity,” says poet Alice Fulton. In his own words, his poems tend to “begin in Kansas and end in Oz.”

Poet-critic Richard Howard has said of Collins:

“He has a remarkably American voice…that one recognizes immediately as being of the moment and yet has real validity besides, reaching very far into what verse can do.”

Collins has described himself as “reader conscious”:

“I have one reader in mind, someone who is in the room with me, and who I’m talking to, and I want to make sure I don’t talk too fast, or too glibly. Usually I try to create a hospitable tone at the beginning of a poem. Stepping from the title to the first lines is like stepping into a canoe. A lot of things can go wrong.” Collins further related: “I think my work has to do with a sense that we are attempting, all the time, to create a logical, rational path through the day. To the left and right there are an amazing set of distractions that we usually can’t afford to follow. But the poet is willing to stop anywhere.”

On Saturday morning during the conference, John Grisham will present a live Zoom session together with Scott Turow and Lee Child on

The Art of the Elegant Thriller.

They will delve deeply into what makes their books so captivating, the essential elements they strive for and where in their writing they have best achieved this.

On Saturday morning during the conference, Lee Child will present a live Zoom session together with John Grisham and Scott Turow on

The Art of the Elegant Thriller.

They will delve deeply into what makes their books so captivating, the essential elements they strive for and where in their writing they have best achieved this.