Unprecedented 3 Nominations for Hawaii-Born Writer KIRBY WRIGHT

KIRBY WRIGHT, a writer born and raised in Hawaii and now living in San Diego, has been nominated an unprecedented 3 times for 3 different books at the upcoming 2014 San Diego Book Awards being held in Del Mar, California on Saturday, June 21st, 2014.

A List of Wright's Nominated Books:

THE WIDOW FROM LAKE BLED in the Poetry Category

isbn 467572616

*A collection of poems, prose poems and flashes, broken into 4 mini-books, each book representing poems written during an overseas or domestic residency. The collection includes the winners of the Honolulu Weekly Poetry Prize and Jodie Stutz Memorial Award for Poetry. The mini-books are: Hong Kong, Eastern Europe, Martha's Vineyard and Hawaii. The book also includes Pushcart Prize-nominated verse.

THE END, MY FRIEND in the Horror/SciFi/Fantasy Category

isbn 0974106798

*Paris Hilton and Lady Gaga are dead. So is the President. Psytrance parties rage as Palm Springs burns. Police and fire departments are gone. Martial law is imposed to deal with the riots but the military is overwhelmed when Mexicans storm the border to fly their flag over Imperial Beach. Warlords battle private security forces for control of coastal towns. Power, gas, and water are luxuries. Hummers and motor coaches are obsolete. The internet and cells are inoperative. Wi-Fi is history. Stores have been ransacked. The black market thrives. Teenage gangs go door-to-door looting and killing. Suburbanites must either leave or risk getting slaughtered. Tent cities sprout like mushrooms from the beach into the desert. Welcome to the Prelude to the Apocalypse. Journey with Tony and Evo into the heart of the American Nightmare as they search for safe haven in a world that knows no rules.

SQUARE DANCING AT THE ASYLUM in the Short Story Collection Category

isbn 0974106771

*This collection of Kafkaesque miniatures offers a terrifying vision of the Worcester asylum where the writer's uncle spent most of his adult life. The asylum theme zips into overdrive in a series of sometimes darkly comic flashes threaded throughout the book. Dadio and June Spoon have created their own asylum in the burbs, one in which they 'incarcerate' their children within the confines of the home through guilt control, paternal manipulation, money, and demands bordering on the insane.

BIO:

KIRBY WRIGHT was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a graduate of Punahou School in Honolulu and the University of California at San Diego. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Wright has been nominated for five Pushcart Prizes and is a past recipient of the Honolulu Weekly Nonfiction Award, the Jodi Stutz Memorial Prize in Poetry, the Ann Fields Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Award, the Robert Browning Award for Dramatic Monologue, and Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowships in Poetry and The Novel. BEFORE THE CITY, his first poetry collection, took First Place at the 2003 San Diego Book Awards. Wright is also the author of the companion novels PUNAHOU BLUES and MOLOKA’I NUI AHINA, both set in Hawaii. He was a Visiting Fellow at the 2009 International Writers Conference in Hong Kong, where he represented the Pacific Rim region of Hawaii. He was also a Visiting Writer at the 2010 Martha’s Vineyard Residency in Edgartown, Mass., the 2011 Artist in Residence at Milkwood International, Czech Republic, and the 2014 Resident Scholar at Earthskin, New Zealand. His futuristic thriller THE END, MY FRIEND, and his second poetry collection THE WIDOW FROM LAKE BLED, were both released in 2013. Also released in 2013 was SQUARE DANCING AT THE ASYLUM, his collection of flash fiction. His Hawaiian memoir is forthcoming in 2015.