Do you ever wonder what your favorite writers are reading? Looking ahead to Donald Carreira Ching and Kristiana Kahakauwila’s upcoming reading and talk story on July 27th, we asked the writers to share a book they’d recommend each other to read.
“[Donald has] read all the books I’ve ever assigned or recommended and then some,” shared Kristiana. “But, here’s my rec: Swim Home to the Vanished by Brendan Shay Basham. It’s about brothers, grief, recovery, and community. I think it could suit [him].”
For Kristiana, Donald chose Feast your Eyes by Myla Goldberg.
“I talk a lot about this book, so I may have already mentioned it to her,” he said. “This novel focuses on the life of a photographer named Lillian Preston and is written like a catalogue accompanying her posthumous show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, with Preston’s estranged daughter writing the entries. Tiana loves work that experiments with form and structure, so I think she’d enjoy it.”
We’re so excited to hear these two incredible writers in conversation with each other. Join us on Sunday, July 27th at 2pm at da Shop: Books + Curiosities, for a reading and talk story celebrating Donald’s new book, Blood Work and Other Stories.
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As a treat before next Sunday’s reading and conversation, here are some excerpts of their work:
The Odds
Donald Carreira Ching
On the last night of my brother Matty’s life, I told him that Pordagees don’t know how to grieve. They laugh when they’re supposed to cry. Tell stories no one wants to hear. Think because they stayed up for the wake, they can fall asleep at the Service.
Two weeks prior, we held a living funeral for my brother. Instead of talking about how much I was going to miss him, I repeated the jokes he’d told me. Like the one about getting lost
after you die. “Head toward the light, head toward the light, they tell you. But which one?” I said the punchline, and he was smiling in the back.
We threw the party at our parents’ house. Out in the garage, family and friends talking story and piling their plates with ginger chicken and pancit. Everywhere was green bottles
and boxes of tissue. And on a folding table near the screen door that led into the house was a white Igloo ice chest, scuffed a rough brown, Matty’s name fading on the side. The smell of the last ulua he caught still seeping out of the cover. Beside it, a fat black marker for people to write their last words to him on the chest. Where there was space, I scrawled, I didn’t forget about the twenty I owe you. Remind me next week.
Excerpt from “The Odds” by Donald Carreira Ching in
Blood Work and Other Stories
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Bridge Jumping
Kristiana Kahakauwila
How easily we spent that last day of our happiness. We left Wai‘ānapanapa long after the sun had dipped behind Haleakalā, as the eastern sky darkened. I was hungry and damp and tired. On his moped, Pueo took the turns fast, skidding dangerously close to the edge of the sea cliffs. Billy followed, more cautiously, perhaps because I was with him. The air was thick with the scent of rotting liliko‘i and strawberry guava, and I buried my face into Billy’s neck, knocked that too-big helmet against the brim of his A’s cap. I could taste, on his neck, the saltwater from those deep anchialine pools. I leaned my body in tandem with his, pressing into a turn, the moped slowing as we ascended a hill, the engine whirring with the effort to climb, and then we were off again—skimming the edge of the highway while beneath us the ocean appeared feathered and thrumming, like a bird’s wing beating against the sky.
Excerpt from “Bridge Jumping” by Kristiana Kahakauwila in
Kīpuka: Finding Refuge in Times of Change
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About the authors:
Donald Carreira Ching was born and raised in Kahaluʻu on the island of Oʻahu. He earned his PhD in English from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. His debut novel, Between Sky and Sea: A Family’s Struggle, was published by Bamboo Ridge Press in 2015 and was awarded the Ka Palapala Poʻokela award for excellence in literature, honorable mention, and is listed by Honolulu Magazine as one of Hawaiʻi’s “essential books.” His writing has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies locally and elsewhere, including StoryQuarterly, Every Day Fiction, and RHINO. In 2018, he was awarded the Elliot Cades award for Literature, Emerging Writer, Hawaiʻi’s most prestigious literary award.
He is currently an Assistant Professor of Writing at Leeward Community College. His collection Blood Work and Other Stories is forthcoming from Bamboo Ridge Press, and he recently completed a near-future eco-thriller, Hawaii 2038: The Bitter Storms.
Kristiana Kahakauwila is the author of two books set in and about contemporary Hawai‘i. This is Paradise: Stories was published by Penguin Random House in 2013 and was selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program. Clairboyance, published by HarperCollins in 2024, was recognized as an Honor Book by the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association and is a finalist for the 2026 Nēnē Award from the Hawai‘i State Public Library System. Kristiana’s short fiction and essays have appeared in anthologies such as Honolulu Stories Today as well as literary and commercial magazines such as Kartika Review, Hunger Mountain, and Red Ink. She is a former editor for Highlights for Children and Wine Spectator. In 2015-16, Kristiana was the Lisa Goldberg Fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study. Today, she teaches in the Department of English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa where she is the Director of the Creative Writing Program.
Talk story