Garrett Hongo was born in Volcano, Hawaii, in 1951. The author of two collections of poetry and a memoir about growing up in Hawaii, he has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation. His poetry collection The River of Heaven (reissued by Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2001) was the Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. (updated 7/2010)