Juliet Kono

Kono was born in 1943 in Hilo, Hawaii to Yoshinori and Atsuko Asayama; her grandparents were immigrants from Japan. One of her earliest memories is from the April 1 tsunami resulting from the 1946 Aleutian Islands earthquake; her family lost their home, which was near the water's edge where Liliuokalani Gardens is today, and were forced to live near her grandparents, who operated a small sugar cane plantation in Kaiwiki. She is married to David Lee, who was a fellow dispatcher. ==Career==

She took up writing while working at a former job as a police dispatcher, publishing as Juliet S. Kono. Kono has also taught at guest workshops for universities and colleges including Wellesley College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is considered a member of the Bamboo Ridge group of writers ==Awards==

Kono received a Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission in 1998 Her novel Anshu: Dark Sorrow received the 2011 Ka Palapala Po'okela Book Award for Literature. ==Bibliography==