From the ahupuaʻa of Aʻapueo in Kula, Maui, Brandy Nālani McDougall (Kanaka ʻŌiwi, she/her/ʻo ia) is the author of two poetry collections, The Salt-Wind, Ka Makani Paʻakai (Kuleana ʻŌiwi Press, 2008) and ʻĀina Hānau, Birth Land (University of Arizona Press, 2023). She was awarded the Elliot Cades Award for Literature in 2024. Her critical monograph Finding Meaning: Kaona and Contemporary Hawaiian Literature (University of Arizona Press, 2016) is the first extensive study of contemporary Hawaiian literature and was the winner of the 2017 Beatrice Medicine Award for Scholarship in American Indian Studies. She is an Associate Professor of American Studies (specializing in Indigenous studies) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. The Hawaiʻi Poet Laureate for 2023-2025, McDougall’s creative work was featured in the Hawaiʻi Triennial 2025 and is now part of the City and County of Honolulu’s Wahi Pana Public Art Initiative. She lives with her keiki in Mānoa in the ahupuaʻa of Waikīkī on Oʻahu.
https://hawaiicontemporary.org/ht25-artist-mcdougall
