Chris McKinney is an American writer born and raised in Hawaii.
Career
His novels are set in Hawaii and the plots often concern the difficulties of underprivileged people dealing with societal change.
He is an associate professor in Language Arts at Honolulu Community College where he has taught since 2003.
McKinney was a fellow of the Hawai`i Writing Project in 1998 and the 2000 recipient of the Elliot Cades Award for Literature.
His novel, ''The Tattoo'', won first place awards for Excellence in Literature and Excellence in Writing Literature from The Hawai`i Book Publishers Association.
His screenplay ''Paradise Broken'' was nominated for best film at the Los Angeles Pacific Film Festival. His latest novel, ''Midnight Water City'' was named a Best Mystery of 2021 by Publishers Weekly and a Best Speculative Mystery of 2021 by CrimeReads
Personal life
McKinney was born in
Honolulu
Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of Honol ...
and grew up in nearby
Kahalu'u. His mother was Korean and his father was from Hawai'i.
When he was a baby his parents divorced; they both remarried and his father moved to the US mainland, to Gaithersburg, Maryland and later Selma, California.
[Oi, Cynthia]
"Author's anger gives way to awareness – and a novel that explodes images of paradise"
''Star Bulletin'' From fourth to sixth grade, he spent the school year with his father and their new family, and summers in Hawaii with his mother and her family.
He stopped going back to the mainland in 6th grade.
He attended
Mid-Pacific Institute
Mid-Pacific Institute is a private, co-educational college and career preparatory school for grades preschool through twelve in Honolulu, Hawaii with an approximate enrollment of 1,400 students, the majority of whom are from Hawaii (although man ...
in Honolulu for high school and graduated from the
University of Hawaiʻi
The University of Hawaiʻi System is a public college and university system in Hawaii. The system confers associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees through three universities, seven community colleges, an employment training center, ...
with a B.A. in English.
He has been married twice and has two children.
Legal issues
In 2019, McKinney was identified as a co-conspirator in the indictment of former Honolulu deputy prosecutor
Katherine Kealoha, a family friend.
Between 2015 and 2017, McKinney allegedly conspired with Rudy Puana, the brother of Katherine Kealoha, to illegally sell oxycodone pills, or use the pills to purchase cocaine.
Bibliography
* The Tattoo (1999)
* The Queen of Tears (2001)
* Bolohead Row (2005)
* Mililani Mauka (2009)
* Boi No Good (2012)
''Boi No Good''
(Hawaii Public Radio
Hawaiʻi Public Radio (HPR), is a network of listener-supported, public radio stations broadcasting two streams on fifteen frequencies across the state of Hawaii. It is a member of National Public Radio (NPR). The stations originate from studios ...
)
* Red Headed Hawaiian: the inspiring story about a local boy from rural Hawaii who makes good (2014)
* Yakudoshi: Age of Calamity (2016)
* Midnight Water City (2021)
* Eventide Water City (2023)
* Sunset Water City (2023)
*Honolulu Noir (2024)
References
External links
Chris McKinney
on PaperBackSwap PaperBackSwap (PBS) is a book swapping website which was founded in 2004. The purpose of PaperBackSwap is to use the Internet to facilitate the parity trading of books among members in the United States using a credit based system for swapping. T ...
Chris McKinney
on Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevu ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mckinney, Chris
Living people
Writers from Honolulu
Year of birth missing (living people)
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa alumni