Short Bio
Kalilinoe Detwiler is a PhD Candidate of English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Indigenous Nations Poet, Storyknife Fellow, and animator. She works at Hā Kūpuna National Resource Center for Native Hawaiian Elders. Her work has appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, Haymarket Books We the Gathered Heat Anthology, and elsewhere, as well as showcased at the Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaiʻi International Film Festival, and Smithsonian Native Cinema Showcase. Her work cares for life and coming of age narratives, the strengthening of relationships through story, and the perpetuation of moʻolelo in creative forms.
The Long Story
Kalilinoe Detwiler is a Kanaka Maoli artist-writer who grew up watching the clouds move across Oʻahu from her home in Makakilo. Her work cares for the adaptation of lives, strengthening of relationships, coming of age narratives, and perpetuation of inherited moʻolelo (stories, histories) using creative, often hybrid forms. Woven into her practice as a storyteller are reciprocity, hope, and sovereignty, and her preferred mediums include poetry, non/fiction, animation, and illustration. Kalilinoe has a B.A. in Creative Media (2020), B.A. in English (2020), M.A. in English (2022), and is currently a PhD Candidate in English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa where she explores storytelling responsibilities and possibilities. She works with Hā Kūpuna, National Resource Center for Native Hawaiian Elders, and as a Co-PI, Artistic Coordinator, and Lead Storyteller for Symphony of Hawaiʻi Seas, a live orchestra performance facilitating student relationships with the ocean using arts and STEAM curriculum. In the Hawaiʻi community, she served as a grant-writer, evaluator, illustrator, performer, and educator.
Kalilinoe's written work appears with Yellow Medicine Review, Haymarket Books We the Gathered Heat Anthology, the Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. She was an Honorable Mention and Finalist for the James Welch Poetry Prize (2024, 2026) and Honorable Mention for the Center for Biography Prize (2024). In 2022, she was selected as part of the inaugural cohort of Indigenous Nations Poets, hosted by the Library of Congress in D.C., and later honored by Counsel Member Radiant Cordero at the June 2022 City Counsel Meeting. In 2025 she was selected as a Storyknife fellow and reselected as an Indigenous Nations Poet. In 2026, she was selected for the Kundiman Writer's Retreat in poetry.
Her films and multimodal work has showcased locally and nationally, including the Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaiʻi International Film Festival, and the Smithsonian Native Cinema Showcase, as well as internationally such as at the Paris International Film Awards and Māoriland. She currently works as an animator on Hawaiʻi films, nonprofits projects, and local visionary initiatives. She worked as an animator on the short film Kapō Maʻi Lele (2025) and the Symphony of the Hawaiʻi Forests (2024). She completed a festival run for her short animated film, Pua Ka Uahi (2020), which showed at 14 Film Festivals including the National Museum of the American Indian Native Cinema Showcase, Prague International Film Festival, Hawaiʻi International Film Festival, and Wairoa Māori Film Festival.
All of her work (writing, research, art, and everything in between) are a part of her responsibility and privilege of being raised in and by Hawaiʻi. Integral to her process is the ōlelo noʻeau ma ka hana ka ʻike, because knowledge is learned and perpetuated when it is embodied. She is most thankful to her kumu (ʻāina, cultural practitioners, mentors, friends, and kūpuna, to name a few) who guide and lend her stories power.