We are pleased to announce Alani Apio and Kristiana Kahakauwila as the recipients of the 2025 Elliot Cades Awards for Literature. Kanaka ʻŌiwi playwright Alani Apio is the recipient of the Established Writer award, and Kanaka Maoli writer Kristiana Kahakauwila is the recipient of the Emerging Writer award.
The Elliot Cades Awards for Literature are given to writers whose published work demonstrates high literary quality and whose work is in or of Hawaiʻi. The candidates are nominated by the public. Since its establishment by Charlotte and J. Russell Cades in 1988, the awards have been administered by the Hawaiʻi Literary Arts Council until its succession by Friends of the Library of Hawaiʻi in 2026.
Friends of the Library of Hawaiʻi will present the awards on Saturday, November 14, at 10 a.m. at Hawaiʻi State Library. The event is free and open to the public.
2025 Established Writer Awardee: Alani Apio
Alani Apio is a playwright, poet, essayist, woodworker, and actor born in Honolulu and raised in Puʻuloa, aka ʻEwa Beach, Oʻahu. He attended the Kamehameha Schools and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Drama and Theatre from the University of Hawaiʻi in 1988. He is the acclaimed author of the plays Kāmau: The Trilogy—Kāmau (1994), Kāmau Aʻe (1998), and Ua Pau (2019)—a saga following four generations of a mixed-Hawaiian family as they navigate the prolonged impacts and generational trauma of poverty, displacement, mental health, and US tourism in Hawaiʻi. The semi-autobiographical trilogy was commissioned and staged in its entirety for the first time in 2024 by Kumu Kahua Theatre. Each play, and the trilogy as a whole, has also won numerous Poʻokela theater awards over the past thirty years.
Mr. Apio is also known for his advocacy work and lifelong commitment to Native Hawaiian rights and environmental conservation. He is a co-founder of the non-profit organization Kanu Hawaiʻi, championing Native Hawaiian culture, self-resilience, and sustainability practices, and serves as a founding board member of Hui Aloha, bringing awareness to the housing crisis in Hawaiʻi and solutions to homelessness.
2025 Emerging Writer Awardee: Kristiana Kahakauwila
Kristiana Kahakauwila is a writer of Kanaka Maoli, German, and Norwegian descent from Southern California whose body of work, from short stories to middle-grade fantasy, explores themes of mixed identity, ancestry, and the cultural underbellies of contemporary Hawaiʻi.
Her debut short-story collection, This Is Paradise: Stories, was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and a finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her middle-grade novel Clairboyance, published in 2025, was awarded a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection and an Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA) Children’s Literature Honor of that year. Her works have also been published in Kīpuka: Finding Refuge in Times of Change, Nonwhite & Woman, and the literary journal Hunger Mountain, among others.
Ms. Kahakauwila earned a BA in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan. She currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where she directs the Creative Writing Program.
Hoʻomaikaʻi!
You can view previous award recipients here. For more information, visit FLHHawaii.org, call 808-536-4174, or email info@FLHhawaii.org.
