Welcome to Kate H. Winter's
Official Website
BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND OF AUTHOR KATE WINTER-
Born in upstate New York, Dr. Kate Kealani H. Winter is Professor Emeritus from The University at Albany specializing in regional American literature and history. Her award-winning books re-tell the stories of New York's Adirondack Mountain region and the life and times of America's "female Mark Twain," Marietta Holley. A perennial success, the biography of Holley was recreated in a PBS documentary that itself received a half dozen national awards. In addition, Winter received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the University at Albany as well as two other teaching honors. She completed the certificate program in Hawaiian History and Culture through the University of Hawai'i. Winter has always worked in both fiction and non-fiction centered in local stories and voices. Since her first short story was published in Yankee Magazine over four decades ago, Winter has written about the relationship between place and writer. She discovered the power of Hawai'i when she vacationed here and began studying the history, language and culture. On leave from the University at Albany, she taught English for 3 years for the University of Hawai'i Hilo at the West Hawai'i Center. For many years, she has worked with the Kona Historical Society in Hawai'i as an historical interpreter, writer, trainer and education coordinator. She studied hula under Kumu Hula Etua Lopes - by whom she was given her Hawaiian name "Kealani" - of Halau Na Pua U I O Hawai'i at Hulihe'e Palace. Winter is also co-chair of a preservation and curatorial committee for an ancient Hawaiian heiau or temple in Kona.
Lost Twain, A Novel Of Hawai`i, (Fiction/Historical)
Her latest book, Lost Twain, A Novel Of Hawai`i, takes place on the Island of Maui about a journalist (Mark Twain) who suddenly ceased sending his dispatches back to California only to resume six weeks later without explanation. The novel explores the lure of 'going native' and our 'civilized' resistance to it.
WHAT REVIEWERS ARE SAYING ABOUT LOST TWAIN:
"...pictures Hawai`i before it was defiled by Yankee commercialism, crassness and hyper-religiousity" - R. G. C.
"...gripping, often poignant, sometimes mystical prose - seems to be like Hawai`i itself" - W. R.
"Her characters, past and present, real and imagined, are woven into a lei that wraps the reader in the spirit of aloha. If you've never been to Hawai`i this will compel you to go. If you have left, like both Twain and Witt, it makes you yearn to return" - T. W. A.
"...you probably won't realize until the end how much you have learned about the nuances of the Hawaiian culture and history, present day and yesteryear" - K M.
"I am a big fan of all things Mark Twain and if I didn't know better, I would think that the journal excerpts in this novel were the real thing. The style and dialogue - uncanny. Can't wait to read more of Winter's books!" - M. P.
"The whole world needs aloha..." ...and who better to make that clear than Kate Winter in this
beautifully sensitive novel. Winter uses Twain's voice to remark that"Eden offers no subject for a writer" and yet Winter has found plenty
for the reader to consider in her evocation of paradise.
Reading Lost Twain is an opportunity to venture into the beauty and serenity of Hawai'i through a tale of two parallel, gently developed love stories. But Winter also makes clear what western culture has lost, or has never known, about a life well-lived. In Winter's hands, sensuality takes its proper place as central to human
fulfillment rather than the empty, grasping materialism of "mainland" culture. Side by side with enticing and vivid descriptions of Hawai'i is
a piercing account of what is lost, over and over again, as a result of white colonialism.
As Winter expertly channels both the sensitivity and critical eye of a young Twain, the reader is offered an opportunity to consider one's own choices as they affect our true, psychic wellbeing and that of those around us. If it is true, as her Twain says, that "the sages have said that travel begets new thought," then the journey of this novel begs us to consider - what really matters?" - P.C.
