Interview

What was the jour­ney like to becom­ing an artist? Did you always knew you could cre­ate art?

As long as I remem­ber, my dream was to illus­trate chil­dren’s books, from my young age. That dream came true when God brought me to Hawaiʻi. In my ear­ly career, I was giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to illus­trate a text­book by Bess Press in 1989 and illus­trat­ed and designed many island prod­ucts by Island Her­itage Pub­lish­ers. I also illus­trat­ed many cul­tur­al paper dolls for mag­a­zines and a pub­lish­er on the con­ti­nent, Dover Pub­li­ca­tions, for about ten years.

Then from around 1996 through 2000, I illus­trat­ed a series of Hawai­ian theme edu­ca­tion­al col­or­ing books, includ­ing Hawai­ian Plants and Ani­mals and Exot­ic Flow­ers for artists (76 pages), for Dover. To accom­plish the task, I did inten­sive research and study, and that knowl­edge became my foun­da­tion for illus­trat­ing Hawai­ian chil­drenʻs books. I give thanks to God how He has guid­ed my illus­trat­ing career, which I have nev­er dreamed I’d have when I first land­ed on the Big Island.

I also can­not thank enough for the rela­tion­ship I have with Island Her­itage since my first encounter in 1993 design­ing island prod­ucts and my first book in 1997. I illus­trat­ed many chil­drenʻs books, board books, paper doll books, and col­or­ing and activ­i­ty books, and we con­tin­ue to work to cre­ate for island kei­ki to this day. One of the longest sell­ing books I illus­trat­ed with them, Humu: The Lit­tle Fish Who Wished Away His Col­ors, is 23 years old now! The author Kim­ber­ly A. Jack­son and I are still good friend, and we are learn­ing ʻōle­lo Hawaiʻi, Hawai­ian lan­guage, togeth­er now.

What do you enjoy most about cre­at­ing art? 

When I see kei­ki read­ing my books in the library or oth­er pub­lic places, or when moms of my art class stu­dents tells me they used to read my books when they were young, I feel so hum­bled and grate­ful, and feel reward­ed for my hard work.

What do you enjoy most about writ­ing, espe­cial­ly for kids? What are some of your great­est challenges?

I love read­ing my books to chil­dren and see­ing their reac­tions! My great­est chal­lenge is find­ing time to grow as a writer. I’m busy as an Eng­lish instruc­tor and tutor, but I read craft books and watch craft webi­na­rs when I can.

What is your writ­ing process like?

I spend a lot of time think­ing and talk­ing about sto­ry ideas before draft­ing. I usu­al­ly revise drafts count­less times.

Three of your books are co-authored by your broth­er, John Payne. What is it like to work with a fam­i­ly mem­ber? What strengths do each of you bring to a project?

I like work­ing with my broth­er to devel­op sto­ries. He brings his imag­i­na­tion; I bring my analy­sis. While he comes up with new ideas, I fol­low indus­try stan­dards for plotting.

Please tell us about Chep­chop Unai. What inspired you to write that sto­ry? Who inspired your main char­ac­ters? What do you like best about them?

I’ve always want­ed to write about Guam because it’s my home. Chep­chop Unai is writ­ten most­ly in Eng­lish, but it has a sprin­kling of CHamoru/Chamorro words. It reflects the way I speak. My first lan­guage is Eng­lish, but I use CHamoru/Chamorro words to express cer­tain ideas. My fam­i­ly inspired my main char­ac­ters because the sto­ry depicts a close rela­tion­ship between a child and his grand­par­ents. I like show­ing how grand­par­ents are impor­tant in children’s lives.

What inspired you to write these sto­ries? Is there any par­tic­u­lar sto­ry that speaks to you? 

I’ve always loved writ­ing short sto­ries and liv­ing in their world of brevi­ty and sub­tle­ty. These sto­ries in par­tic­u­lar came to me over a long peri­od of time (the first sto­ry I began around 2015, I believe) and emerged out of a love and admi­ra­tion of our Hawai­ian com­mu­ni­ty and par­tic­u­lar­ly the mana and feroc­i­ty of our women.

In terms of sto­ries that speak to me, I’d say “The Love and Decline of the Corpse Flower” has a spe­cial place in my heart, in that it came to me almost ful­ly formed. I felt an instant affin­i­ty for the women in this piece, and knew right away I want­ed to do right by them.

I love that sto­ry, too. What was your favorite part of writ­ing your col­lec­tion? What was most challenging? 

My favorite part of writ­ing this col­lec­tion is also my favorite part of writ­ing sto­ries in general—I love liv­ing in the lan­guage and tak­ing the time to play with my sen­tences. Usu­al­ly on the line lev­el is where char­ac­ters first emerge for me, so see­ing how these women slow­ly start­ed to reveal them­selves in the collection’s many sto­ries was such a pleasure.

The biggest chal­lenge I faced was more of an inter­nal strug­gle in that for many months I feared how these sto­ries would be received by kāna­ka read­ers. I so bad­ly want to make native Hawai­ian read­ers proud, which cre­ates a twofold emo­tion­al response for me, in that I also have lots of anx­i­ety around dis­ap­point­ing them. While I know there’s no uni­ver­sal or mono­lith­ic Hawai­ian expe­ri­ence, I couldn’t help but feel par­a­lyzed by the fear that the expe­ri­ences I was writ­ing into through these sto­ries sim­ply weren’t valid, and this brought a lot of pres­sures to sto­ries that were still in their infan­cy. I real­ly had to work through this fear for a while, and some­times it still creeps up.

Oh, yes, I under­stand the pres­sure. What char­ac­ter­is­tics do you love best about the pro­tag­o­nists in Every Drop? Are they mod­eled after spe­cif­ic people?

I just love messy women and see­ing them be messy on the page! I also real­ly admire when char­ac­ters in fic­tion are afford­ed the full range of their human­i­ty, which I tried to do for the women in Every Drop. While none of the women are mod­eled after spe­cif­ic peo­ple, there are so many strong, resilient, messy women among my friends, fam­i­ly, and com­mu­ni­ty who I’m sure have seeped into these char­ac­ters with or with­out my knowledge.

What was the jour­ney to get­ting Every Drop pub­lished like? How long did it take to write your book? 

It’s strange — the jour­ney feels both incred­i­bly long and very com­pressed simul­ta­ne­ous­ly! There’s a pret­ty wide range in terms of when these sto­ries came to be; I began a few of them as ear­ly as 2015, while one I wrote as recent­ly as 2021. I had been nurs­ing the major­i­ty of the book’s sto­ries for many years before I was able to con­ceive of them as a col­lec­tion. Then COVID hit, I began my MFA at the Mich­en­er Cen­ter for Writ­ers remote­ly and real­ly got to work on curat­ing a col­lec­tion and tak­ing it very seri­ous­ly. I signed with my agent Iwalani Kim in April 2021, after which we spent over six months revis­ing and pol­ish­ing the sto­ries before she went out on sub­mis­sion. The book sold at auc­tion fair­ly quick­ly after that.

Why did you become author? Have you always want­ed to be an author?

Yes, it’s the only thing I’ve ever want­ed to be and hon­est­ly like­ly one of the only things I’m good at! In all seri­ous­ness, I’ve tak­en art­mak­ing seri­ous­ly since I was a child and always knew I want­ed to do some­thing in the lit­er­ary space. For a while, I dreamed of becom­ing a jour­nal­ist, then a nov­el­ist. Read­ing wide­ly and being exposed to so many incred­i­bly gift­ed authors was what pro­pelled for­ward my pas­sion to become an author myself.

What do you enjoy most about writ­ing? What are some of your great­est challenges? 

I love the play­ful and gen­er­a­tive space of start­ing a sto­ry. Before any pres­sure is put on it to become the thing it wants to be, there exists a sense of end­less pos­si­bil­i­ty that just thrills me. I think one of my great­est chal­lenges is learn­ing when to end some­thing. I have a ten­den­cy to over­write (which is why I also take so much time with the revi­sion stage), and it can be hard for me to see an end­ing clear­ly because I often just want to keep going with a char­ac­ter, a world, an atmos­phere, etc.

What are your hopes and dreams for the year and beyond in terms of your pub­lish­ing career and what you would like to see pub­lished in the future? Can you share a bit about what you’re work­ing on next?

I would love to see the sto­ry col­lec­tion wel­comed into the larg­er lit­er­ary land­scape, par­tic­u­lar­ly because there are so few works being pub­lished on a large scale by native Hawai­ian authors. There are plen­ty of books writ­ten about Hawaiʻi and Hawai­ians, but few have been penned by Hawai­ian authors, and it’s real­ly impor­tant for me to cham­pi­on Indige­nous writ­ers and their work.

In terms of future projects, I’m on con­tract with Blooms­bury (my pub­lish­er) for my first nov­el. It’s ten­ta­tive­ly titled Blood­sick, and while I won’t give too much away, I can share the book is invest­ed in the top­ics of moth­er­hood, men­stru­a­tion, and anxiety.

What beliefs are your work challenging? 

One of the beliefs I hope my work chal­lenges is the afore­men­tioned idea of a mono­lith­ic Hawai­ian expe­ri­ence that stems from a lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Hawai­ian expe­ri­ences in con­tem­po­rary lit­er­a­ture. I also hope to push against the idea that Indige­nous char­ac­ters in fic­tion should be rep­re­sent­ed well and admirably—this expec­ta­tion ends up strip­ping them of so much of their human­i­ty. Instead, I want­ed these sto­ries to cham­pi­on char­ac­ters who made bad deci­sions and said the wrong things—and were ulti­mate­ly still capa­ble of receiv­ing and return­ing love.

What advice would you give an aspir­ing writer?

Take plea­sure in the work. It’s easy for writ­ers to aspire to pub­lic­i­ty and rave reviews and awards, but no exter­nal recog­ni­tion can com­pare to the plea­sures of a ful­ly real­ized sto­ry. A writ­ing career also takes a lot of grit, per­sis­tence, and patience, so it’s impor­tant for you to locate your love and inspi­ra­tion first and fore­most in the work itself.

What’s your online pres­ence like? Do your read­ers con­tact you? What do they say? 

I have a hum­ble online pres­ence, most­ly in the form of my web­site and Insta­gram. A few read­ers have con­tact­ed me with over­whelm­ing­ly kind things to say about the col­lec­tion, which tru­ly means the world to me. When the read­ers in ques­tion are kāna­ka, my heart absolute­ly soars. 

And now a few niele ques­tions, if you’d like to answer. Who is your biggest supporter?

My par­ents are my biggest, longest run­ning sup­port­ers, with­out ques­tion. My part­ner Van has also been in my cor­ner since day one.

Is there a fun fact youʻd like to share about your­self with readers?

Since book pro­mo­tion began, I’ve become obsessed with tak­ing sta­tion­ary rhyth­mic cycling class­es as a stress relief and now can­not imag­ine my life with­out it!

What kinds of sto­ries do you enjoy read­ing? Any favorites?

I love sto­ries that yield deep insights into what it means to be human and in a body. I also grav­i­tate toward sto­ries that sub­vert my expec­ta­tions, are play­ful on the line lev­el, and demand an atten­tion to the lan­guage, some­times so much so that I must return to them again and again. Just a few sto­ry col­lec­tions that stand out to me: The Vis­it­ing Priv­i­lege (and espe­cial­ly “Hon­ored Guest”) by Joy Williams, Sab­ri­na & Cori­na by Kali Fajar­do-Ans­tine, Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz, Sing to It by Amy Hempel, and most recent­ly The Sor­rows of Oth­ers by Ada Zhang.

This has been so fun! Maha­lo nui, Megan, for talk­ing sto­ry and shar­ing your man­a’o with us. Our best wish­es always for your con­tin­ued suc­cess! To learn more about Megan and to read more of her work, vis­it her web­site and fol­low her on Insta­gram.

Images cour­tesy of Megan Kamalei Kakimoto

Can you share a bit of your upcom­ing debut pic­ture book, Alo­ha Every­thing, illus­trat­ed by you and writ­ten by Kaylin Melia George? Is this your first pic­ture book?

I don’t want to spoil any­thing but in a nut­shell, it fol­lows a girl named Ano who learns about her Native Hawai­ian her­itage through hula and her adven­tures. And yes, tech­ni­cal­ly Alo­ha Every­thing is my first children’s pic­ture book although I was work­ing on it along side anoth­er book called Alo­ha Christ­mas by Bur­ton Richardson.

What was the process like to mak­ing those beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions in Alo­ha Every­thing?

The cre­ative process was awe­some. My col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kaylin was a very spe­cial expe­ri­ence that made the project so much fun. We first start­ed the cre­ative process by dis­cussing the mood boards that Kaylin cre­at­ed. She did a real­ly great job set­ting the visu­al pace of the book. Once we were on the same page, I began the con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing phase which main­ly con­sist­ed of cre­at­ing sim­ple com­po­si­tions that high­light­ed the text best. We gen­er­al­ly refer to these as thumb­nail sketch­es. The book is split into three dif­fer­ent sequences: Main, Rest, and I Spy. Ear­ly in this stage we didn’t have a style estab­lished yet but what we knew that it was impor­tant for us to have con­sis­ten­cy for all three sequences. We want­ed to make sure that the I Spy and rest pages were dis­tin­guish­able from the main pages. The next step was cre­at­ing char­ac­ter designs for Ano who was the pro­tag­o­nist. We cre­at­ed a hand­ful of ver­sions. We also cre­at­ed char­ac­ter designs for a cou­ple of rec­og­niz­able names such as Laka, who we end­ed tak­ing out in the final, and Pele.

To achieve the over­all looks of our char­ac­ters, I ref­er­enced sources such as The Mer­rie Monarch Fes­ti­val and archives from UHM’s data­base that held images of dif­fer­ent instru­ments, tra­di­tion­al attires, and tools. I also looked at dif­fer­ent mod­ern­ized Native Hawai­ian looks that inspired the fun and whim­sy ele­ment that chil­dren would enjoy.

After the long and tedious job of gath­er­ing ref­er­ences, I start­ed cre­at­ing drafts of the pages based off the thumb­nail sketch­es. Then, I cre­at­ed col­or swatch­es fol­lowed by dig­i­tal ren­der­ings to fur­ther explain my visions. After that, we took it to the big paper. I cut 300 lb Arch­es water­col­or paper to the prop­er dimen­sions and dove into paint­ing. We didn’t paint the pages in chrono­log­i­cal order which was nice.

Do you have a favorite illus­tra­tion? Which one and why?

Hon­est­ly, I hold every illus­tra­tion close to my heart. It’s as if all the pages of art­work have a mind of their own and they’re try­ing to come out of the paper. If I had to choose one, page eight clicked to me from the begin­ning. Ano has her arms stretched wide as if she is over­see­ing and embrac­ing the land.

I love that one, too! What was your favorite part of work­ing on the book?

The book reveal was the most reward­ing. I teared up a bit. When you work day in and day out on some­thing you don’t get to take it all in until it’s in your hands.

What was the most challenging?

The biggest chal­lenge for me was ensur­ing con­sis­ten­cy with all the illus­tra­tions. There would be times where my mind would go wild and I would want to imple­ment new things (I secret­ly did any­way) but I had to dial it back.

How long did it take to com­plete the illustrations?

It real­ly depend­ed on the com­plex­i­ty of the design. Some, such as page three which has a ton of sea crea­tures fol­low­ing the mighty honu, took me what seemed to be a bil­lion years—it actu­al­ly took maybe two weeks while the last page took me about a week.

What tech­niques and resources did you use to illus­trate the book?

After doing a few mate­r­i­al swatch­es and mini paint­ing sam­ples we set­tled on acrylic and gouache on paper. I real­ly loved how ver­sa­tile and opaque the paints could be while being able to bleed like water­col­or. It was impor­tant for me to be able to have access to a wide range of textures.

Can you share a bit of your upcom­ing debut pic­ture book, Alo­ha Every­thing? With­out giv­ing too much away, what is it about? 

Alo­ha Every­thing is a jour­ney of adven­ture and learn­ing. With­in its pages, you’ll encounter mighty canoes crash­ing over ocean waves, roy­al hawks soar­ing high above the clouds, and, most impor­tant­ly, you’ll meet a coura­geous young girl who learns, grows, and comes to love her island home with all her heart. In the book, knowl­edge sur­round­ing Hawai­ian his­to­ry, ecol­o­gy, and cul­ture is care­ful­ly woven into a beau­ti­ful rhyming scheme that will lull lit­tle ones into bril­liant dreams of vibrant adventure.

What char­ac­ter­is­tics do you love best about the pro­tag­o­nist? Is she mod­eled after some­one specific? 

From the begin­ning, my mother’s sto­ries about grow­ing up on Molokaʻi were a huge inspi­ra­tion for the sto­ry. So, when we were design­ing our pro­tag­o­nist, it felt only nat­ur­al that the char­ac­ter be par­tial­ly mod­eled on my moth­er her­self. Mae Waite (the incred­i­ble illus­tra­tor of Alo­ha Every­thing) and I ref­er­enced old pho­tographs of my mom grow­ing up on the islands. We were look­ing to cap­ture land­scapes, flo­ra, and ani­mals to ref­er­ence in the book. But, even more impor­tant­ly, we were look­ing to cap­ture the spir­it of a lit­tle girl who deeply loves her island home.

I remem­ber one pho­to­graph in par­tic­u­lar that was heav­i­ly ref­er­enced. It’s my mom as a lit­tle girl, and some­one was clear­ly try­ing to catch her with the cam­era, but she shows up a lit­tle blur­ry because she just wouldn’t stay still for the pho­to! Even with the blur­ri­ness of the pho­to­graph, the one thing that’s absolute­ly clear is the image of a child who is full of ener­gy and adven­ture and excit­ed to be out­side and tak­ing in the joy of the islands. That’s a feel­ing that we try to recre­ate in every illus­tra­tion of Ano, the pro­tag­o­nist of Alo­ha Every­thing.

What was your favorite part of writ­ing your book? 

We always dreamed that the sto­ry would be not only an exhil­a­rat­ing adven­ture but also an oppor­tu­ni­ty for learn­ing. That’s why, while the book was still in ear­ly stages of devel­op­ment, we con­sis­tent­ly con­sult­ed with teach­ers, par­ents, and, of course, with kids them­selves. We brought the book into over a dozen class­rooms and to non­prof­it read­ings to see stu­dents of every age expe­ri­ence the book, and that was def­i­nite­ly one of my most favorite parts of the process. See­ing kei­ki as young as preschool age and as old as fifth grade all deeply engaged and learn­ing and inter­act­ing with the book in dif­fer­ent ways has tru­ly been such a remark­able gift. I met stu­dents who were so joy­ful to see Hawai­ian words they rec­og­nized includ­ed in a book for them. I met oth­er stu­dents that were so excit­ed to learn Hawai­ian words for the first time. Those expe­ri­ences, and see­ing the gen­uine excite­ment in stu­dents’ eyes, are some­thing I’ll cher­ish forever.

I must also say that as much as I hope that Alo­ha Every­thing will be an awe­some learn­ing expe­ri­ence for kids every­where, cer­tain­ly no one has learned more from cre­at­ing this book than I did. And that is most def­i­nite­ly my oth­er favorite part of writ­ing the book.

Grow­ing up away from the islands, I always learned about my Native Hawai­ian her­itage from my mother’s sto­ries. But through the cre­ation of this book, I found an oppor­tu­ni­ty to seek out new learn­ings in a whole new way. I was hav­ing new con­ver­sa­tions with my fam­i­ly about our his­to­ries and our her­itage. I was inter­view­ing inspi­ra­tional and influ­en­tial kumu. I was spend­ing years in read­ing and research. And I was hav­ing the most incred­i­ble inter­ac­tions with mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty who have been so kind as to share with me their per­son­al sto­ries and their man­aʻo. It has been tru­ly trans­for­ma­tive for me; I was con­stant­ly learn­ing new things about myself that I had nev­er known. And I am so grate­ful for that jour­ney and every­one who has made it possible.