The leisurely version:​​​

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When people ask me if I was born in Hawai’i, I say no, but I got here as soon as I could! I grew up in a family of amateur naturalists, photographers, and poetry lovers in a small town in western Illinois called Galesburg, poet Carl Sandburg’s birthplace. I started writing poems and stories and letters when I was about seven. My favorite days then and now have always been rainy days, because they fill me with energy and ideas. 

 

I studied history in school, and in my early twenties I came to Hawaiʻi to study Chinese language and Chinese and Japanese history at the University of Hawaiʻi. From the beginning I fell in love, not only with the natural environment but with the many local cultures in the islands. And the rain! So I stayed and have lived in Honolulu for the rest of my adult life, most of it near the shore of Maunalua Bay.

 

For sixteen years, I taught history and Asian studies at La Pietra Hawaiʻi School for Girls. During that time I also began to write poetry seriously. After earning an MFA in Writing (poetry) from Vermont College, I left teaching to write.  Through the Hawaiʻi Literary Arts Council, I met many poets based in the islands, including two who still influence my writing: the late W.S. Merwin of Maui, and the late landscape poet/artist Reuben Tam of Kauai.  For several years I directed the Book Cellar reading series which featured both new and experienced local poets and writers. 

 

My greatest joy in writing poetry is finding just the right language to convey an observation or experience that might otherwise be lost. In fiction I try to write stories of serious hope, with a dash of humor.  Focusing on writing means that there is not enough time for many things that I would like to do, but I can always write about them. I hope to be lucky enough to do this for the rest of my life. 

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The official version:

 

Sue Cowing was born in Illinois and now lives and writes in Hawaiʻi. She earned degrees in history from Knox College and Emory University, then studied Chinese and Japanese history at the University of Hawaiʻi.

 

After teaching history and Asian studies at La Pietra School in Honolulu for sixteen years, she earned an M.F.A. in Writing (poetry) from Vermont College of Fine Arts and began writing full-time.  Her poems for general audience have appeared in:Virginia Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, Wormwood Review, Bamboo Ridge, Chaminade Literary Review, Hawaii Review, Negative Capability, and in several anthologies. including Sister Stew and The Denney Poems. In 1996, the University of Hawaii Press, in cooperation with the Honolulu Academy of Arts, published her Fire in the Sea: An Anthology of Poetry and Art. In 2021, she published a chapbook of her poems, The Octopus of Imagination through Mutual Publishing. The first full collection of her poems, Shore Lines,  is forthcoming from Bamboo Ridge Press in early 2027.

 

Around 1990, Sue began writing for children as well as general audience. Some of her stories, poems, and nonfiction articles have appeared in CRICKET and SPIDER magazines. She has written two books for children: My Dog Has Flies: Poetry for Hawaiʻi’s Kids (BeachHouse, 2005) and a young adult novel, You Will Call Me Drog (CarolRhoda Books, 2011; Usborne UK,  2012).

 

Sue served as President of the Hawaiʻi Literary Arts Council and directed the Book Cellar reading series for several years. She was Co-Regional Advisor of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators-Hawaiʻi for nine years and has been involved with the Biennial Conference on Literature and Hawaiʻi’s Children for twelve conferences. 

Sue has received Ka Palapala Po‘okela Awards for Excellence from the Hawaiʻi Publishers’ Association for Fire in the Sea and My Dog has Flies as well as the 2006 Cades Award for Literature, the Grand prize for fiction from Negative Capability, and the Children’s Christmas Fiction prize from the Honolulu Advertiser for her story “John-Boy’s Christmas Zoo.” You Will Call Me Drog was nominated by the Hawaiʻi Library Association for the Nene Children's Choice award three years in a row and was short-listed for the 2013 United Kingdom Literacy Association Book Award.

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