Chris McKinney | |
|---|---|
| Born | Honolulu, Hawaii, US |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Citizenship | American |
| Education | University of Hawaii |
| Children | 2 |
Chris McKinney is an American writer born and raised in Hawaii. [1]
His novels are set in Hawaii and the plots often concern the difficulties of underprivileged people dealing with societal change. [2] [3] He is an associate professor in Language Arts at Honolulu Community College where he has taught since 2003. [4] [5]
McKinney was a fellow of the Hawai`i Writing Project in 1998 and the 2000 recipient of the Elliot Cades Award for Literature. [6] His novel, The Tattoo, won first place awards for Excellence in Literature and Excellence in Writing Literature from The Hawai`i Book Publishers Association. [6] His screenplay Paradise Broken was nominated for best film at the Los Angeles Pacific Film Festival. His latest novel, Midnight Water City was named a Best Mystery of 2021 by Publishers Weekly [7] and a Best Speculative Mystery of 2021 by CrimeReads [8]
McKinney was born in Honolulu and grew up in nearby Kahalu'u. [9] His mother was Korean and his father was from Hawai'i. [10] When he was a baby his parents divorced; they both remarried and his father moved to the US mainland, to Gaithersburg, Maryland and later Selma, California. [2] [10] From fourth to sixth grade, he spent the school year with his father and their new family, and summers in Hawaii with his mother and her family. [2] He stopped going back to the mainland in 6th grade. [2]
He attended Mid-Pacific Institute in Honolulu for high school and graduated from the University of Hawaiʻi with a B.A. in English. [2] [10] He has been married twice and has two children. [11] [12]
In 2019, McKinney was identified as a co-conspirator in the indictment of former Honolulu deputy prosecutor Katherine Kealoha, a family friend. [13] Between 2015 and 2017, McKinney allegedly conspired with Rudy Puana, the brother of Katherine Kealoha, to illegally sell oxycodone pills, or use the pills to purchase cocaine. [14]