Chris McKinney

Chris McKinney is a Korean, Japanese, Scottish American writer born in Honolulu, Hawaii. His novels are set in Hawaii and the plots often concern the difficulties of underprivileged people dealing with societal change. He is an associate professor in Language Arts at Honolulu Community College where he has taught since 2003. McKinney was a fellow of the Hawai`i Writing Project in 1998 and the 2000 recipient of the Elliot Cades Award for Literature. His novel, The Tattoo, won first place awards for Excellence in Literature and Excellence in Writing Literature from The Hawai`i Book Publishers Association. 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 and a Best Speculative Mystery of 2021 by CrimeReads. He attended Mid-Pacific Institute in Honolulu for high school and graduated from the University of Hawai'i with a B.A. in English. He has been married twice and has two children.