Rain Wright

Contact:
rwright7@hawaii.edu

Rain Wright received her BA, MA, and Ph.D.in English with a focus in creative writing from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She currently teaches writing at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Rain has been published Hawai’i Review, Mud Season Review, Connotations Press: An Online Artifact, Madras Magazine, Summit Magazine,  Hawai’i Pacific Review, Entropy Magazine, Dreamers, and The Pinch Journal.  She won the 2014 University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Biography Prize for her work A Way With Water.  

Publications


  Creative Nonfiction
  • "The Grey House Didn't Speak, " Dreamers, 2019
  • "Buttons," The Pinch Journal," 2019
  • Excerpt from Everything Turns to Light, Entropy, 2018
  •  “The Grey House Didn’t Speak,” Mud Season Review, 2016
  • “Dinuguan in Captain Cook,” Connotations Press: An Online Artifact, 2016
  • “Dinuguan in Captain Cook,” Madras Magazine, 2016
  • “Shrines,” Summit Magazine, 2016
  • “A Way With Water,” Hawai‘i Review81: Muliwai, 2015
  • “Shrines,” Hawai‘i Review82: Ian MaCMillan, third place winner, 2015
Poetry
  • “Sisters,” Hawaiʻi Pacific Review, 2016
  •  “Tangles in Organ,” Hawai‘i Review81: Muliwai, 2016
Under Review
    • “We Came Up the Hill” Dappled Things - J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction
    • Everything Turns to Light, River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative 
  Work in Progress White Daughter, a memoir, explores Rain Wright's stepfather's life and death, and her relationship with him. Teddy Ginn was born in Black Bottom, Detroit, which according to him was one of the largest ghettos, filled with jazz and creativity, as well as poverty and heartache. He learned jazz on the streets, playing the hambone under the streetlamps with his brothers and other young black men. In the mid-1960s, Ginn moved to Kona, Hawaiʻi--one of the first jazz musicians in Kona. In 2015, Ginn passed away from lung cancer. Wright spent Ginn's final days with him, talking music, love, and family. His last words to Wright were, "Tell it like I would, honey. Write my story." In this work, she writes from the position the white daugther of a black man, navigating the language of a society that couldn't or didn't expect a white woman to claim a black man as father, dad.

Areas of Interest


 
  • Contemporary Life Writing
  • Fiction: The Short Story
  • Memoir
  • Auto\biography
  • Critical Ethnic Studies Theory
  • Creative Writing Pedagogy
 

Awards


  • University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Frances Davis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching for Graduate Teaching Assistants
  • LLL Award for Dissertation Research
  • Honorable Mention, Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award, “We Came Up the Hill,” 2017
  • Stryker Prize, Creative Writing Program, UHMānoa,“We Came Up the Hill,” 2016
  • Third place, Saiki Prize, Creative Writing Program, UH Mānoa, “Keʻei Stories,” 2016
  • Biography Prize, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2014
  • Abernethy Award in Creative Writing, 2013
  • The Red Mandarin and Lady Yi Suen Shen Tuition Scholarship in English, 2013
  • Myrle Clark Award, Creative Writing, 2011

Education


  • Ph.D., the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Department of English, Dissertation: Everything Turns to Light, 2018
    • Nominated for the University of Hawaiʻi Biography Award, 2019
  • M.A. in English, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Creative Writing focus, 2012            M.A Thesis: A Way With Water, 
    • Winner of the University of Hawaiʻi Biography Award, 2014
  • Bachelor of English, Highest Honors, Summa Cum Laude, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 2012, Honors Thesis: Struggle and Strength

Courses


Spring Semester 2021
  • ENG-313: Types of Creative Writing
Fall Semester 2020
  • ENG-100: Composition I
Summer Semester 2020
  • ENG-313: Types of Creative Writing
Spring Semester 2020
  • ENG-190: Composition I for Transfers
  • ENG-200: Composition Il
Spring Semester 2019
  • ENG-100: Composition I
  • ENG-200: Composition II
Fall Semester 2019
  • ENG-100A: Composition I
  • ENG-313: Types of Creative Writing
  • ENG-313: Types of Creative Writing
  • ENG-413: Form and Theory of Fiction
Summer Semester 2019
  • ENG-100: Composition I
  • ENG-311: Autobiographical Writing