Linda’s connection to Hawaii didn’t begin the day she landed in Honolulu. It began before she was born. When her mother was pregnant with her, her father who was an Army medic in both Hawaii and the Philippines had written home,“Hawaii is truly the most beautiful place in the world… and how is our little Thumper doing inside?”

When Linda stepped off the plane in Honolulu twenty years later and breathed in the plumeria-scented air, she felt a profound connection to this place and wrote,

“I felt I had always been part of Hawaii. I sensed I had been here before, and was now re-experiencing its warmth and fragrance in my soul. I just did not know why, but in time, I would put the pieces together.”

Linda’s poetry about Hawaii has been written over many years and draws on her experience on all the different islands. Writing poetry feels as natural to her as breathing. It’s a rhythm she experiences as she takes in the islands’ natural wonders that shimmer inside her and crystallizes these into poems over time. Her poems move the way the islands do: a green sea turtle gliding beneath the surface, a whale’s tail breaking the horizon, a rainbow arcing over her as she swims in turquoise waves, the flowing grace of hula dancers moving to become the rain, the ocean waves, and lifting their arms to form the rising sun. Readers won’t just see Hawaii — they will feel its pulse in her poetry.