THE HAWAII LITERARY Arts Council was founded in 1974 to encourage and promote literature activity of all sorts in Hawai i. The primary activating force in its founding was the poet and reviewer Phyllis Thompson. Phyllis had been organizing readings and generally energizing the scene before then, and in 1974 with the help of her ambitious students and proteges, along with other colleagues and supporters, HLAC got underway. Since then, almost every literary activity in Hawai i―poetry and fiction readings, workshops, conferences, seminars―involving local writers and visiting writers, has been either sponsored, co-sponsored or promoted by HLAC. The list of writers supported by HLAC is huge, including W. S. Merwin, the brilliant Reuel Denney, and Nobel Prize-winner Czeslaw Milosz, to name three.Most important, HLAC is open and fair. They support all the local mags that contact them―Hawai i Review, Chaminade Literary Review, Manoa, Bamboo Ridge, Hawai i Pacific Review, Rainbird and many others over the years, including the feisty independent alternative mag, Oahu Review, edited by Joe Balaz.
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