Parul Sehgal, for masterfully guiding the first workshop I took, and later tossing me the first paid work I got as a writer. Also for letting me hang out with her and Adam, even after they got to know me.
Kathryn Savage: best fiction, best poetry, even better friendship. I’d take a bullet for her.
Emily Flamm, Carlea Holl-Jensen, Tom Earles, the Max Plateau mob. Best Sunday nights I had in DC. Thanks, Em, for letting me crash the party.
Lance Cleland and the whole Tin House family. I’m so glad I walked through the door when you opened it.
Michael Collier and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, for the support and honors. My first waiter reading in Little Theater was a gift of joy I‘ll never forget.
Dad, for telling me, “If someone told me when I was twenty that if I just practiced for half an hour every morning then the sky would be the limit, I’d have saved myself a lot of time.” I was listening.
Carolyn Kuebler at New England Review, who sent me the kindest rejection letter I’ve ever received, saying: I see you, I hear you, almost, keep trying.
Katrin Tschirgi, Gabrielle Hovendon, and Catherine Carberry, who welcomed me into their unholy trinity of cool one summer. Forever grateful for the brief time with you baddest bosses.
Those who came first: Lois Ann-Yamanaka, Kiana Davenport, Kaui Hart Hemmings, Kristiana Kahakauwila, Mary Kawena Pukui, Brandy Nālani McDougall, and all the other artists of the islands who preserve and amplify the truth of our land.
For anyone else I may have failed to mention: Just because I didn’t write it down doesn’t mean I don’t care, it just means I’m a parent and husband with two full-time jobs besides. Sometimes I forget things for a minute.
About the Author
Photo by Crystal Liepa
Kawai Strong Washburn was born and raised on the Hāmākua coast of the Big Island of Hawai‘i. His work has appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, McSweeney’s, and Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, among other outlets. He was a 2015 Tin House Summer Scholar and a 2015 Bread Loaf work-study scholar. Today, he lives with his wife and daughters in Minneapolis. Sharks in the Time of Saviours is his first novel.
kawaistrongwashburn.com
HAMISH HAMILTON
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First published in the United States in 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 175 Varick Street, New York 10014
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
First published in Australia in 2020 by Hamish Hamilton
Copyright © Kawai Strong Washburn, 2020
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, published, performed in public or communicated to the public in any form or by any means without prior written permission from Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd or its authorised licensees.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locates is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Gill Heeley, Canongate Books Ltd.
ISBN 9781760144777
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Sharks in the Time of Saviours Page 31