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Alan Brennert is a novelist, screenwriter, and playwright. He was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, to Herbert E. Brennert, an aviation writer, and Almyra E. Brennert, an apartment rentals manager. He has lived since 1973 in Southern California, where he received a B.A. in English from California State University at Long Beach and did graduate work at the UCLA film school.
His novel Moloka'i was a national bestseller and a One Book, One San Diego selection for 2012. It also received the Bookies Award, sponsored by the Contra Costa Library, for the 2006 Book Club Book of the Year.
His next novel, Honolulu, won first prize in Elle magazine's Literary Grand Prix for Fiction and was named one of the best books of 2009 by The Washington Post. Of his novel Palisades Park, People magazine said, "Brennert writes his valentine to the New Jersey playground of his youth in Ragtime style, mixing fact and fiction. It's a memorable ride."
His work as a writer-producer for the television series L.A. Law earned him an Emmy Award and a People's Choice Award in 1991. He has been nominated for an Emmy on two other occasions, once for a Golden Globe Award, and three times for the Writers Guild Award for Outstanding Teleplay of the Year. His short story "Ma Qui" was honored with a Nebula Award in 1992, and that same year he co-wrote the libretto for the Alan Menken/David Spencer musical Weird Romance, produced by the WPA Theatre in New York and since performed in dozens of regional, high school, and college productions throughout the country. Columbia Records released a soundtrack album in 1993, which is currently available on iTunes.
In February 2019, he published Daughter of Moloka'i, a long-awaited follow-up to Moloka'i.
Alan Brennert's website
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A Conversation with Alan Brennert about Daughter of Moloka'i
What inspired you to write a sequel to Moloka'i?
Not long after Moloka'i was published, I was speaking to a book club when one of its members asked me, "Have you ever considered telling Ruth's story?" I had not, and though I found the idea intriguing, so soon after Moloka'i I was ready to move on to other subjects. Two books and a decade later, I was talking to my brilliant agent, Molly Friedrich, about an idea I had for another novel when she said, "You know what you should write? You should tell Ruth's story," and argued that there was potentially a powerful story there to be told. Well, I don't need to be hit on the head with an idea a third time! After some initial thought I began to see a perfect three-act structure to Ruth's life: her childhood in Honolulu and California; her internment during World War II; and the final third of the novel, Ruth's meeting with Rachel and her 22-year relationship with her birth mother, which had only been alluded to in Moloka'i. Two and a half years later, with substantial help in shaping the story from Molly and my editors, Hope Dellon and Elisabeth Dyssegaard, the structure I first envisioned remains.
Was it difficult ...
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