About
I’m a Deaf writer, film programmer, and planner/landscape designer from and based in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. I graduated with a BLA in Landscape Architecture from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in 2023, along with minors in city and regional planning and restoration ecology. I am a strong advocate for disabled inclusion in the built environment professions, and throughout all stages of the design and planning process.
As a writer, I primarily cover film and video art across the Asia-Pacific region. I also cover issues in landscape architecture and urban planning, and I view my writing as an opportunity to examine and challenge the political and structural inequities created by these disciplines from a critical perspective. I believe that design practice and criticism support each other and must be pursued in tandem to agitate for change on multiple fronts.
I have bylines in publications such as Film Comment, MUBI, Screen Slate, Cinema Scope, Design Museum Magazine, and the New York Review of Architecture. I’ve worked with the Honolulu Museum of Art and the Hawaiʻi International Film Festival, and am a member of the Hawaiʻi Film Critics Society. In 2022, I was a Documentary Magazine Editorial Fellow at the International Documentary Association.
I am profoundly deaf. I wore a unilateral cochlear implant until I was 12, when I had it removed due to chronic ear infections. I do not wear any hearing aids. I’m a classically-trained percussionist with over a decade of performing experience, primarily with the Cal Poly Percussion Ensemble and the Hawaii Youth Percussion Ensemble. These days, I’m mostly behind a drumset. I also love playing the ukulele.
Photo by Winnie Wang.