Hawai'i Pacific Review (HPR) is an annual literary magazine fully supported by Hawai'i Pacific University. Hawai'i Pacific Review was conceived by English/Literature faculty members Professor Charles Mitchell and Dr. Arnold R. Lipkind as a forum for student creative writing in 1986. In 1987, Dr. Frederick Hohing became the editor of the magazine and widened its authorship by opening it to writers from Hawai'i and the mainland. The magazine required that its submissions focus on a Hawai'i theme at that time. Also in 1987, an editorial board consisting of HPR's editorship and two other Hawai'i Pacific University faculty, Dr. Helen Chapin and Ms. Caroline Garrett, was formed. This editorial board still functions today; formerly made up of Dr. Chapin and Ms. Garrett, it now consists of Mr. Tyler McMahon and Dr. Micheline Soong, who offer their expertise toward the magazine's publication of high quality work.
Professor Elizabeth Fischel, who began teaching at HPU in 1987, was assistant editor to Dr. Hohing in 1992 and she became editor in 1993. Professor Fischel opened up the magazine to works focused on all themes and in any form, and promoted HPR by listing it in well-known U.S.-published indexes. Since then, submissions to the magazine have swelled to 800-1,000 annually. In 1995, HPR sponsored a poetry contest and devoted its issue that year to poetry only. All other issues have featured poetry, short stories and personal essays.
In 1996, a published poet and faculty member at HPU, Professor Patrice Wilson, volunteered to help produce the magazine in 1996, and became co-editor in 1997. In 1998, she became poetry editor, while Dr. Catherine Sustana, new to HPU in 1997, experienced in publishing the feminist literary magazine 13th Moon and herself a writer of fiction, became fiction editor. The magazine acquired a part-time student managing editor in 1997 to work on broadening the magazine's readership and subscriber list.
Since 2002, Dr. Patrice M. Wilson has been the editor-in-chief of the magazine. Staff editors continue to take part in choosing submissions, as part of WRI 3390, an HPU course that teaches small magazine publishing and is responsible for producing the magazine. Dr. Wilson teaches this course every semester.
With many contributors from Hawai'i, the US mainland, and submissions from all over the world, previous and current editors' vision that the efforts of all who have contributed to HPR become realized in a national/international magazine that is well-known and well-respected in our global community has been achieved. HPR is and has always been visually attractive and publishes high quality work, so that it maintains its status and will continue to do so in the future.
