From the ahupuaʻa of Aʻapueo in Kula, Maui, Brandy Nālani McDougall (Kanaka ʻŌiwi, she/her/ʻo ia) is the author of two poetry collections, The Salt-Wind, Ka Makani Paʻakai (2008) and ʻĀina Hānau, Birth Land (2023). A Ford and Mellon-Hawaiʻi fellow, her critical monograph Finding Meaning: Kaona and Contemporary Hawaiian Literature (University of Arizona Press, 2016) is the first extensive study of contemporary Hawaiian literature and was the winner of the Beatrice Medicine Award in 2017. She is the director of the Mānoa Center for Humanities and Civic Engagement and an Associate Professor of American Studies (specializing in Indigenous studies) at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She is the Hawaiʻi Poet Laureate for 2023–2025. She lives with her keiki in Kalaepōhaku, Honolulu, in the ahupuaʻa of Waikīkī on Oʻahu.