Kim S. Rogers

When I graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1985, I figured I’d end up back in Chicago where I grew up. Instead, I am living on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

My husband and I moved to Kauai for one year, or so we told our family. We sold a four-bedroom house and all its contents. I sold a successful advertising and public relations firm and shipped my computer, camping gear, two dogs and little else besides my address book of New York editor contacts. That was in 1999.

I landed my first freelance magazine assignment with Fitness magazine, mostly because the editor was an alumna of my alma mater. More assignments came: Weight Watchers, Healthy Living, Backpacker, Sports Afield, Golf for Women, Running Times, Islands, Canoe & Kayak.

Somewhere along the way, I ventured to Antioch University Los Angeles and collected a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, and my husband built us a home. The dogs we flew to Hawaii with us died, and we adopted two more. I discovered I liked birds--Laysan albatrosses, in particular. And Hawaiian monk seals and humpback whales and conservation work.

My writing has taken a turn for place, primarily the people and culture of Hawaii. I have contributed to Hawaii magazine, Hawaiian Airlines’ Hana Hou, and, most recently, as a staff writer, for OutriggerHawaii.com, where you’ll find dozens of my bylined feature stories and six years of blog posts for the View from Here blog.

I quit the Best Job in the World in April of 2014 because of three pesky creative projects that wouldn’t shut up. Now, I find myself a freelancer again, because I realized the only way to quiet those stories in my head was to sit down and write them.

I currently blog at my own website. Please feel free to join me there.