Dina Wood Kageler is a storyteller and adventurer who grew up in Texas and journeyed through the islands of the Pacific in the early 1970s. Settling in Hawaiʻi, she has for many years been a respected visual, vocal, and performing artist and arts educator. Today she lives on several acres of treefern and ʻōhiʻa forest in the uplands of the Island of Hawaiʻi with her botanist husband and two entrepreneurial adult children. Finding inspiration in true-life stories and from the rainforest around her, Dina writes, works with clay, mosaics, pen and ink, and creates hand-dyed textiles and quilts. She dances Hawaiian hula and plays the ukulele and slack key guitar in the Hawaiian style alongside some talented musician friends. She walks on Kīlauea volcano, inspired to catch songs, find harmonies, or chant into the wind.
She recently published a book of stories, history, tradition, drama and mystery, from her experience in the U.S. Peace Corps. This journey provided Dina an avenue out of the only world she had known and took her into the mountainous regions of the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippine archipelago where she lived among people whose lives were little known beyond their mountain homeland. Dina’s stories are crafted from her detailed journals and letters home.