From her birthplace in Honolulu and her childhood in the rural Midwest, to the places where she’s resided – New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, the Washington coast, and the Wasatch Mountains of Utah – Nina Macheel has ventured widely and lived expansively. After university in Wisconsin and at New York, she volunteered with the Peace Corps in Turkey.  She's traveled globally as off-the-beaten-path as safely possible, and raised her children in the ski resort town of Park City, then moved to the Pacific Northwest to immerse in its robust literary communities. A year-long hiatus in Hawaiʻi  catalyzed Don’t Call Me Moana, published in late 2022. Coming full circle, she now lives in a tiny cottage on a tiny lake in Wisconsin, where she writes fiction based on the diverse and unique individuals she's met  along the way.