Executive director Roger Jellinek discusses Hawai‘i Book & Music Festival

When Roger Jellinek became the executive director of the Hawai‘i Book & Music Festival in 2006, it was the latest chapter in an interesting and varied life.

His prologue began in Mexico, where he was born to British parents and spent his formative years. Though he would first learn to speak Spanish, the English language would eventually become the focus of his career.

At 8 years old, his family moved back to Britain. He went on to complete his education at the University of Cambridge with a degree in history and political theory. After being granted a fellowship, he went back across the pond to study international relations and architecture at Yale University in Connecticut.

In the summer of 1963, when a friend of a friend arranged an introduction with the editor-in-chief at Random House book publisher in New York City, Jellinek was hired as an assistant editor and found his calling.

Unfortunately, less than a year later, his job at Random House didn’t survive management changes. But in the years that followed, he learned the publishing business as a science newsletter publisher, a literary agent, a book editor, a publisher of decorative maps and as the deputy editor of the New York Times Book Review.

After close to three decades in New York, Jellinek decided to start a new chapter, bringing his professional connections to Hawaii in 1992.

He joined the board of the Hawai‘i Book & Music Festival in 2005 and has been the festival’s executive director since 2006.

In 2019, the festival moved out of downtown Honolulu to the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Last year, the pandemic forced the event to become virtual, as it is again this year.

The 16th annual Hawaii Book & Music Festival began Friday and will run through Nov. 4. The event, Hawai‘i 2.0 — Model for the Planet, includes more than 60 Zoom sessions with Hawaii and national authors, community leaders and experts in the keynote subjects of sustainability and resilience, health and wellness, Innovation Future and Hawaiian culture.

For the full schedule of events, visit hawaiibookandmusicfestival.com.

In a late addition to the schedule, the festival is co-hosting an hourlong interview with journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa about their release, “Peril,” at 1 p.m. Oct. 14. “Peril,” published Sept. 21, is the final book in Woodward’s trilogy on the presidency of Donald Trump.

Jellinek, 83, lives in rural windward Oahu with his wife, Po‘okela Award-winning actor/educator Eden Lee Murray. We caught up with him by phone last week.

I know this is difficult, but along with Woodward and Costa, which of the festival’s Zoom sessions top the list?

U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo is obviously important. Michael Mann, the author of “The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet,” is phenomenal. You can see what he’s doing at michaelmann.net. The most relevant to (the theme of) Hawaii 2.0 is Kate Raworth. She asks the question, “Growth for what?” It totally applies to Hawaii.

Do you have a “most memorable” book you edited?

It actually was four books with KGB defector Victor Sheymov. The first described his experience with the KGB (the former Russian secret police and intelligence agency). The second was a textbook on ­cybersecurity, from the most primitive forms of security to the most the sophisticated. His third book was a thriller, based on an idea that he was pretty sure was true, about the Soviet breakup (in 1991). The last book was a sequel to his first memoir about his 20-year battle with the CIA after he defected.

Where is Hawaii as a source of contemporary fiction? Nonfiction?

Here’s the problem: Fiction is desperately competitive, and the novels that come out of Hawaii are competing with an extraordinary number of authors from across the country. The level of writing (on a national level) is just amazing. For nonfiction, the problem is that you really need a deep pool of journalists who have time to observe what’s going on and write it, and we don’t have it.

Have you seen a local manuscript ­recently that stands out for you?

A phenomenal manuscript by (Hawaii ­actor) Jason Quinn. It’s a very long book, 120,000 words, about life as lived out in the drug-ridden West Side (of Oahu). He goes where (local author Chris) McKinney and others have sort of gone. It’s more than I want to read (about that lifestyle), but it is really deep and it’s breathtaking.

What are your plans for after the festival?

Planning the next festival.

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Reach John Berger at jberger@staradvertiser.com.