Folks You Meet in Longs and Other Stories is a collection of short, dramatic monologues by award-winning playwright and columnist Lee Cataluna. Originally written for the stage, these character sketches read like overheard conversations from the aisles and glimpses into the private lives of public people. Some are laugh-out-loud funny. Others are disarming in their honesty. All are rooted in the community, language, and layered identities of Hawai'i.
First published by Bamboo Ridge Press and honored with the Ka Palapala Po'okela Award for Excellence in Literature, Folks You Meet in Longs has become a local classic. The characters are fictional, but they feel real and recognizable. Their voices are relatable and richly drawn. They are aunties and exes, co-workers and customers, each carrying a mix of judgment, joy, and heartache. Cataluna's monologues do not romanticize or flatten local life. Instead, they celebrate its contradictions, humor, and everyday dramas with emotional insight and compassion.
Perfect for fans of character-driven short fiction, dramatic monologue, and slice-of-life literature, this book is widely taught, frequently performed, and deeply beloved across Hawai'i's schools and stages. Whether you live in the islands or are simply curious about everyday life in Hawai'i, Folks You Meet in Longs offers a reading experience that is both entertaining and thoughtful.
Lee Cataluna was born on Maui to a Part-Hawaiian father and a Portuguese mother. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from University of California, Riverside. After college in California, she came home to Hawai'i to start a career in journalism.
Her work for theater includes commissions from La Jolla Playhouse (What the Stars See at Night); Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Ipu); Arena Stage (Emma Riot); and San Francisco Playhouse (Sons of Maui). Her script Funeral Attire won the Von Marie Atchley Excellence in Playwriting Award from Native Voices at the Autry. Her play Heart Strings received a ReImagine: New Plays in TYA (Theatre for Young Audiences) grant and was developed at Atlantic Theater Company, New York City. Her play Home of the Brave is produced in schools around the country.
Her books include Folks You Meet in Longs and Three Years on Doreen's Sofa, both published by Bamboo Ridge Press, and Ordinary 'Ohana, published by Bess Press. She also has a piece published in the Dramatic Publishing anthology I Have a Story: Plays from an Extraordinary Year.
"Winner of the Hawaiʻi Book Publishers Association Ka Palapala Poʻokela Award of Excellence in Literature, Folks You Meet in Longs is simply magical. Through voice, Lee Cataluna conjures your neighbor, your co-worker, your raucous classmates, the old ladies you see in Chinatown, the uncles sitting in the garage, and you. Their images appear before you as you listen to Cataluna's dead-on capturing of sound with an incredible sensibility, artistry, and poignancy." — Lois-Ann Yamanaka, author of Blu's Hanging, Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre and more
"Lee Cataluna introduces this collection of monologues with two guidelights for readers: people come to Longs when they're in NEED, and the aisles serve as passageways to the stages of their lives. With that in mind, she then lets us eavesdrop on dozens of conversations and inner thoughts, that could have been 'overheard' in the aisles of Longs. Yes, the drug store.These micro stories are so Hawaiian, so funny, sometimes so dark and sad, but all showing Cataluna's surgical understanding of and deep affection for people in Hawaii. The voices are distinct, the characters are illuminated as if by lightening for the few moments their stories are heard. Although the book doesn't aspire to anything lofty, it hints at the webbed connectedness of local culture, with disparate monologues referencing each other, completing each other--different sides of the same stories." — Becca, Goodreads
"In the pages of Lee's collection of flash fiction stories, you'll find neighbors, friends, aunties, uncles, and even local, ahem, collection workers and former disco queens. They're all there, shopping for unmentionables, looking for love, and just trying to get through one more day. Lee's gift is the complete picture she draws with minimalist brush strokes. We fill in the details, the backstories, the motivations, and the ultimate consequences and conclusions to her stories because these people are us. Lee has a fine ear for Pidgin and she uses it to bring to life people that we immediately recognize as prep school kids, tutus, popos, thugs, cops, and everything in between.And the stories are bus' laugh hilarious, poignant, and true. I can't recommend this book highly enough." — MC Parker, Amazon
