Lillian Howan spent her early childhood in Tahiti and later graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. She is the editor of Wakako Yamauchi's collection, Rosebud and Other Stories (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011). Her writings have been published in Asian American Literary Review, Café Irreal, Calyx, Jellyfish Review, New England Review, South Dakota Review, Vice Versa, and the anthologies Ms Aligned 2 and Under Western Eyes. Her debut novel, The Charm Buyers (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017), received the Ka Palapala Po'okela Excellence in Literature Award. "Howan’s language is breathtaking, building a land and family with detail and power. The novel is full of characters, all related to one another in various ways, yet each person stands out for a different reason. Everyone feels real, and the conversations and other interactions between the characters are lifelike and believable...The Charm Buyers is a thought-provoking insight into a time of cultural change. It captures an essence of existing between reality and surreality, dreaming and wakefulness, the past and the future." – Foreword Reviews "Ultimately what makes this novel a haunting, dreamlike and immersive read is its crisp, elegant and sumptuously precise prose that weaves an engrossing tale which draws the reader in...The protagonist discovers the power that stories have for people is often built on the strength of what cannot be known for sure – gossip based on suppressed secrets, the existence of ghosts based on ephemeral childhood memories, and the power of shamans based on the magic of a charm to save a life."

• Pacific Rim Review of Books