Author, actor
Jason Quinn has committed his life to the spoken and written word. He is a writer, producer, director, and professional actor who spent more than twenty years honing his craft on and behind local, national, and international stages and screens. Formerly based in New York and Los Angeles, and currently back home in Hawaii, Quinn’s focus is on performing and writing brutal truths with grit, subtlety, and nuance. He dropped an acclaimed hip hop album that had a song featured in Grand Theft Auto. His short film, The Trickle Down Effect, won best short film in the San Francisco Black Film Festival and the New York Underground Film Festival. In 2020, Quinn starred in the movie Waikiki, which won best film at the Hawaii Film Festival, and he’s also appeared in TV shows such as Marvel’s Inhumans, Magnum P.I., Hawaii Five-O, and NCIS: Hawai’i.
However, Quinn’s greatest professional achievement is publishing Concrete Rainbow and recording and self-narrating the audio book. It’s a must listen. The venerable playwright and journalist, Lee Cataluna, described Quinn and Concrete Rainbow:
Quinn's work on stage and screen is familiar to audiences, and his years as an actor are reflected in his writing. His story has the cadence and color of the spoken word and is written with so much voice, the experience of reading it is almost like listening to the tale being told in a moment of unguarded honesty by the man who lived it. — Forward, Concrete Rainbow.
Quinn lives in Honolulu with his wife, Angelica, and son, Ziya.
Ohana
In Hawaii, “ohana” means “family”, and there is nothing more important to Jason Quinn than his ohana. Jason grew up in Ewa (pronounced “eva”) Beach on the West Side of Oahu in the early 1990s. The west side of Oahu was hit hard by meth epidemic and pushed many lives over the edge. At that time, the most likely outcomes for Jason were prison, death, or both.
Ohana saved Jason from a life of unfulfilled potential. Staring down the prospects of imprisonment, Jason chose to move back in with his mother, stepfather, and siblings and enrolled in the local community college in Pearl City, Hawaii. There, he majored and excelled in Film Production and Theater, and met his future wife, Angelica, who also is a talented actress, dancer, and model.
Angelica and Jason spent the next ten years in New York and Los Angeles chasing their dreams. In 2009, Jason and Angelica, once again inspired by ohana, moved back to Hawaii with their infant son, Ziya.
Similar to Angelica and Jason, Ziya has the good fortune of being raised in Hawaii. Unsurprisingly, Ziya has already started following in this father’s footsteps on stage and screen acting.