Jeanne Cooper writes frequently about Hawaii for the San Francisco Chronicle, where she previously worked as a travel editor, as well as for Marin magazine and HawaiiIslander.com. Her stories about the islands have also appeared in the Houston Chronicle and other newspapers, plus magazines such as Southwest, Sunset, Modern Luxury Silicon Valley and Luxury Las Vegas. Before helping relaunch Frommer's Hawaii, she contributed to guidebooks on San Francisco, Boston and Washington, D.C., for several different publishers. Now living on Moku o Keawe, the Big Island, she was inspired to study hula by her mother, who learned to play ukulele and dance hula in pre-statehood Hawaii.