Born and raised on the northern beaches of Sydney, Holly Wawn’s father started pushing her into waves at their local Bungan Beach when she was three. She started competing in her teens, won local events, and won the 2012 Australian Junior Titles at age 15. From 2015 to 2019, she competed full-time on the ’QS, bagged a few thirds, but came to realize that she was happiest surfing outside of the contest forum. Now 27, based in Coorabell, near Byron Bay, Wawn is a freesurfer known for her big, swooping hacks.

In this episode of Soundings, Wawn sits down with Jamie Brisick to talk about lineup hierarchies, her relationship to competition, life as a freesurfer, producing content, the importance of self-expression, and her cinematic goals.

From Newport, New South Wales, Australia, Derek Hynd is known for his unconventional approach to surfing and all else. Hynd was a pro surfer in the late 1970s and early ’80s, making his name both for his surfing in a jersey and for the pieces he wrote for the surf mags of the era. In 1980, while competing in South Africa, he suffered a brutal injury that resulted in the loss of vision in his right eye. He retired after the 1982 season and became a coach, first for Billabong, then for Ripcurl. In 1992, Hynd came up with The Search, Rip Curl’s iconic film series starring Tom Curren. Around this time, Hynd bought a prime plot of land at Jeffrey’s Bay and built an architectural marvel of a house looking straight out to Supertubes. Design experimentation led Hynd to FFFF, aka Far Field Free Friction, aka finless surfing. Today, he lives near Byron Bay, where he practices his latest obsession: mat riding.

In this episode of Soundings, Hynd sits down with Jamie Brisick to talk about his career as a professional surfer, unconventional surfcraft, writing, childhood’s golden moments, J-Bay, the allure of going finless, sharks, and how he lost his eye.

Born in 1960 in Sydney, Australia, Cheyne Horan joined the pro tour in 1977 at age 16, and finished second in the world four times, in 1978, ’79, ’81, and ’82. He surfed with an urgency and potency, weaving in and around the pocket on his needle nose, fat-tailed Lazor Zap single-fins. His boards had vibrant, elaborate airsprays. His wetsuits were bright and loud. His hair was peroxide blond. He became a macrobiotic vegetarian, a yogi, a devotee of astrology, and the I Ching. He was outwardly pro-weed and pro-psychedelics.

Horan retired from the pro tour in 1993. Soon after, he began to focus on big waves, riding giant Waimea Bay, Outer Log Cabins, and Jaws. In 1999, he won the Quiksilver Masters World Championships. Today, Horan shapes boards and runs a surf school in Queensland.

In this episode of Soundings, Horan sits down with Jamie Brisick to talk about dealing with fame, committing to the single-fin, pro surfing’s wild days, and his victory at the 1989 Billabong Pro at Sunset Beach.  

Born and raised on Oahu, Kelia Moniz is a two-time world longboarding champion, freesurfer, wife, mother, and entrepreneur. From a deeply rooted surfing family, Moniz rode her first waves around the time she learned to walk. She started competing at age 15, racked up a string of victories, and turned pro shortly thereafter. She is the 2012 and 2013 world longboarding champion. She spent much of the 2010s as a traveling freesurfer. In 2015, on a trip in Tahiti, she rode serious Teahupo’o on a longboard. Now 31 and a mother of two, Moniz and her husband, photographer Joe Termini, recently opened the Honolulu Pawn Shop, which sells clothing and Joe’s work.

In this episode of Soundings, Moniz talks to Jamie Brisick about competing, longboarding, her Town roots, living out her dreams, her most memorable trips, overcoming self-doubt, Rell Sunn’s legacy, starting her own business, and surfing as a universal language.

Born in Honolulu in 1951, Tom Pohaku Stone made a name for himself at Pipeline in the early 1970s as a stylish goofyfooter. Around that time, he was imprisoned after a drug bust. While incarcerated, he found books and higher learning. He studied, and, after his release, got a job as a lifeguard and enrolled in college. He got his BA in Hawaiian Studies from the University of Hawaii in 1998 at the age of 46. A few years later he earned his MA for his thesis paper about the ancient Polynesian practice of riding papa holua boards—which are long, wooden sleds—down grass-covered mountains. Now a professor of Hawaiian History at University of Hawaii, Pohaku Stone’s commitment to the preservation and revival of ancient Polynesian knowledge and practices extends beyond academia and into his personal life as a surfer and shaper.

In this episode of Soundings, Pohaku Stone sits down with Jamie to talk about the early days at Pipeline, finding solace in the past, his Hawaiian heritage, sobriety, Jose Angel, finding academia, and memorable moments on the North Shore. 

Michele Lockwood is an artist, writer, photographer, clothing designer, mother, activist, and environmental scientist. She grew up in the boroughs of New York City and started sneaking out to hip-hop gigs, house music clubs, and punk shows while in high school. She hung out at the Brooklyn Banks in the late 1980s, and played the character “Kim” in Larry Clark’s 1995 film Kids. The X-girl logo, designed by Mike Mills, was based on her face, which led her to becoming a clothing designer in Tokyo with her own brand, called Material. Lockwood has lived in Australia for the last 20-odd years with her partner, Andrew Kidman, on a rural property in the hills between Byron Bay and the Gold Coast. Recently, Lockwood has started working for a not-for-profit Indigenous organization that helps to build more resilient communities and ecosystems. In her spare time, she studies and publishes papers on a local endangered frog species.

In this episode of Soundings, Lockwood sits down with Jamie Brisick at the Big Sky compound to talk about her teenage years, creativity, fashion, surfing in California, Kids, music, the artistic process, moving to Australia, and the study of frogs. 

Born in 1944 in Queensland, Australia, Bob McTavish started surfing at age 12 on a 16-foot plywood paddle board. Best known as a surfboard shaper, he started working with Sydney’s biggest board builders at age 17, then became a major player in the shortboard revolution. He worked closely with George Greenough and Nat Young, helping Young design “Magic Sam,” the thinner, lighter, shorter longboard that would win Young the 1966 World Championships in San Diego, California. In 1967, McTavish produced the first vee bottom, nicknamed the “Plastic Machine.” Shortly thereafter, he and Young were seen tearing it up at Honolua Bay in Paul Witzig’s The Hot Generation. In the late ’70s, McTavish wrote several essays for surf magazines talking up the long- and mid-range boards he was shaping. In 2009, Bob penned Stoked!, his memoir. Now in his eighties, a father of five and a grandfather, McTavish is still actively shaping and surfing.

In this episode of Soundings, McTavish sits down with Jamie Brisick inside his factory to talk about his prolific shaping career, stowing away to Oahu, Magic Sam, The Hot Generation, Dick Brewer, and his most memorable moments in the water. 

Born in 1981 on Oahu, Mark Healey started surfing at age three, turned pro by the time he was 17, and made his name in heavy, scary waves, first in Hawaii, then around the world. But big-wave surfing was only part of it. An avid diver, Healey won the World Cup of Spearfishing in La Paz, Mexico, in 2008. And then there were sharks. In 2011, he traveled to Mexico’s Guadalupe Island to dive with great whites for a Nat Geo TV shoot. Outside magazine called him “the greatest athlete you’ve never heard of.” Recently, he founded Healey Water Operations, synthesizing all his singular skills into a personal brand.

In this episode of Soundings, Healey sits down with Jamie Brisick on the North Shore to talk about his first Pipe session, the nuances of discerning the personalities of sharks, weaving together experiential and scientific knowledge, chasing after big surf, the ins and outs of spearfishing, and staying composed in heavy situations.

Kylie Manning is a painter, surfer, and fisher based in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents were both art teachers, and, while she was growing up, the family moved between their home in Juneau, Alaska, to various regions in Mexico, which would inform her artwork—and her surfing. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts with a double major in philosophy and visual arts. While she was getting her MFA at the New York Academy of Art, she had a captain’s license to operate 500-ton commercial fishing boats on international waters, and spent her summers catching salmon on the Pacific coast. Manning has gained global respect for her abstract figurative paintings, which embody powerful yet delicate compositions with brushstrokes that seem to be in motion. Her work is held in numerous collections worldwide, including the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida; and the X and Yuz Museums in China.

In this episode of Soundings, Manning talks with Jamie Brisick about weather and wonderment, beauty and brawls aboard commercial fishing vessels, atmospheric fascination, style, her proudest artworks, the nuances between grit and growth, and her collaboration with the New York City Ballet.

Born in 1950 in San Diego, California, Jeff Divine is one of surfing’s preeminent photographers and photo editors. Divine began photographing anything and everything around his hometown of La Jolla, California, as a teenager. Surfer magazine first published his photos in 1968, and by the early 1970s his work was all over the surf sphere. He shot everything—water and action, portraiture, lifestyle, landscapes, travel. He was the photo editor for Surfer from 1981 to 1998, then occupied the same position at The Surfer’s Journal until 2016. He’s published several books, among them Masters of Surf Photography: Jeff Divine, Surfing Photographs From the Seventies Taken by Jeff Divine, and Surfing Photographs From the Eighties Taken by Jeff Divine. His work has been featured in many gallery and museum exhibitions.

In this episode of Soundings, Divine talks with Jamie Brisick swimming at Sunset Beach, the legacy of Ron Stoner, the beauty of the North Shore, art and artifact, Windansea, photographing Andy Irons, color palettes, the evolution of lens technology, and the transition from film to digital.