New Zealand Writers

AVIA, Tusiata

A dynamic poet and performer.

AVIA, Donna Tusiata (1966-) is a poet, a performer, and children’s book writer. Avia is of Samoan descent, and her name, Tusiata, means both painter and artist.

Avia was born and raised in Christchurch. She attended Canterbury University, before moving to Auckland and then overseas. From 1990 until 2001 Avia travelled and taught. She spent time in Samoa, Europe, Australia, the Middle East and Africa before returning to New Zealand in 2001. In 2002 she completed the MA Creative Writing Programme at the International Institute of Modern Letters.

Tusiata Avia’s poetry has appeared in various literary journals including Turbine, Sport, and Takahe. Her radio drama You Say Hawaii was broadcast in 2002. She also works as a performance poet. Her solo show Wild Dogs Under My Skirt premiered at the 2002 Dunedin Fringe Festival.

Avia is currently publishing a series of books for children. The first two, Mele and the Fofo (2002) and The Song (2002), have been published in Samoan, Tongan, Cook Islands Maori, Nuiean and Tokelauan and English.

Avia describes her work as being about, among other things, Pacific themes. In all of her work Avia explores the boundaries between custom and contemporary life, between place and self. Hers is a dynamic new voice.

LK

Updated Information

Wild Dogs Under My Skirt (2004), Tusiata Avia's first collection of poetry, draws on two different cultures and charts the sometimes painful points of their intersection. These poems are both confrontational and entertaining, raw and lyrical, they occupy legend and history - yet break through into an urban landscape that is just as arresting and richly patterned. Avia's poetry is alive with the energy and rhythm of performance poetry and an oral tradition, but it also stakes out a unique physical life on the page, reshaping our language and our understanding of New Zealand culture.
'Tusiata's poetry is quite revolutionary in the sense that, not only does it define the face of Pacific literature in New Zealand, but it redefines the face of New Zealand literature itself.'
Sia Figiel

Tusiata Avia was an artist-in-residence at the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies in Christchurch in 2005.

She was also awarded the 2005 Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writers’ Residency at the University of Hawai’i. Avia will use the residency to work on her latest projects: a collection of poetry and a new theatre work.

Tusiata Avia was shortlisted for the 2006 Prize in Modern Letters.

Writers in Schools

Tusiata is available to visit with schoolchildren of all ages as part of the Writers in Schools programme. She is prepared to discuss any topic, to classes of any size. She is also happy to run workshops, by prior arrangment.