Tusiata Avia is an award-winning poet, writer and performer from Ōtautahi Christchurch.

Her latest poetry collection is available now.

Tusiata Avia is a Samoan New Zealand poet, writer and performer. Raised by a Samoan dad and Pākehā mum, her roots are both coloniser and colonised.

In her work, she explores racism, hatred and colonisation with vulnerability and unflinching honesty. Confrontational and entertaining, raw and lyrical, disarming and thought-provoking, her poetry speaks from scars and wounds and rage. She has published 5 books of poetry, 5 children’s books, short films, radio documentaries and plays.

“I think it's good for white people to sit and squirm a bit. I mean, we're [brown people] squirming all the time.”

Tusiata Avia

Upcoming Shows

19/08

TBC
Invercargill

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18/08

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Invercargill

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August

Book Launch
Christchurch

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“I write about everything, but I also write about the same things again and again: colonisation, racism, being a woman of colour in a world seething with white privilege, being from two very different cultures, the weirdness, beauty and horror of the human condition.”

View the world through the eyes of Tusiata, while supporting her as a writer and creative. Subscribe to her Substack.

  • "Avia’s poetry is disarming and thought-provoking on the page; onstage it electrifies."

    Flat City Field Notes

  • "Avia is a bold, uncompromising artist with a sharp intelligence and caustic wit: her poetry swaggers and her poetry sears."

    Aotearoa New Zealand Review of Books

  • "Avia takes us to the edge with poetic and layered diatribes against colonial exploitation and white terrorist massacres."

    Academy of New Zealand Literature

  • "Bursting with alofa, profound pantoums, profanity and FafSwaggering stances, garrulously funny, bleakly satirical, magnificent."

    Judges of the NZ Book Awards