Truth to Power. Poet. Performer. Playwright.

Avia has held several residencies including the Ursula Bethel Writer in Residence at the University of Canterbury and the Fulbright Pacific Writer’s Fellowship at the University of Hawaii. She received a CNZ Emerging Pacific Artist Award in 2006, was the 2013 recipient of the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award, and her collection Fale Aitu (Victoria University Press, 2016) was shortlisted for the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, an award which The Savage Coloniser Book (2021, Victoria University Press) won in 2021.

In 2020 Avia was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to poetry in the Queen's Birthday Honours and made an Arts Foundation Laureate. In 2024 she won the Prime Minister's Award for Literature (Poetry), the first woman of Pasifika heritage to win the award, and the CNZ Senior Pacific Artist award.

Her work has featured in collections, exhibitions and festivals around the globe. Avia toured her solo show Wild Dogs Under My Skirt both nationally and internationally. Adapted into an ensemble play, it won Best Director, Best Production and Best Lighting Design at the 2018 Wellington Theatre Awards. It has been performed off-Broadway and in Korea. The stage adaption of The Savage Coloniser premiered in Auckland in 2024.