Tusiata Avia
Tusiata Avia is the award-winning author of Wild Dogs Under My Skirt (2004; also staged internationally), Bloodclot (2009), Fale Aitu | Spirit House (2016), The Savage Coloniser Book (2020; winner of the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry and also staged nationally), Big Fat Brown Bitch (2023) and Giving Birth to My Father (2025; long listed for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry).
Tusiata has held the Fulbright Pacific Writers Fellowship at the University of Hawai‘i in 2005 and the Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence at University of Canterbury in 2010. She was the 2013 recipient of the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award, and in 2020 was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to poetry and the arts. In 2023 she was given a Distinguished Alumni Award at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington and a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement.
In 2026, she is Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington International Institute of Modern Letters and Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence.
Photo credit The Arts Foundation
Verb Readers & Writers Festival 2026 events Tusiata Avia features in:
Fever! A Poetry Gala
Seasoned Self, Disclosing Self: On Memoir