17 Facts About Tusiata Avia

Donna Tusiata Avia was born on 1966 and is a New Zealand poet and children's author.

Tusiata Avia has been recognised for her work through receiving a 2020 Queen's Birthday Honour and in 2021 her collection The Savage Coloniser won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Tusiata Avia's father is Samoan and her mother is New Zealand European.

Tusiata Avia's poetry explores Pasifika and cross-cultural themes, as well as the borders between traditional and contemporary life, and between place and the self.

Tusiata Avia has toured both nationally and internationally performing her solo show Wild Dogs Under My Skirt which premiered at the 2002 Dunedin Fringe Festival.

Tusiata Avia is a creative writing lecturer at the Manukau Institute of Technology.

Poetry by Tusiata Avia has appeared in numerous literary journals such as Takahe, Sport, Turbine, and Trout.

Tusiata Avia has been published in the Best New Zealand Poems series, including the 2004,2009,2011, and 2017.

In March 2023, Tusiata Avia attracted media attention about her confronting poem The Savage Coloniser about British explorer Captain James Cook and his association with the legacy of British colonialism in New Zealand.

Tusiata Avia was criticised for allegedly promoting reverse racism and violence by right-wing YouTuber Lee Williams, The Platform host Sean Plunket, ACT Party leader David Seymour, New Zealand First party leader Winston Peters, and Kiwiblog founder David Farrar.

The attention meant that 2023 Tusiata Avia became a target for harassment and death threats.

Tusiata Avia defended her poem and accused the ACT Party of misrepresenting her work.

Tusiata Avia was supported by The Spinoff book editor Claire Mabey, New Zealand Poets Laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh and Chris Tse, University of Waikato indigenous studies Associate Professor Waikaremoana Waitoki, and Creative New Zealand, who defended the poem on artistic, free speech, and historical grounds.

In 2005, Tusiata Avia was awarded the Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writer's Residency at the University of Hawai'i and was the artist-in-residence at the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Canterbury.

Tusiata Avia was the 2010 Ursula Bethell writer in residence at the University of Canterbury.

Tusiata Avia was made an Arts Foundation Laureate, receiving a 25,000 award and recognition as one of New Zealand's most outstanding artists.

Tusiata Avia was the first Pasifika woman to win this award, and the collection was described by the judges as "a book bursting with alofa, profound pantoums, profanity and FafSwaggering stances, garrulously funny, bleakly satirical, magnificent".