Truth to Power. Poet. Performer. Playwright.

Avia is an internationally recognised poet based in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Growing up brown in the 1970’s and 80’s she believed ‘girls like me don’t write’ and it wasn’t until she was in her 30’s that she gave herself permission to write.

She has now become a powerful Pasifika voice, travelled the world performing her one-woman show, publishing 6 collections of poetry, teaching creative writing at university-level, publishing children’s books and mentoring emerging poets. Her work unapologetically examines race, racism and identity with humour and acerbity.

Avia has held multiple 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 has been named 2026 International Institute of Modern Letters Writer in Residence – Academy of New Zealand Literature.

Awards received include CNZ Emerging Pacific Artist Award in 2006, Janet Frame Literary Trust Award in 2013, and Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, for which her collection Fale Aitu (2016) was shortlisted in 2017 and The Savage Coloniser Book (2021) 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) and the CNZ Senior Pacific Artist award.

Her work has featured in collections, exhibitions and festivals around the globe. She performed Wild Dogs Under My Skirt, as a solo show, both nationally and internationally, then adapted it into an award-winning ensemble play. The stage adaptation of The Savage Coloniser Book premiered in Auckland in 2024, directed by Anapela Polata’ivao ONZM. Her latest poetry collection, Giving Birth to My Father, has been described as “an extraordinarily rich poetic work about grief and renewal that will rearrange its readers”.