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Acclaimed Samoan-New Zealand poet and performer Tusiata Avia with her award-winning poetry collection, The Savage Coloniser Book. As a 10-year-old growing up in Christchurch, she discovered her penchant for prose through a school teacher who devoted half the class time to poetry writing. But by the time she was 15, Avia felt compelled to put the craft aside. “It was 1981 in Christchurch under a Muldoon government, and it was not a friendly time to be Samoan or brown of any shade,” Avia said. “I just got the message from everywhere that brown girls like me didn’t go on to become writers, so I shut it down.”