Figiel, Sia

Born in 1967 in Matautu Tai, Samoa, Sia Figiel is a novelist, poet, and painter. She grew up amidst the traditional Samoan singing and poetry which heavily influenced her writing. She has travelled in Europe and held writers’ residencies at the University of the South Pacific, Suva, and University of Technology, Sydney. She won the Polynesian Literary Competition in 1994 and her novel Where We Once Belonged was awarded the 1997 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for fiction, South East Asia/South Pacific region. Her work has been translated into French, German, Catalan, Danish, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Portuguese.