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Concept
Sia Figiel
Summary
Sia Figiel (born 1967 Apia, Samoa) is an American contemporary Samoan novelist, poet, and painter.
Sia Figiel grew up amidst traditional Samoan singing and poetry, which heavily influenced her writing. Figiel's greatest influence and inspiration in her career is the Samoan novelist and poet, Albert Wendt.
Her formal schooling was conducted in Samoa and New Zealand where she also began a Bachelor of Arts, which was later completed at Whitworth College (United States). She travelled in Europe and completed writers' residencies at the University of the South Pacific, Suva, and the University of Technology, Sydney.
Sia Figiel's poetry won the Polynesian Literary Competition in 1994 and her novel Where We Once Belonged won the 1997 Best First Book award in the South East Asia/South Pacific Region of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Her works have been translated into French, German, Catalan, Danish, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Portuguese.
In 2000 Figiel performed her Oceanic poetry at the University of Hawaii's twenty-fifth annual Pacific Island Studies conference.
The performances of Figiel and Teresia Teaiwa were recorded at this conference and subsequently released in a joint production with Hawai'i Dub Machine records and 'Elepaio Press. The album is titled Terenesia.
Sia Figiel has also been a contributor to The Contemporary Pacific journal on multiple occasions, including publications in 1998 and 2010.
Selected poetry by Figiel was included in UPU, a compilation of Pacific Island writers’ work which was first presented at the Silo Theatre as part of the Auckland Arts Festival in March 2020. UPU was remounted as part of the Kia Mau Festival in Wellington in June 2021.
Sia Figiel's life has been affected by diabetes in various ways. Members of her family have had diabetes, and related complications caused the death of both Figiel's mother and father. In 2003 Figiel herself was diagnosed with Type two diabetes. Figiel initially kept her diagnosis secret as she felt it to be a sign of weakness and did not want her condition to shape her as a writer and a public figure.
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