PAGO PAGO (Samoa News/PINA) — Acclaimed Samoan writer Sia Figiel has been named by the University of Hawaii’s English Department as its next distinguished visiting writer.
The University of Hawaii-Manoa English Department has been looking at Pacific literature and writers. It began by inviting Maori poet Robert Sullivan last year and the Niuean novelist, artist and poet John Pule, who is the current visiting writer.
Figiel will depart American Samoa for the University of Hawaii in early August.
Figiel will be on the faculty as an associate professor. She will teach a graduate course, creative fiction, and an undergraduate course, introduction to fiction. Figiel is acknowledged as the first contemporary Samoan female novelist and became known initially for her groundbreaking book, “Where We Once Belonged,” published in New Zealand.
Figiel won the prestigious 1997 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best First Book in the Southeast Asia-South Pacific region, the first Pacific islander to win the prize.
Figiel has held distinguished writer positions at the University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji, and the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.
She has traveled widely with other writers like the eminent Samoan writer Albert Wendt.
The author is currently teaching English at Fa’asao-Marist High School in American Samoa. Prior to that, she was teaching at Logoipulotu College, a Catholic School in Safotulafai, Savaii, Samoa.
