Two Pasifika women writers have been awarded at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
At last night's ceremony in Auckland Tusiata Avia took away the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry for her collection The Savage Coloniser Book, and New Zealand-Samoan chef and food writer Monique Fiso won the illustrated non-fiction awards for Hiakai: Modern Māori Cuisine.
Acclaimed poet, writer and performer Avia told RNZ the news was still sinking in that she's the first Pacific woman to win a major category in the awards.
"That kind of recognition is always good.
"I wrote it really quickly actually, last year. I wrote it during 2020, so it's very of the time and speaks to colonisation ... and all the things that come from that - racism, Black Lives Matter... "
Poetry category convenor Dr Briar Wood said the book showcased "the violence of shared and fractured histories ... throughout the collection like liquefaction, unsettling, displacing, disrupting. The poet's experience of hospitalisation and seizures likewise overflows, mingling with the ancient arts of spiritual possession to inspire contemporary outpourings."
Fiso's Hiakai is named after her award-winning Wellington restaurant.
Category convenor of judges Dale Cousens said the text was "hard-won, inspiring and utterly original in scope", and the book was "beautifully designed and photographed".