Join us to launch a new book of poetry by the incredible Tusiata Avia. Giving Birth to My Father is about learning to live with a loss that seems simply too heavy to bear. First, Tusiata Avia tells the imagined story – the one of how things should go – followed by the story of what really happens. As her father travels through his last days and into the arms of his tupu’aga, transformed, the family gathers around him with their love and raw need, and their suffering turns to storm clouds.

Tusiata Avia is the award-winning author of Wild Dogs Under My Skirt (2004; also staged internationally), Bloodclot (2009), Fale Aitu | Spirit House (2016), The Savage Coloniser Book (2020; winner of the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry and also staged nationally) and Big Fat Brown Bitch (2023).

Saturday 15 November, 5pm @ Space Academy, 371 St Asaph Street