Winner of New Zealand Society of Authors Best First Book Awards: Jessie Mackay Award for Poetry 2010.

Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh is of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English, Scottish and French descent. She was the first Pacific Islander to graduate with a PhD in English from the University of Auckland and is now a lecturer in the English Department, specialising in Pasifika literature. Marsh is currently developing a Pasifika Poetry website in conjunction with the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre and working on a critical anthology of Pacific women poets writing in English, Ancient Banyans, Flying Foxes and White Ginger, based on her thesis. Her poetry has appeared in Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poetry in English, the Best New Zealand Poems website and in Niu Voices: Contemporary Pacific Fiction 1, which she edited. Her work deals specifically with issues that affect Pacific communities in New Zealand and indigenous peoples elsewhere, most recently focusing on the challenges and triumphs of being afakasi.