Sia Figiel

Sia Figiel
Born	Sia Figiel 1967 Apia, Samoa
Language	English, Samoan
Ethnicity	Samoan
Alma mater	Whitworth College
Notable works	Where We Once Belonged
Notable awards	Commonwealth Writers' Prize

Sia Figiel (born 1967 Apia, Samoa) is a 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 has travelled in Europe and completed writers' residencies at the University of the South Pacific, Suva, and the University of Technology, Sydney. Unfortunately, Sia Figel lost both parents to complications with diabetes. She too was diagnosed with diabetes 13 years ago.

Sia Figiel's poetry won the Polynesian Literary Competition in 1994 and Where We Once Belonged was awarded the 1997 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for fiction, South East Asia/South Pacific region. 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.

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