Nafanua Purcell Kersel

Kersel was born in Samoa and moved to New Zealand as a four-year-old in the 1980s.^[1] She grew up in Wellington, New Zealand, where she began writing poetry as a teenager.^[2][3] She moved with her family to Hawke's Bay in the early 2000s, and as of 2026^[update] she is based in Maraekakaho.^[3][4] She holds a Master of Arts degree from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington, completed in 2022.^[2][5] She has three children.^[6]

Kersel's poetry has been published in journals and anthologies including Cordite Poetry Review, Landfall, the 2022 edition of Best New Zealand Poems, Turbine / Kapohau,^[2] and Vā: Stories by Women of the Moana (2022).^[6] She won the 2020 Hawke's Bay Poetry Slam,^[3] and was the 2025 Emerging Pasfika Writer in Residence at Victoria University.^[2][7][8]

In addition to her written poetry, Kersel is known for performance poetry, creative writing workshops and work with Pasifika communities.^[2][7]

Kersel's debut poetry collection, Black Sugarcane, was published in 2025, having received the Biggs Family Prize in Poetry as an unpublished manuscript in 2022.^[2] Kersel has described the book as a collection of stories that inadvertently became poems.^[4] Ruby Macomber, reviewing the collection for the Aotearoa New Zealand Review of Books, described Kersel as "capable of impressive worldbuilding and of careful, high-impact detail", and concluded that the collection contributes "to a growing, bold Pasifika poetry canon".^[9]

In 2026, Black Sugarcane won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, New Zealand's top award for poetry.^[4] Judge Daren Kamali said that each of Kersel's poems "pulses with clarity, restraint, and quiet power, revealing the extraordinary within the ordinary".^[10]

• Black Sugarcane (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2025)