The Songmaker's Chair tells of a Samoan family, the Aiga Sa Peseola, who have been in Auckland since the 1950s. Over three generations the family have intermarried with Maori and Pakeha to develop what they refer to as the Peseola Way. Central to that Way is the magnificent Polynesian exploration and settlement of the Pacific, and a songmaking tradition which Peseola Olaga, the family patriarch has inherited from his father. At the heart of the play is the love between Peseola Olaga and Ma...

Journey through the many stories and worlds of the immortal Vela - Vela, so red and ugly at birth they called him the Cooked; Vela the lonely admirer of pigs and the connoisseur of feet; Vela the lover of song maker Mulialofa the Boneman. Follow him down through the centuries on his travels, encountering the single-minded society of the Tagata-Nei and the Smellocracy of Olfact. Accompany him, too, as he recounts the stories of Lady Nafanua, the fearsome warrior queen, before whose powers t...

Albert Wendt's new collection of short stories explores the nature of family, tradition and culture through the eyes of those seemingly caught between the realities of modern contemporary life and the ancestral ties of their heritage. With a deft touch, he draws us into his characters' lives and with equal parts wisdom and wit, he exposes them to us. This is a masterful meditation on the ties that bind people together across time and place.

‘The Vaipe has the Roman Catholic Cathedral at its western boundary, the court and police station to the east, the market and harbour in front, and the swamps behind it. These are convenient boundaries that I’ve turned into a symbolic fence for the marvellous world of the Deadwater.’Albert Wendt crosses into new and deeply personal territory in this stirring BWB Text. Returning to his boyhood in the Vaipe, a suburb of Apia in Samoa, sees Wendt confront elemental questions: Is the Vaipe he ...

A collection of classic short stories from the award-winning author, Albert Wendt, acknowledged as one of the Pacific's major writers. Albert Wendt's short stories, providing a complex and profound understanding of people and the world, have been read and praised in New Zealand, the Pacific and internationally. This collection brings together his classic stories published in the Flying-Fox in a Freedom Tree and the Birth and Death of the Miracle Man and Other...

A dynamic group has emerged in Auckland whose members refer to themselves as the Tribe. Mainly Polynesian, they grow up together, rise from poverty and become successful professionals, bound by love and fierce loyalty. At the centre, is Aaron, who lives at the edge of danger, shady dealings and self-destruction. When Daniel, receives a call in Hawaii telling him that Aaron has been killed, he returns to New Zealand, and steps into the most dangerous crisis the Tribe has faced. They must co...

From the valleys of Hawaii to the seasons of a garden in Auckland, this extraordinary offering of poems explores a variety of themes. Though hips need replacing, poets grow older, tsunamis destroy, and friends slip away, a spirit of renewal and humor pervades the collection. Alert and full of love, this is a moving and compelling book by a celebrated Pacific writer.

In Albert Wendt's new poems, his first collection for over a decade, snapshots of the close and familiar contrast with strange and mythical sequences from a vast Pacific epic in progress and a vivid impressionistic montage of global travel in the late twentieth century. The rich diversity and range of Photographs is astonishing, as this complex writer moves with ease and fluency from ancient Polynesia to contemporary China to family celebrations in an Auckland garden, and through a variety...

An epic novel stretching out from Samoa to Europe, America and New Zealand, from the turn of the nineteenth century, through the First World War, the Spanish Influenza Epidemic and beyond. Since the 1960s, Albert Wendt has created a profound and fabulous Pacific world that is uniquely his own. A fictional world focused on Samoa and New Zealand and reaching out to the centres of the world, a world inhabited by the richest menagerie of characters in Pacific fiction, charact...

This collection of essays and selected poetry responds to an address on Samoan religious culture given by Samoa's Head of State, His Highness Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta'isi Tupuola Tufuga Efi, to the 2009 Parliament of the World's Religions. The address challenges some fundamental aspects of and assumptions in modern Samoan indigenous religious culture. The essays and poetry form a carefully woven critique, from within and outside Samoa, of aspects of Samoa's religious and cultural values....

An Ocean of Wonder: The Fantastic in the Pacific brings together fifty writers and artists from across Moananuiākea working in myriad genres across media, ranging from oral narratives and traditional wonder tales to creative writing as well as visual artwork and scholarly essays. Collectively, this anthology features the fantastic as present-day Indigenous Pacific world-building that looks to the past in creating alternative futures, and in so doing reimagines relationships betwee...

Edited by Albert Wendt and copublished the University of Hawaii Press, Nuanua is an anthology of short stories, extracts from novels, and poems written since 1980 in the Pacific Islands. It remains an essential resource for teachers of Pacific literature.