Nafanua Purcell Kersel

Nafanua Purcell Kersel won the country’s most prestigious poetry award for her first poetry collection Black Sugarcane (Te Herenga Waka University Press) – the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2026.

NVA26 judge Louise Ward says Nafanua addresses challenging ideas in her poetry with a gentle elegance, landing heartbreak and joy on the reader. ‘Her work deftly places us in Samoa and Aotearoa, inviting us to visit places most of us have never been.’