Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh is an Auckland-based Pacific poet and scholar of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English, Scottish and French descent. She was the first person of Pacific descent to graduate with a PhD in English from the University of Auckland, where she now lectures in both creative writing and Māori and Pacific literary studies. Selina’s work has been widely published and has appeared in a range of online and hardcopy literary journals and anthologies including Blackmail Press, Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poetry in English, Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poetry in English–Whetu Moana II (Auckland University Press/UHP), Best New Zealand Poems 2006, Niu Voices: Contemporary Pacific Fiction 1 and The Contemporary Pacific (UHP). Her first collection of poems, Fast Talking PI, was published by Auckland University Press in 2009, and subsequently won the 2010 NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry. Tusitala Marsh was named the Commonwealth Poet for 2016. In August 2017 Marsh was awarded the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2017–2019. Bio and photo courtesy of Read NZ.