In March, Kete is excited to welcome award-winning playwright and writer Victor Rodger as guest editor for a two-week celebration of Aotearoa’s Pasifika books and authors.

From 3 to 16 March the Kete Books site will celebrate and showcase books by Aotearoa’s talented Pasifika writers. Over this period, the site will feature specially commissioned reviews and articles selected by Pasifika guest editor Victor Rodger.

Alongside this feature content, Kete and the Coalition for Books will also launch the Pasifika Books 2025 catalogue focusing on new books by local Pasifika authors. A special edition of the Kete newsletter will highlight Pasifika feature content and the catalogue.

Readers will also be able to browse and buy the books featured at Auckland’s Pasifika Festival on 8 and 9 March. Kete and The Coalition for Books are set to host a stand and bookstall at the event in Western Springs Park. Find the Kete stand in Aotearoa Village.

Guest editor Victor Rodger

Victor Rodger is a critically acclaimed playwright and producer of Samoan and Scottish descent. His writing, often dealing with issues of sexuality, race and identity, has been praised for its boldness, candour and freshness.

Victor began his writing career as a cadet reporter, wrote several children's stories for Radio New Zealand Ears programme and had his first award-winning play, Sons, produced in 1995. A collection of his work, Black Faggot and Other Plays was published by Victoria University Press (now Te Herenga Waka University Press) in 2017. In 2016 his theatre producing entity, FCC revived Tusiata Avia's play Wild Dogs Under My Skirt, later performing it off-Broadway at the SoHo Playhouse in New York.

Victor has written for television productions such as Shortland Street, the critically acclaimed Māori Television series, This is Piki and the Pasifika supernatural series Teine Sa: The Ancient Ones. His fiction appears in the Māori and Pasifika anthology Black Marks on the White Page, Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa, and The Penguin New Zealand Anthology 50 Stories for 50 Years in Aotearoa.

He has held several writing residencies throughout Aotearoa including the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago as well as the Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence at the University of Hawaii. In 2021 he was named an Officer of the Order of New Zealand merit for services to theatre and Pacific arts and last year was named an Arts Laureate.

Victor also teaches writing through the Institute of Modern Letters Maori/Pasifika creative writing workshop at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.

Image: Deborah Marshall