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No mean feat: Pacific writers launch debut anthology 

Fika: A fictional body of new writing was launched last week at Waru: the Pacific Arts Festival. It contains the work of 15 emerging Pacific writers. The word "fika" can be translated as "figure" in English: the figure of a woman or to figure out. It is also half of the word "Pasefika".

The anthology was compiled by two of the group's members, Danielle O'Halloran and Felolini Maria Ifopo, and was published with the support of a $7000 grant from Creative New Zealand.

"Some of the writers in the anthology are musicians or MCs and some are visual artists, so there's an interesting mix of lyrics, rants, poems and stories, as well as a lot of artwork," Danielle says.

"For the past four years, we've been meeting once a fortnight at each other's homes or at the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, doing a five-minute writing exercise, sharing food, our kids playing in the background, reading our work and offering feedback."

The ongoing support from Creative New Zealand and its Pacific Arts Committee has been "fantastic", Danielle says. An initial $1000 grant in 2005 supported further writing workshops for Christchurch-based Pacific writers, conducted by established writers such as Adrienne Jansen, David Fane and Tusiata Avia.

"Then we got a second grant to publish an anthology of our work," she says. "Along with the finance, it gave us the confidence to tell ourselves that we could do it."

Performance poet Tusiata Avia writes in the preface that "keeping going after the first flush" is often a big hurdle for many writers. "This group, First Draft Pasefika Writers, has managed not only to keep going, they have produced this anthology of their work - no mean feat."