Sia Figiel NEWS
April 30, 2026 | Friday, @ 8:30PM | Directors Guild of America (7920 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90046) Join us for the LA premiere of BEFORE THE MOON FALLS, an “intimate portrait of acclaimed Samoan writer Sia Figiel … [that] illuminat[es] the complexities of inconsistently treated mental illness and the devastating toll it […]
We are saddened to hear of the passing of Kaya Press author Sia Figiel (1967-2026). Figiel was the author of Where We Once Belonged, originally published in 1996, and won the the 1997 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in the Southeast Asia/South Pacific region, and was considered the first major novel by a […]
Where We Once Belonged
A bestseller in New Zealand and winner of the prestigious Commonwealth Prize, Sia Figiel’s debut novel represents an exciting and promising new voice on the international literary scene. It also marks the first time a novel by a Samoan woman has been published in the United States. Lively, spirited, and fiercely written, Figiel uses the traditional Samoan storytelling form of su’ifefiloi to talk back to Western anthropological studies on Samoan women and culture. In doing so, she weaves an honest – and sometimes brutal – coming-of-age story which combines poetry with an exhilarating combination of humor and violence. Told in a series of linked episodes which recall V. S. Naipaul and Sandra Cisneros, this powerful and highly original narrative follows thirteen-year-old Alofa Filiga as she navigates the mores and restrictions of her village, Malaefou, and comes to terms with her own womanhood and search for identity.
praise
“Sia Figiel has written a passion, a song of longing and loss, a song of fire. The young woman in Where We Once Belonged and the world she seeks to navigate are marvels of prose. I do not know from where Sia draws her insights and her language, but I’m as grateful for their existence as I am grateful for the sun.”
— Junot Díaz, author of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“A storytelling triumph.” — Elle Australia
“A sort of Samoan Puberty Blues, in which Gauguin is dead but Elvis lives on.” — Vogue Australia
“A bold, accomplished and highly subversive first novel…Figiel’s characters and language always remain lucid and powerful. Sia Figiel is to be congratulated on this complex, funny and richly rewarding novel.”
— Courier-Mail, Australia
awards
Winner, Commonwealth Writer’s Prize
Sia Figiel NEWS
April 30, 2026 | Friday, @ 8:30PM | Directors Guild of America (7920 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90046) Join us for the LA premiere of BEFORE THE MOON FALLS, an “intimate portrait of acclaimed Samoan writer Sia Figiel … [that] illuminat[es] the complexities of inconsistently treated mental illness and the devastating toll it […]
We are saddened to hear of the passing of Kaya Press author Sia Figiel (1967-2026). Figiel was the author of Where We Once Belonged, originally published in 1996, and won the the 1997 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in the Southeast Asia/South Pacific region, and was considered the first major novel by a […]
