Grace Teuila Taylor

Grace Teuila Taylor is of Samoan and European descent. She earned an MA in youth development from Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. In 2008, she cofounded the South Auckland Poets Collective, an organization that promotes spoken word poetry as a powerful tool for social change, and cofounded the Rising Voices Youth Poetry Slam in 2011. In 2013, she cofounded Niu Navigations, an organization committed to encouraging the publication and performance of Aotearoan and Pacific poetry.

Taylor’s first collection of poetry is Afakasi Speaks (2013). She directed her first theater work, SKIN, for the Auckland Theatre Company in 2014, and her one-woman show, My Own Darling, debuted in 2015 with the Auckland Theatre Company. Taylor has received an Auckland Writers Festival Poetry Idol award (2008), a Vodafone New Zealand Foundation World of Difference award (2012), and an Emerging Pacific Artist award at the 2014 Creative New Zealand Arts Pasifika Awards.