Terisa Siagatonu

Terisa Siagatonu is an award-winning touring poet, speaker, educator, and community organizer born and rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her voice in the poetry world as a queer Sāmoan woman has granted her opportunities to perform in significant places such as the nation’s White House (Obama administration), the UN Conference on Climate Change (Paris), the Asia Pacific Triennial (Brisbane, Australia), and the 2019 Women’s March (San Francisco). A recipient of President Obama’s Champion of Change Award for her activism as a poet/organizer in her Pacific Islander community, and with numerous viral poetry videos garnering millions of views collectively, Siagatonu’s writing/teaching blends the personal, cultural, and political in a way that calls for healing, courage, justice, and truth. A 2019 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 List Honoree and Kundiman fellow, her work has been published in Poetry Magazine and The Academy of American Poets and has been featured on Button Poetry, CNN, NBCNews, NPR, KQED, Huffington Post, Everyday Feminism, The Guardian, and Buzzfeed.

Projects:

• Thick Solidarity CoLAB