Who are we?
Tadra Vata is a literary series that lives inside festivals—but isn’t contained by them.
Growing out of the Fiji Fringe Literary Series produced by Baka Books and Studio Kiin in 2025 it brings together writers, illustrators, and performers across Oceania and its diasporas to share stories, develop new work, and imagine futures together through the power of words.
The name Tadra Vata — meaning to dream collectively in vosa vakaViti — was gifted to us by Tongan Fijian writer Arieta Tegeilolo Talanoa Tora Rika, and that’s exactly what guides the work.
Beyond Islands, Beyond Borders
Our 2026 Tadra Vata Aotearoa theme is ‘Beyond Islands, Beyond Borders’
This theme speaks to the spaces that connect and separate us: the ocean as both distance and bridge, the border as both limit and invitation.Through this theme, we celebrate creative collaboration as a crossing - of cultures, disciplines, and dreams.
Whether through words, image, or performance, Tadra Vata becomes a meeting place where artists of Oceania imagine new ways of belonging and becoming, grounded in the shared understanding that our islands are not boundaries, but starting points for collective creation.
Through talanoa, workshops, and performances, the series brings together writers, illustrators, and thinkers from across Oceania to reimagine futures that honour ancestry, connection, and creative sovereignty.
Our Approach
Each edition is locally grounded, regionally connected, and shaped by the people in the room.
Workshops sit alongside performances.
Panels blur into conversations.
Process matters as much as product.
At its heart, Tadra Vata is about making space.
For collaboration over competition.
For knowledge sharing over gatekeeping.
For community over spectacle.
Because Pacific stories don’t exist in isolation.
And neither should the spaces that hold them.
Collective beginnings
We start with ideas, questions, and shared imagination—creating space for dreaming before outcomes are defined.
Built to carry forward
Tadra Vata invests in people and relationships, supporting sustainable literary practice across the Pacific.