Nafanua Purcell Kersel (Satupa‘itea, Faleālupo, Aleipata, Tuaefu) is a writer, poet and performer who was born in Sāmoa and raised in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa.

Her poetry has been widely published and performed. She won the 2022 IIML Biggs Family Prize in Poetry for Black Sugarcane, which has since been published as her first collection by Te Herenga Waka University Press. Nafanua is the 2025 Emerging Pasifika Writer in Residence at the IIML, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington and lives in Te Matau-a-Māui Hawke’s Bay with her husband and their three teenage children.