Mikaela Nyman

Mikaela Nyman was born on the autonomous Åland islands in Finland and spent four years in Vanuatu. She writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry in Swedish and English. Her diverse work has featured in Sport, Minarets, Turbine | Kapohau, Blackmail Press, Lumière Reader, Sweet Mammalian, SWAMP, the anthology More of Us (Landing Press), Strong Words 2019: The Best of the Landfall Essay Competition, and the Finnish literary magazine Horisont. Her poetry and accompanying prints have also been exhibited as art in New Zealand and in Vanuatu. In 2011 she gained an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from Victoria University, followed by a PhD in 2020. Her PhD in Creative Writing uses feminism and Pacific Studies to explore women’s marginalised or under-represented public voices in Vanuatu, focusing on literary writing. It entailed facilitating writing workshops and ongoing collaboration with writers from Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. One of her collaborative poems with Rebecca Tobo Olul was published in Sport 47(edited by Tayi Tibble). In 2019 her first poetry collection När vändkrets läggs mot vändkrets – dealing with the premature death of her sister and the perceived loss of memory and her mother tongue, Swedish – was published by Ellips Förlag in Finland. Her first novel, Sado, published by Victoria University Press in 2020, is set in Vanuatu in the aftermath of Category 5 tropical cyclone Pam that made landfall in March 2015 with devastating consequences. Her current collaboration with Ni-Vanuatu writers entails being on the editorial team for a Vanuatu Women’s Anthology to celebrate Vanuatu’s 40th independence anniversary in 2020.