Mikaela Nyman
Mikaela Nyman was born on the autonomous Åland Islands in Finland and lives in Taranaki, New Zealand. She spent four years in Vanuatu and experienced the devastation of Tropical Cyclone Pam first-hand in 2015, which informed her first novel, Sado, published by Te Herenga Waka University Press in 2020. Awarded the 2024 Robert Burns Fellowship at Otago University. Mikaela is an award-winning writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry in Swedish and English, as well as an editor, assessor and mentor. Her work has featured in World Literature Today, Trasdemar, Sport, Minarets, Turbine | Kapohau, Blackmail Press, Lumière Reader, Sweet Mammalian, SWAMP, Strong Words: The Best of the Landfall Essay Competition 1 and 2, Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand, and the Finnish literary magazine Horisont. Her poetry and accompanying art have been exhibited at galleries in New Zealand and in Vanuatu. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2023 for poetry published in the USA. She holds an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction (2012) from Te Herenga Waka University, and was awarded her PhD in 2020. Her PhD in Creative Writing, inter-disciplinary with Pacific Studies, explores women’s expressions of creativity and under-represented public voices in Vanuatu, focusing on literary writing. It entailed facilitating writing workshops in Port Vila and ongoing collaboration with writers from Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. Her first poetry collection, När vändkrets läggs mot vändkrets, published by Ellips in Finland, was short-listed for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2020. Her second poetry collection, För att ta sig ur en rivström måste man röra sig i sidled, was published in August 2023 by Ellips. It was nominated for the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE's Swedish-language Literature Prize 2023 and the Nordic Council of Literature Prize 2024. In February 2024, she was awarded a major literary prize from the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland for this collection. The poems document the turbulent times we live in and connect Taranaki and her native Åland Islands. She's the co-editor of the first Vanuatu women's anthology, Sista, Stanap Strong! (THWUP, 2021), with Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen. A literary essay and a selection of Helen Heath's poems in English original and in Swedish translation was published by Ellips in November 2022. https://vup.victoria.ac.nz/mikaela-nyman/ https://vup.victoria.ac.nz/mikaela-nyman-rebecca-tobo-olul-hossen/ http://www.ellips.fi/forfattarna/mikaela-nyman/
Genre:
- Fiction
- Non-Fiction
- Poetry
Skills:
- Competition Judging
- Freelance Writing
- Manuscript Assessment
- Mentoring
- Novelist
- Poetry Readings
- Translating
- Tutoring
- Workshops (adults)
- Workshops (children/schools)
Branch:
Central Districts
Location:
New Plymouth
Publications:
När vändkrets läggs mot vändkrets (Ellips 2019)
Poetry collection (in Swedish), short-listed for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2020. Concerned with the loss of a sister, memory and language, and the realities of island life, the poems attempt to bridge the geographical, temporal and cultural differences between New Zealand, Vanuatu and the Åland Islands in Finland.
Sado (Victoria University Press 2020)
Sado n. shadow 2. reflection 3. humiliation, dishonour —A New Bislama Dictionary Friday 13 March, 2015: Category 5 Tropical Cyclone Pam makes landfall with devastating consequences. Vanuatu is bruised but not broken. Reeling from the loss of livelihood and struggling to meet basic human needs, people start to reassemble their lives. Cathryn is an NGO worker from New Zealand who has a ruined home, a teenage son and a Ni-Vanuatu boyfriend she hasn’t heard from since the phone lines went dead. Faia is a community organiser, a radio journalist and a survivor who fights for women to be heard. Together and apart they navigate their places in the complex cultural and social systems of Vanuatu, where tradition clashes with modern urban life. Sado is a novel about relationships – between friends and family, across cultures and communities, and also with the past. When a terrible accident occurs, all of these relationships are called into question.
Sista, Stanap Strong! A Vanuatu Women's Anthology (VUP, 2021)
Sista, Stanap Strong! is an anthology of new writing from Vanuatu by three generations of women – and the first of its kind. With poetry, fiction, essay, memoir, and song, its narrative arc stretches from the days of Blackbirding, to Independence in 1980, to Vanuatu’s coming of age in 2020. Most of these writers are ni-Vanuatu living in Vanuatu. Some have set down roots in New Zealand, Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Canada. Some were born overseas and have made Vanuatu their home. One is just twenty; another is an octogenarian.
The writers in this anthology have chosen to harness the coloniser’s language, English, for their own purposes. They are writing against racism, colonialism, misogyny and sexism. Writing across bloodlines and linguistic boundaries. Professing their love for ancestors, offspring and language – Bislama, vernacular and English.
Mikaela Nyman: Helen Heaths elektriska vänner
Chapbook. A literary essay in Swedish about Helen Heath's award-winning poetry collection Are Friends Electric? (2018), including a selection of Helen's poems in the original English version and in Mikaela's Swedish translation. Publisher: Ellips, Finland / Imprint: lilla e, nr 4. ISBN 978-952-7081-30-3 | ISSN 2814–5062.
För att ta sig ur en rivström måste man röra sig i sidled
Mikaela Nyman's second poetry collection, För att ta sig ur en rivström måste man röra sig i sidled, was published in August 2023 by Ellips in FInland. It was nominated for the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE's Swedish-language Literature Prize 2023 and the Nordic Council of Literature Prize 2024. In February 2024, she was awarded a major literary prize from the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland for this collection. The poems document the turbulent times we live in, with pandemics, climate change, coastal erosion and the devastations of war, and connects Taranaki and Mikaela's native Åland Islands.