Tawahum Bige
Tawahum Bige is a Łutselkʼe Dene, Plains Cree poet and spoken word artist from unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-waututh Territory (Vancouver). Completing his Bachelor of Arts in creative writing at KPU in 2019, he’s continued to establish himself in the arts community, working as a poetry mentorship facilitator and self-employed writer. “KPU encouraged me to get involved in the field before I even graduated. Finding that path changed my whole life’s direction. You can work and connect on an intimate level here. It’s easy to feel welcome.” Speaking at various rallies and protests and performing at venues across Canada, Tawahum represented KPU at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and completed the first-ever Indigenous Spoken Word residency at the Banff Centre during his education. He also worked with other members of the KPU community to run the annual KPU Pow Wow and served as an Aboriginal Student Representative with the Kwantlen Student Association.
“I connected with Indigenous culture and community. I was representing myself and my communities in the public or at national events” he says, adding, “the relatively small yet active Indigenous community on campus allows you to engage with you Indigeneity on your own terms in a safe environment.” Now, Tawahum has been published in over a dozen literary journals and magazines, with his work first being published before he completed his degree and receiving his first grant to create his own poetry collection within a year of graduating. He currently has self-published three chapbooks, with additional poetry collections coming soon.
“You will never actually be fully ready—dive in head-first anyway. The process will teach you more than you would ever know.”
Nina Mosall
Nina Mosall graduated from KPU's Creative Writing BA program in 2017 and hasn’t slowed down since. Born in Surrey to Iranian refugees, Nina attended KPU and shortly after, the University of British Columbia, in which she obtained an MA in Library Studies, opening the door for her to work in public service. Currently working as a librarian in Victoria, she writes poetry when she is not singing to babies, helping seniors figure out how to use cell phones, or delighting in the natural wonders the island has to offer. Her poetry and short stories have appeared frequently in Kwantlen Polytechnic University's literary magazine Pulp and in the literary magazine Event.
Bebakhshid, her debut poetry collection, came out in June of 2023. The collection explores Middle Eastern identity, immigration, familial relationships, and the romance of everyday life. Mosall wrote the majority of Bebakhshid at KPU. Attending the university's Creative Writing program assisted her towards coming into her own voice, experimenting with different styles of poetry, networking and forming connections with other writers, as well as navigating the business of writing and seeking publication opportunities. Nina is currently working on a few poetry collections and looking to improve her surfing skills.
Geoff Nilson
Geoffrey Nilson is a poet, editor, musician, and literary critic born in Duncan, BC. He graduated from KPU in 2016 with a BA in Creative Writing and worked for a number of years as a copywriter and freelance journalist. His poetry, book reviews, and critical writing have appeared widely in journals and magazines. His most recent book, Light Makes a Ruin (above/ground, 2022), writes the bound, painful, and isolated space of pandemic lockdown as an extended series of visual poems, where a creative practice enacts an expression of architectural limitation.
Since leaving KPU, Nilson has been the editor and publisher of micropress pagefiftyone, and served as Secretary and member of the Board of Directors for the League of Canadian Poets. After completing his MA in English in 2021, Nilson is now a PhD student in the department of English at Simon Fraser University, where he was awarded the Whitford / Stevenson Graduate Scholarship in Canadian Literature and is the 2024 recipient of the Charles Olson Award. His dissertation in progress – “Burning Frames: Canada, Literary Nationalism, and the Post-millennium Long Poem” – analyzes settler-colonial desire as it manifests in Canadian writing, focusing on how the long poem has been deployed to reinforce the colonial imaginary, while also serving as a weapon of critique against the Canadian state.
“My time at KPU taught me two vital lessons: that reading is fundamental to my creative craft, and that writing is a vocation that only ‘works’ when engaged with the social and the historical. The instructors in the Creative Writing Department always pushed me to engage beyond myself with the wider world. Both my soul and my texts are better for it.”
While not playing guitar and writing poems (of every possible sort), Geoffrey (occasionally) teaches literature at Vancouver Community College and for the Humanities 101 community program at University of British Columbia.
Visit his website at www.vcovcfvca.com