Nafisa A. Iqbal is a Bangladeshi writer, researcher, and activist living and working in Vancouver, B.C. She is a graduate of the MFA Creative Writing program at Columbia University.
“Let no one be fooled that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it.”
— Chinua Achebe
About
Nafisa is among the third generation of women in her family to pursue writing as a lifelong path. Nafisa has lived across the world. At eighteen, she found herself on her own, 8,000 miles away from her home in Bangladesh in the tumultuous industrial wash cycle that is New York City. After 8 years in that brutal and beautiful city, she settled in Vancouver, British Columbia to soften her heart, in search of a slower pace of life and a local murder of crows to feed. A decade after first leaving home, she has since returned to Dhaka City to care for her aging parents and their 18-year-old cockatoo.
Achievements
In 2020, Nafisa was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize among over 5,000 applicants. During her time at Columbia University, she served as the Co-President of Our Word, a student organization supporting marginalized writers. At Columbia, she received the Felipe P. De Alba fellowship awarded by the Chair of the Writing Program. She is represented by Naomi Eisenbeiss of InkWell Management.
Her poem, I Tried To Be A Muslim, has been nominated for Best Young Poets 2024. Her poem, Sixteen Salvation, won the Lascaux Prize in Poetry 2024 and awarded $1,000. Her short story, The Vegetarian, was a finalist for the Waasnode Prize 2024 awarded by Passages North. Nafisa’s essay, Those Who Came Before, was chosen as a Notable Essay of 2024 in the Best American Essays 2025 anthology.
Writing
FICTION
The Vegetarian, Passages North (Issue 46, in print) [finalist for Waasnode Prize 2024]
Hereditary, Asian American Writers’ Workshop The Margins
Majnoon, The Ex-Puritan(Issue 55)
Forget Him, Tint Journal(Issue Fall ‘20)
The Shedding, adda(Commonwealth Foundation)
Bellow, FOLIO (Issue 38, in print)
Material Abstraction/Mutual Attraction, great weather for MEDIA anthology (Beacon Radiant issue)
Feral, Foglifter Magazine (Spring 2025 issue, in print)
The Tent, Room Magazine (Issue 48.3 Rest/Unrest, in print)
POETRY
Sixteen, Salvation, The Lascaux Review [winner of the Lascaux Prize 2024, nominated for Best Young Poets 2025]
The Dead Sea, wildness (Issue 31)
I Tried To Be A Muslim, wildness (Issue 31) [nominated for Best Young Poets 2024]
Death, You’re the Elephant in the Room, Gyroscope Review (Spring 2023 issue, in print)
My Screen Is the Temple of My Yearning and, By God, I Am Praying, Common Ground Review
A Man Has Died, Common Ground Review
Union, Unravelling, Anodyne Magazine (Vol. 4, in print)
In Search of a Better Life, Foglifter Magazine (Spring 2025 issue, in print)
two images, both of g—d, The Offing
Louis Kahn’s Ghost, Glossy Planet [1st Place Winner of March Challenge]
Head in the Clouds, Feet in Compression Socks, The Fiddlehead (Summer 2026, Disability Issue)
NONFICTION
The Divine Aquatic,The Rumpus
How Medical Gaslighting Harms Women, The Mighty
Those Who Came Before, Fourth Genre (Issue 26.1), [Notable Essays and Nonfiction of 2024, Best American Essays 2025]
Thinking-(queerly)-with the Crocus, Visual Arts Research (Vol 51, No. 2, Winter 2025)
Events
SPEAKER
Undisciplined Conversation: Poetic Inquiry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, October 2024
Medical Gaslighting, Global Genes RARE Health Equity Summit 2022, Atlanta, GA, November 2022
‘Skin of the Moon’: A Poetic Inquiry of Dhaka Muslin, Canadian South Asian Studies Association (CSASA), George Brown University, Toronto, Canada, June 2025
Sensorial A-r-tography: Walking with Public Art, International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) World Congress, Palacký University, Olomouc, Czechia, July 2025
Thinking-with-the Crocus: An A-r-tographic Inquiry, International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) World Congress, Palacký University, Olomouc, Czechia, July 2025
ORGANIZER
Editors Panel with Claire Boyle (McSweeney’s), Cressida Leyshon (The New Yorker) and Elizabeth DeMeo (Tin House), Columbia University School of the Arts, Our Word, New York, April 2022
Postcolonial Narratives Panel with Asako Serizawa, Kawai Strong Washburn, Novuyo Rose Tshuma, and Sally Wen Mao, Columbia University School of the Arts, Our Word, New York, April 2022
An Agent Conversation between Jin Auh (The Wylie Agency) and Sarah Bolling (The Gernert Company), Columbia University School of the Artsm Our Word, New York, March 2022
Alice Wong Spring Writer-in-Residence, Conversation and Q&A, Columbia University School of the Arts, Our Word, New York, February 2022
Sally Wen Mao Fall Writer-in-Residence, Reading and Workshop, Columbia University School of the Arts, Our Word, New York, December 2021
Palestinian Artists Panel with Zaina Arafat, Sumaya Awad, and Betty Shamieh, Columbia University School of the Arts, Our Word, New York, June 2021
Email Nafisa. Or find her on Instagram at the_monafisa.
Contact