About Liz

About Liz | Educational | Residencies | CV |  Podcast | Event Poster

Liz Niven is a poet and writer who was born in Glasgow and currently lives in Dumfries. She has published several poetry collections, including Stravaigin and Burning Whins and written and edited texts to support Scots and English language work in Education. She teaches creative writing and has held a wide range of writing fellowships.

Her collaborative work includes various projects with artists, photographers and sculptors.
The public art work Cree Lines in South West Scotland was a text-led collaboration with Scottish Natural Heritage.

Her Inverness Airport Residency was the subject of an ITV documentary ‘Poet on a Plane’.
Previous posts held include teaching English and Learning Support, Scots Language Development Officer, Cultural Co-ordinator for creative writing in Dumfries & Galloway schools.
She is currently co-editor, with Brian Whittingham, of New Writing Scotland, ASLS.
She has been awarded two Scottish Arts Council Writers’ Bursaries (1996 & 2003) and a Year of the Artist award (2001) for engaging with land users in south west Scotland. In 2006, Liz Niven was an award winner for the third time in the Glasgow University Scots Poetry prize.
She has twice received a TES/Saltire award for co-authoring and editing books for education;
The Kist/A Chiste and Turnstones.

Stories and poems have been widely published in newspapers, anthologies and magazines and broadcast on radio BBC Scotland, Four, Ulster & World Service and Chinese Radio International.
Liz Niven welcomes commissions of all sorts in English and in Scots. She has a wide experience of delivering workshops in creative writing, reading from her own work and writing to deadlines. She enjoys working with adults and young people and is happy to travel to do so.