Nyberg was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario in 1944. He was raised in southern British Columbia by his maternal grandparents, who were working-class Swedish immigrants. He attended the University of British Columbia, where he was among the first graduates of the university’s new Creative Writing Department. There he wrote his first poems under the guidance of Earle Birney. He later returned to UBC to become a certified teacher. In 2004 he was awarded a Postgraduate Diploma in English Linguistics from the University of Central England, Birmingham.

 

Nyberg began his career in education as a Creative Writing instructor at Douglas College in the Fraser Valley, BC. In the late ‘70s he worked at various labor jobs and was a high school substitute teacher in Vancouver. At Vancouver Community College he taught English as a Second Language, mainly to Chinese immigrants and post-war refugees from Vietnam known as the “boat people.” 

 

In 1984 Nyberg left for for Quito, Ecuador. There he taught high school English at Colegio Americano. After that he taught English as a Foreign Language at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, and subsequently at Sultan Qaboos University in the Sultanate of Oman. He remained there until his retirement, when he returned to British Columbia.

 

Nyberg released his first book, The Crazy Horse Suite, a collection of poems for four voices, in 1978, before switching to fiction in 1980. The Crazy Horse Suite was broadcast as an hour-long production on CBC Radio. Galahad Schwartz and the Cockroach Army was published in 1987, winning the Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature. Nyberg published the mainstream novel El Dorado Shuffle in 1998, and another children's book, Bad Day in Gladland in 2011. Throughout the 2010s Nyberg continued writing adult fiction with Mr. Millennium in 2011 and a six-book post-apocalyptic series set in British Columbia, The Raincoast Saga.