That Nikki You Know (TNYK) is an internationally recognised slam poet, musician, podcast creator and author.
As a child, Nikki always had great style, with a notable love for vibrant patterns in clothing.This is Nikki playing with zir grandpa's train set in zir grandparents' house.
Early beginnings in performance
In school, Nikki was in every play, sang in the choir and started contemporary dance lessons.These plays were mostly large cast ensemble pieces with musical elements. Every year, they would put on a "kids' show", a series of one-act plays, and a play for the Sears Drama Festival.During this time, Nikki also started performing original music in local cafes and busking with zir guitar.
Dear Me
After university (ze studied psychology), Nikki formed a band called Dear Me.Emmanuel MacCaull played drums, Daniel Richard was on bass, and Nikki sang and played guitar. Together, they performed Nikki's original songs.The band was going strong, with each performance leading to more bookings, until Nikki suddenly got sick.
"The switch is flipped,
the light turns on,
and I realise...
I'm dying."
After surviving two major surgeries at 23, Nikki got a new lease on life.Married at 21 (and engaged since 18), Nikki decided that the next phase of life needed to be faced alone. So, ze got divorced, moved into a shared house with eco-anarchist hippies and became a slam poet.
The Guelph Poetry Slam (GPS - Where you at?!) was a lively and relatively fresh initiative in Guelph.Started by Truth and Beth Anne, the couple who nurtured that community as they would a child, the poetry slam happened in the basement of the Guelph Guggenheim with dirt floors and a smoking room in the back.Within a few months of slamming, Nikki made the team and flew to Victoria, BC to compete at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (CFSW) where they placed 3rd in the country!
As the slam evolved and moved into eBar, Nikki stuck with it and was on the team again the following year.During this time, Nikki also began exploring zir queerness more publicly and exploring the many creative communities of Guelph.During this time, Nikki had continued to write more music and was eager to return to performing zir music with a band.Nikki moved to Montreal to gain access to a larger pool of musicians.
The Misprints were a special band in 2016/2017 who quickly became darlings of the Montreal bar scene.Wearing the rejected leggings from Nikki's day job at a custom print clothing factory, this band combined original music from both Nikki and Tim Coker's repertoires.As with Dear Me, every show led to more. They were invited to play POP Montreal just before circumstances changed and the band dissolved.
The Quickest Way To Die EP
This EP features 3 original songs performed, recorded, mixed and mastered entirely by TNYK.Through The Heart is the song that was featured in the film, Bleed With Me (2020). The music video for this song was a collaboration with Costa Rican videographer, Ale Hidalgo, and features fellow slam poet and collage artist, Alex Tkachuk.
Around this time, Nikki began writing NSFW articles on Tabooless.net under a pseudonym. Spanning gender, sexuality, relationship styles, kink and pop culture trends, Tabooless continues to be a home for Nikki's analyses of the psychology of sex.
Meanwhile, Nikki returned to slam poetry, this time representing Montreal, to perform on the very stage that got Nikki into zir first slam team (in Guelph).Nikki wrote a new poem, Run Little Girl, while at the festival which was then performed as a 5 person poem.Shortly after returning from CFSW 2018, Nikki created an album (Memories) to archive selected slam poems that Nikki had written and performed over the years.
During the pandemic, Nikki produced two podcast series.The first was called Unknown Artist, featuring local musicians, and the second was The Gay & Grey Montreal Podcast, which gave a platform for older adults in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community to have their voices heard and their stories told.
Thursday Colours is the first full length vinyl record produced by TNYK with Babyhorse Records.It includes 15 different musicians, a choir featuring the voices of members of Gay & Grey Montreal, and a fair bit of sound magic.Tap the album cover (photographed by Emily Read) to listen and buy the album.
In 2025, Nikki got into zir first major Bollywood film, War 2.This happened just as Nikki completed the full manuscript for zir first book, Looking At The Stars. This book is the first of a series which builds off of Nikki's experiences in the creative scene of Guelph, ON in the 2010s.Nikki has since been involved in the filming of King, and has begun script writing.