My fingers are folded into a fist pried open by prayer – a rose in bloom rupturing like my ovarian cyst. I crush my birth control tablets and pray to God for a better womb […]

Do I accept me and mine as darkness? Perhaps I ought not to. For the generation that comes after us. To convince them as I have had to be convinced that there is so much light, life, in myself – in my kin – to give the world. But what do we keep giving ourselves to and for? Consumption, and consumption, why radiate if it is swallowed whole by the machinations of a coloniser?

I consider radiance to be a state of illumination and purification that culminates from an intense process of refinement. I equate it to the spiritual beautification of one’s being, the way one observes, the manner in which one speaks, listens and engages with the world. To be in a state of radiance is to be in perpetual refinement. Our life experiences in their variations and uniformities, and our choices, whether to resist or endure, become the processes that make us radiant

I sometimes retreat into confusion. In these moments, I forget that I am merely human, a transient being. My own radiance—that inner light—is inevitably dimmed: sometimes by the state of the world, and other times by the storms within my own mind

Radiance is motherhood. Being a single mother has given me eyes that I would never have in any other timeline. I am grateful for the gift of life passed through my womb. Birthing is a form of knowing.

Radiance is the light reflected from our words pointing towards what matters most to us. There is a deep vulnerability involved in standing beneath this light or feeling charged with directing it. Every moment of delving into this and choosing to be seen, to be heard, brings us closer to creating a life for ourselves from our words.

In this tenth edition of A Long Talk, Liberian poet Jeremy Teddy Karn is in conversation with Ghanaian poet Henneh Kyereh Kwaku. This conversation begins with an depth look on each writer and their relation […]

In this ninth edition of A Long Talk, Nigerian poets Abu Bakr Sadiq and Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto have a deeply profound conversation that touches on life in Nigeria, the present (and future) implications of studying and […]

Zukiswa Wanner is a critically acclaimed South African journalist, novelist and editor who recently released her fifth novel Love, Marry, Kill with South African publisher Kwela. For this seventh edition of A Short Talk, 2025 […]

I have been thinking recently about how once a story, poem, essay (whatever container holds it) exists in the world, the storyteller no longer holds the pen. The readers bring so much of themselves to the page that when they finish, they leave with a completely different experience from the writer, and even every other reader. I love that