The smiling individual in the photo is me, Vuyo Kwakweni.

 

The website you have found yourself on also happens to be a place where I post some of my creative work. I write poetry, essays, and churn out the occasional short story (many fantastic but ill-fitted lines are lost in that process); I sometimes make video edits for television shows or movies that I had no choice but to make because the parallels were right there! (It also keeps this site nice and unmonetizable, which is good for the soul.) An extremely willing executor of fantastic ideas, I sometimes am. Other times, I am just stubborn enough to communicate a bad idea as best as I can.

 

I suppose I should write something about why I write:

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Because while reading Cixin Liu’s Death’s End, I would read a page before I was overcome with thoughts on why humanity keeps moving forward.

Because Koleka Putuma’s poetry connected me in unspoken ways to my friends.

Because I read a poem once on tumblr, and have since been unable to find the post, but I have it – luckily, thankfully – memorised after having it on my bedroom wall for years.

Because my English teacher gifted me a book for my birthday.

Because I smile every time I see an Andy Weir book.

Because my mother took me to reading sessions at the bookstore that my would-be best friends’ father owned.

Because I am typing this, hunger nudging me, and trying to figure out a way to say-without-saying that I love stories and I love storytellers, and that the two are indistinguishable from my-self.