Spotlight
People March 2026
Writer of the month
KUCHENGA Shenjé is a writer, journalist and speaker with work on many media platforms including Stylist, British Vogue and Netflix.
Her work is focused on the perils of loving, being loved and women living out loud throughout the ages.
Her first novel The Library Thief is the ultimate marriage of her passions for history, mystery and rebels and was shortlisted for the McDermid Debut Award.
Her second novel That Nelson Girl is currently making its way towards publication and promises another rich exploration of the historical record, identity and defiance.
She resides in Manchester where she is determined to continue living a life worth writing about.
We know how beautiful we are.
We have vast memories and imaginations.
We come together to excavate, speculate and theorise.
We have found the evidence and make quilts out of snatched glimpses of a pre-colonial paradise.
This has given even those beyond our ancestry sight of a need for their own survival.
We ask what names for trans girls, trans boys and enbys might there have been?
What names have survived that we now fashion into ourselves?
The gag is that we know we were once so loved - absolutely - if not forever unconditionally.
“I am beautiful and I know I am beautiful” said Crystal LaBeija around the corner from Stonewall one year before the riots.
We remember a time when we were looked upon as internally and externally golden.
We were loved from our hair follicles to our toe nails.
That love was taken. It was withdrawn.
We have wandered with an undying thirst for it ever since.
We shan’t ever stop searching.
We share the same shapes and feelings.
To bathe in the purity of one’s vision, that once felt impossible, before becoming delectably inevitable.
We responded to the riotous determination inside without the promise of protection.
We have walked into the rolling waves of fire knowing our calling in this time.
For no one has better guardian angels than us.
Polaroids from the Black Trans Lives Matter march