Short Bio
Khaya Ronkainen is a poet, novelist, writer, editor, and artisan author. Her work is shaped by personal history, cross-cultural experience, nature, language, and the many ways people carry home within and across borders. She is the author of three poetry collections: The Sheltering, From the Depths of Darkness, and Seasons Defined. Her poems, essays, articles, and reviews appear in international journals and platforms including Brittle Paper, Kalahari Review, Spillwords Press, LIT eZine, Navigating the Change, POC-lukupiiri, and more. Distorted Is The View, a tender and intricate family novel set in 1980s South Africa, explores love, silence, and the ways perspective distorts what we think we know.
Long Bio
Khaya Ronkainen is a poet, novelist, writer, editor, and artisan author. Born and raised in South Africa and now based in Finland, her work is shaped by personal history, cross-cultural experience, nature, language, and the many ways people carry home within and across borders. Growing up between urban and rural landscapes in a country shaped by apartheid and its aftermath, she writes from a closeness to place, family life, multilingual culture, and historical complexity. These concerns continue to inform her writing, including Distorted Is The View, a tender and intricate family novel set in 1980s South Africa that explores love, silence, and the ways perspective distorts what we think we know.
Extending beyond her South African roots, Khaya’s work across poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, and photography explores home, hybrid identity, belonging, reinvention, everyday beauty, and the restorative power of the natural world. She is especially drawn to the quiet forces that shape people’s lives: what is inherited, what is carried in the body, what is remade, and what becomes possible through tenderness, grace, and attention.
Alongside Distorted Is The View (2026), she has authored three poetry collections: The Sheltering (2022), From the Depths of Darkness (2019), and Seasons Defined (2018). Her other writings appear in international journals and platforms including Brittle Paper, Kalahari Review, Spillwords Press, LIT eZine, Navigating the Change, POC-lukupiiri, and more.
Khaya is active in literary and cultural work. She serves as a volunteer Editor-in-Chief of the Oriole Blog—the current publishing format of The Oriole Journal, the Finnish-African Society’s digital publication. She is also a member of the National Writers Association of South Africa. In these roles and affiliations, she helps support writing that honours voice, context, and the fullness of African and diasporic experiences. Before this, she was part of the editorial team at LIT eZine, a literary e-magazine dedicated to amplifying voices of underrepresented writers from around the world.
My Creative Practice
Hiking is my faith and I'm its devotee. Photography is my means of exercising soft fascination and a closer look at the natural world. Poetry is my prayer and a church I teeter at the threshold of. Personal essay is my attempt at expressing, and fiction is my truth.
What I Care About
Language: The texture of what we dare to express
Language is not neutral—it carries histories, cultures, traditions, silences, and power. And the languages I speak function as a set of keys, unlocking doors to different worlds. As a writer, I weigh each word not just for how it sounds but for its origins and who it might exclude. The ability to read unlocks the understanding of life’s essential hidden facets, demonstrating how the written word derives its power from our deliberate use of language to convey meaning.
Stories: Whose, by whom, and for whom?
Stories carry questions of voice, power, and belonging. Who gets to speak? Who is listened to? Who is allowed complexity? In my writing and editorial work, I am drawn to spaces that make room for African, diasporic, and cross-cultural experiences to exist with fullness, nuance, and self-definition.
Nature: The paradox of writing about nature
I don’t presume Mother Nature to be voiceless. Beautiful yet ruthless, she’s a powerful advocate for herself. Hence, writing about nature is inherently political. Because we are not separate from nature; we are nature. For me, writing about the moon or a flower is to reject being boxed into a single narrative and about broadening the scope of African literature.
Beauty: What is beauty and why does it matter?
I’m drawn to beauty in the every day—the quiet gestures, shared rituals, and ordinary light that make a life feel lived. Through my newsletter, Notes on Making Room, I read home as an archive of stories, tenderness, and the unsaid, making space for beauty as we learn from the past to move forward.
Community: I am, because We are.
My people are my community. Social markers do not define my community. These individuals do not follow me and I do not follow them, but we walk alongside each other and sometimes in each other’s shoes. I have them in the South, in the North and in the digital world. Trust, mutual support, and shared values foster a sense of belonging.
What Fascinates Me
- Hybrid identity and multilingualism
- Making an impact through storytelling
- Writing and publishing in the digital age
- Women’s health, ageing and reinvention
- Travel and cross-cultural experiences
*Learn more about me and my work from these meaningful conversations below:
Conversations + Features
On Sheltering, Writing and Life Influences with Mona Soorma @LIT eZine
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On Making of ‘The Sheltering’ with writer, social scientist & self-confessed wanna-be visual artist Anu Hirsiaho. Music by HarumachiMusic from Pixabay
LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION
October, Seasonal Duality and Language with musical artist Laura Bruno Lilly (Part III)
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October, Seasonal Duality and Language with musical artist Laura Bruno Lilly (Part II)
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On October, Seasonal Duality and Language with musical artist Laura Bruno Lilly (PART I)
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Introduce Yourself with Yecheilyah Ysrayl for PBS Blog
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Life of a Poet with Sherry Marr for Poets United
READ THE CONVERSATION