Book Launch Experience
Standing
on Our
Last Bones
A literary meditation on grief, chronic illness, faith, migration, and the tenderness it takes to survive. By Ngoni Diana Johns.
We carry each other."
Standing on Our Last Bones is a literary meditation on invisible battles — the grief the body holds, the faith that survives suffering, the tenderness of becoming after loss.
Born from five years of chronic illness, migration, and the quiet work of remembering who you are — this is writing that holds you as you find your way back.
"I did not name my work after light because my life was bright — I named it after light because I kept finding it in the darkest rooms."
Zimbabwean-born British poet, speaker, and founder of Chiedza Co. Her work explores chronic illness, faith, grief, and identity.
Standing on Our Last Bones
"Some grief enters the body and never fully leaves. Some faith is rebuilt not in churches, but in the quiet space between one breath and the next."
A poetry and prose collection written across five years of chronic illness, surgical recovery, migration memory, and the daily work of becoming. This is writing that gives language to what bodies hold when words fail us.
"A sacred act of bearing witness — to illness, to diaspora, to faith that refuses to be extinguished."
Chiedza
"I did not name my work after light because my life was bright — I named it after light because I kept finding it in the darkest rooms."
Chiedza — meaning light in Shona — was the first act of naming. Written while studying at the University of Chester, this debut collection carries the seeds of everything that followed: grief, belonging, faith, and the quiet act of finding language for what resists it.
Read alongside Standing on Our Last Bones, Chiedza becomes the beginning of an ongoing conversation with darkness and light — a conversation Ngoni has continued to deepen over seven years.
Chiedza is the beginning. Standing on Our Last Bones is the reckoning. Together, they form a complete literary portrait of one woman's journey through darkness into becoming.
A Reckoning.
A Remembrance.
A Prayer.
The official launch of Standing on Our Last Bones — an evening of poetry, live music, audience reflection, and sacred communal gathering.
Textured lighting. Candlelight. Intentional silence. Reflection walls. Handwritten archive. This will not feel like a book launch. It will feel like remembrance.
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Monthly essays, healing reflections, early access to signed editions, and an invitation to the launch. For women rebuilding with intention.
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The Launch Masterplan
Standing on Our Last Bones + Chiedza Co. — full ecosystem launch strategy
I did not just attend a launch.
I experienced something sacred."