Author: Rivera Sun

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay By Rivera Sun. Note: In this solutionary climate fiction story, I chose to re-envision my childhood home of Auburn, Maine in the year 2200. In exploring this transformed future, the writing offers a glimpse of how solutionary climate fiction could be an empowering form of worldbuilding for our changing world. […]

How can anyone sleep at night? My first nightmare about environmental crisis occurred in 1990. I was eight years old. In it, acid rain poured from the sky, scalding the skin of humans and stripping holes in the leaves of trees. On either side of a long, ashen-gray street, billowing plumes of smog chugged out […]

This story by Rivera Sun is part of a 5-story series on climate solutions commissioned by Metta Center for Nonviolence. Find out more, watch an animated film, and find a lesson plan for students ages 11-18 here. A worthless patch of wasteland. That’s what the developers called it. They promised to transform the empty lot […]

This story by Rivera Sun is part of a 5-story series on climate solutions commissioned by Metta Center for Nonviolence. Find out more, watch an animated film, and find a lesson plan for students ages 11-18 here. Faridah woke before daybreak. The sky above the city rooftops and distant hills gleamed gray as she left […]

This story by Rivera Sun is part of a 5-story series on climate solutions commissioned by Metta Center for Nonviolence. Find out more, watch an animated film, and find a lesson plan for students ages 11-18 here. Rosalinda did not want to leave the mountains of Peru. She loved her home with the tin walls […]

This story by Rivera Sun is part of a 5-story series on climate solutions commissioned by Metta Center for Nonviolence. Find out more, watch an animated film, and find a lesson plan for students ages 11-18 here. Each night was war. The elephants invaded in the dark. They came from the forest, crashing and cracking […]

This story by Rivera Sun is part of a 5-story series on climate solutions commissioned by Metta Center for Nonviolence. Find out more, watch an animated film, and find a lesson plan for students ages 11-18 here. Leonardo sulked in the bow of his father’s boat. The sky blazed blue. The water sparkled. The wind […]

By Rivera Sun for Campaign Nonviolence, originally published at Waging Nonviolence In our efforts to build a culture of active nonviolence, Pace e Bene/Campaign Nonviolence has always urged people to practice nonviolence toward oneself, all others (including socially, culturally, economically and politically) and toward the Earth. Violence toward the planet and ecosystems takes uncountable forms: […]

The last thing any of us need is a war with Russia over the Ukraine. You don’t need to know much about foreign policy to know that. Let the pundits and talking heads argue about the nuances of NATO and war maneuvers at the border of Russia. For most Americans, there are at least four […]

It snowed, finally. We’ve been waiting for months, restless and agitated. Have you ever seen your child settle more deeply into slumber after you tuck them under the blanket? That’s how it feels here. I live in the high-altitude desert of Northern New Mexico. Deserts often invoke images of Saharan sands, but this desert sprawls […]

This is an excerpt from The Crown of Light, the fourth novel in the award-winning Ari Ara Series. Find it here. Note: The Paika are a group of clans that live in the Border Mountains between the two nations of Ari Ara’s world. In this scene, Ari Ara, after being taken hostage by them, agrees […]

This is an excerpt from The Crown of Light, the fourth novel in the award-winning Ari Ara Series. Find it here. Note: The Paika is the name and title of the elder who leads the Paika clans. In this scene, she offers some advice to the lovestruck, 15-year-old Ari Ara. The Paika teased out her braid […]

This is an excerpt from The Crown of Light, the fourth novel in the award-winning Ari Ara Series. Find it here. “Tell her the first Alaren tale, great-grandmother,” Finn cajoled, tossing a grin in Ari Ara’s direction. “The one about the Paika Huntress.” “I have told you many times,” The Paika chided Finn, “they are not Alaren […]

The Ari Ara Series Challenges The Glorification of Violence & WarWe need these stories now, more than ever before. In a culture addicted to violence, your support of Ari Ara’s novels is powerful. Ari Ara doesn’t just live in a utopia of peace. She and her friends challenge the culture of war. They use active […]

Today, a child was born, tiny hands curling and unfurling with the startled shock of cool air on wet skin, oxygen flooding into newly-opened lungs as she cries upon entering this strange new world. This child will likely live to see 2100. The date hangs, inconceivable, futuristic, but now within the span of a single […]

Ari Ara Wins Silver Nautilus Award!Desert Song is the second novel to win this social justice fiction honor. Great news! Desert Song has just won a Silver Nautilus Award – the second book in the Ari Ara Series to be honored in this way! The Nautilus Awards are for socially-engaged fiction and I’m tickled pink to have two of […]

It’s outdated. It’s dysfunctional. It’s hated by most of the populace. No, we’re not talking about the line at the DMV. We’re talking about the Selective Service and the military draft. For decades, young men have had to register. Now, congress is considering expanding draft registration to women.  Here’s a better idea: let’s abolish the […]

By Marissa Mommaerts “Winds of Change,” the third part of the trilogy that began with The Dandelion Insurrection, is so rich that I simultaneously want to share it with every visionary changemaker I know, while at the same time rereading it over and over until I absorb every drop of wisdom, hope and strategy into […]

A young Kansas grain farmer and I were riding on a train through Iowa when the subject of the climate crisis came up. He was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed son of a multigenerational Midwest farming family. I’d grown up on a potato farm in Northern Maine. Both of us spent our teenage years in overalls. We […]

A continent-wide snow storm swept across the United States last week. From Seattle to Baton Rouge and from Dallas to Minneapolis, people grappled with road closures, shutdowns, power outages, and freezing temperatures.  From sea to shining sea, ordinary people stepped up to take care of one another. My brother volunteered to snowblow the Seattle offices […]

8 Magical Stories Of How Peace Literature Changes Culture – And Lives By Rivera Sun Four hours per day, six days per week, I take action for peace. It may not look like your typical nonviolent action – I don’t hold signs or block the gates of military bases. The way I wage peace is […]

Image via Today, “Could The COVID-19 Memorial Become Permanent?” Four hundred lights stretch along the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. Each represents one thousand people in America who have died of COVID-19. It is only in their absence that we have space to acknowledge the dead–there is not enough space beside the pool for that […]

This is an excerpt from Winds of Change, the third novel in the Dandelion Trilogy.You can find it here>> It was a time of giddiness and babble, when the world seemed hopeful and lost all at once. Possibility lurked on the edge of each moment. Disaster loomed across every horizon. With humanity at a crossroads, the […]

This is an excerpt from Winds of Change, the third novel in the Dandelion Trilogy.You can find it here>> By morning, the smoke had swallowed the sky. The day dawned in an eerie orange glow. The Council of All Beings disbanded and evacuated. Charlie and Zadie drove north, shoulders twitching and tensing as the fire tripped […]