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April 24, 2024

“The Ordeal of Queens” – an excerpt from River Dragon ___________ This is an excerpt from River Dragon, Book 5 in the Ari Ara Series. You can get River Dragon through our Community Publishing Campaign. The lanterns and lit windows of Mariana Capital gleamed like a low constellation of stars. Ari Ara, Brinelle, and the others gathered abovedeck. Each stood quietly, holding their churning emotions close to their chest, no two reactions the same. The river bore the vessel swiftly, inexorably, toward the looming threshold of change. Ari Ara wavered between eagerly leaning into the downstream charge of the ship and nervously bracing her …

April 7, 2024

It’s four in the morning and my heart is in my throat again. The presidential election in November fills me with nothing but dread and despair.  On the one hand, we’re facing a candidate who spews hatred, advocates violence, and peddles sneakers and bibles while facing astronomical legal costs for his fraud, lies, sexual assaults and lawbreaking. One the other hand, we’re told that to stop him, we have to vote for a president who keeps sending weapons and billions of dollars to a genocidal nation that has killed more than 33,000 people (including more than 12,000 children) since October.  This is not …

April 1, 2024

Ari Ara’s novels will live longer than any of us. What a thought! Just like we’re still reading Tolkien, exploring Narnia, and traveling to Never Never Land with Peter Pan, imagine readers of the future enjoying Ari Ara’s adventures 70, 90, or 110 years from now! What will people think in 2134? Imagine the children of the 2100s seeing Ari Ara as a cultural icon like Peter Pan and Wendy, Lucy and Edmond, or Frodo and Sam. Instead of fighting pirates, witches, or orcs, though, the children of the future will be playacting nonviolent struggles and embarking on imagined quests in …

March 23, 2024

This is an excerpt from River Dragon, Book 5 in the Ari Ara Series. You can get River Dragon through our Community Publishing Campaign. Ari Ara rubbed her eyes and stared out the crosshatch windows of the ship. The morning had crawled by while she studied. The dense river ports had given way to smaller villages. Fish weirs dotted the reeds in the shallows. Large swaths of water-loving grains swayed on the flatlands, nourished with rich minerals from the annual floods. On a brilliant blue day such as this, entire villages poured into the wetland fields to stand ankle deep in the …

March 9, 2024

“Heir Apparent” – Chapter One of River Dragon This is an excerpt from River Dragon, Book 5 in the Ari Ara Series. You can get River Dragon through our Community Publishing Campaign. Gritting her teeth, Ari Ara waved to the crowd, a fixed smile plastered on her face. The horse fidgeted beneath her, sensing her discomfort and distraction. Her fitted jacket was so stiff that she could hardly move. Designed to prevent slouching, Ari Ara thought in annoyance, and any other motion unbefitting to a royal heir. Solid as a suit of armor – and just as uncomfortable – the jacket held …

February 6, 2024

By Rivera Sun Love is in the air . . . or at least occupying the airwaves this week, selling chocolates and roses and candlelit dinners for two. But this romantic love is just a thin slice of the feast of love that exists in the human heart. And when Valentine’s Day rolls around, I always rebel against such limited fare and demand the full deliciousness of all kinds of love. Love of one’s family. Love between friends. Biophilia (love of nature). Agape (the selfless love that a person feels for strangers and humanity). Love for what Dr. King called …

January 18, 2024

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay By Rivera Sun for Peace Voice As the primaries heat up and the nation goes through the throes of another election cycle, cast your vote for something unexpected, something that defies the lies of politicians, something that could save our nation – and most certainly our souls. Make a choice to weather this election year with respect and decency toward your fellow citizens, no matter our political views. In past years, our election cycles have been marked with fear, distrust, polarization, heightened divisiveness, even violence. In 2024, if we do one thing as citizens, …

January 2, 2024

We all have our reasons for getting alarmed about the climate crisis. With bare ground at Christmas and no snow on the horizon, my neighbors just got theirs. This Northern Maine valley nestles against the border of Canada – and winter without snow is unfathomable. Snowmobiling is a big deal around here. While most of Maine suffers its tourist season along with the blackflies and summer sunburns, my neck of our vast woods gets its annual rush of visitors when the snow starts flying.  They come to these northern reaches with their snowmobiles on trailers to go joyriding over our …

November 9, 2023

… by Rivera Sun If you enjoy this Solutionary Climate Fiction Story, you will also enjoy Ghosts & Gleaners. … “That crow lady’s back.” “She’s more buzzard than crow.” “Magpie, I’d say. Always on the lookout for shiny trinkets.” Peering through the grimy window, clutching identical mugs of steaming herbal tea, the three workers watched the hunched woman scrabble through the debris field of the Middens. The grass-encrusted garbage mounds towered behind her, two lurking behemoths peering down through the morning mist. The lights of the air quality monitors blinked in a steady heartbeat, signaling assurances that the Middens had …

October 10, 2023

Editor’s Note From Rivera Sun From Sept 25-27, thousands of Indigenous Colombians marched in Bogata, calling for an end to paramilitary violence in their regions. They also voiced support for social reforms to alleviate poverty, pointing out the systemic connection between economic hardship, drug cartels, and the violence. It’s a connection that many places worldwide can, unfortunately, relate to. In Los Angeles, hotel workers are making a little headway, securing a deal with a second hotel. The agreement covers 300 workers and offers increased wages, improved healthcare, more robust staffing, pension increases, and more inclusive hiring procedures for formerly incarcerated …

October 9, 2023

This post was originally published on Waging Nonviolence. Twin Cities Nonviolent, one of the sites with our Nonviolent Cities Project, held two environmentally-themed musical actions as part of their 12 Days Free From Violence. On Sept. 30, the symphony group Classical Uprising performed “The (Uncertain) Four Seasons,” Vivaldi’s classic with a climate twist. On Sept. 25, another group performed “A Prophetic Opera For Our Times” with readings on humanity and our connection to the Earth. Twin Cities Nonviolent also participated in the “Hands Across the Mississippi March” that had an emphasis on clean water, air and land. Children painting giant murals for …

July 18, 2023

One of the great joys of my life is having a front-row seat to some of the most innovative, inspiring, solutionary work that’s going on. Over the 10+ years since I wrote The Dandelion Insurrection, I’ve found enduring hope in learning how people are building new systems in their local communities, solving problems, and strengthening connection. Of course, these ideas have made their way into my novels … hoping that people like you will be inspired to plant the seeds of these ideas in your local community. Here are some of my favorites from the many examples across the Dandelion Trilogy: …

July 17, 2023

Nonviolence News Editor’s Note From Rivera Sun If you zoom out to a distant vantage point of human history, you can see the arc of the universe bending toward a certain kind of justice. If we secure a future for humanity, historians will look back on these times and identify them as an era in which ordinary people asserted their rights – and the rights of nature – against the greed-based desires of rich people and megacorporations. Many of the stories in this week’s Nonviolence News embody the nitty-gritty steps of a movement made of billions of people and millions …

July 11, 2023

A Decade of Literary Resistance With The Dandelion InsurrectionCan you believe it’s been 10 years? The Dandelion Insurrection has been lighting up readers’ imaginations for 10 years. It’s hard to believe this golden yellow book has reached a decade of circulation on this maddeningly tumultuous world. It was written as Snowden made his revelations about the extensiveness of the US surveillance state. The Occupy Protests had just been raided and dismantled by a crackdown coordinated under President Obama (who had bailed out the Wall St. banks that led to the protests). The climate crisis was already crashing down upon our heads …

July 10, 2023

Nonviolence News Editor’s Note From Rivera Sun Looking around the globe in this week’s Nonviolence News, it’s evident that people are gripped in “struggles of survival”. The demands are sensible, reasonable: people want safety from brutal repression, they want wages that pay the bills, and they want a planet they can live on that won’t poison them with every breath or sip of water. Is that too much to ask? South Africa is bracing for a general strike over cost-of-living increases. It’s a tactic many countries’ workers could be considering, mobilizing across sectors and tapping into the power of both …

July 3, 2023

https://youtu.be/nYvCx1y7aZA Author Rivera Sun reflects on reaching the 10th anniversary of the publication of The Dandelion Insurrection. The novel has been read by thousands, including by activists in tree-sits or on the front lines of pipeline resistance. Over a decade of resistance and reading, Rivera Sun shares a short lookback on the journey. Find The Dandelion Insurrection and sequels here.

July 3, 2023

Kids ask the darndest things. On a virtual Author Q & A with a school classroom that read The Way Between, I was asked the question: what do I think about ChatGPT and AI novels? Rather than tear off on a long-winded rant about the long arcs of automation and tech capitalism’s lack of concern for the human toll of their inventions, I turned it around and asked the 10-12 year old students: Do you think AI could have written The Way Between? Almost every hand went up, to my chagrin, so I asked a second question: Do you think …

April 4, 2023

. By Rivera Sun for Peace Voice At the post office, my neighbor rolled down the window of his pick-up truck to chat. As is typical in Northern Maine this time of year, we praised the sunlight, warmth, bare patches of ground, and eyed the shrinking snowbanks with delight. “Winter wasn’t so bad, this year,” he weighed in, “not like it used to be.” At 85, he’s old enough to remember the -20 F temperatures from January onward. At 40, I also remember that same frigid sting, particularly in the mornings while my siblings and I waited for the school …

March 20, 2023

(Note: This tale is part of the fictional Stories of the Third Brother, an ancient book of folktales about Alaren in Ari Ara’s world. Each folktale teaches a lesson in waging peace using true stories as a spark of inspiration for the tales of courageous nonviolent action. You can find the stories in The Adventures of Alaren here>> ) How could he remind the king of the true cost of war? Alaren strode down the street, angry and worried. His brother, King Marin, was visiting this mid-sized city in the eastern foothills and he had come to stop his headstrong sibling from starting …

March 15, 2023

Image by Silviu on the street from Pixabay This article was originally published on Campaign Nonviolence’s Community Page on Waging Nonviolence. It is reposted with permission. “Aren’t we supposed to sing beyond the choir?” This question recently came up during a training, the person’s eyebrows drawing down into a perplexed expression. On the screen, a diagram of the Spectrum of Allies – a classic activism tool that helps us refine our strategy to sway people toward our cause – had the segments on mobilizing passive allies highlighted. I’d just told them to remember to sing to the choir from time …

January 23, 2023

Originally published by Campaign Nonviolence (in collaboration with Nonviolence News) on Waging Nonviolence. Nonviolent action is an art, a science and a toolbox for making change. With over 300 methods of waging struggle — from street art to strikes, boycotts to blockades — and millions of people engaging with it, nonviolent action is innovative, unexpected and sometimes laugh-out-loud surprising.  If nonviolent struggle has a bread-and-butter item, it’s protests. They’re everywhere. They can be so routine, in fact, that the news media often yawns and ignores them. But instead of “yet another boring protest,” people can infuse their ideas with a …

January 21, 2023

When I was a teenager, I knew global warming was caused by fossil fuels. So did Exxon.  For decades, Exxon has been hiding the truth about the climate crisis, burying their own scientific reports. From 1970 to 2003, the oil company ran studies that accurately predicted the disastrous consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels.  They modeled out the alarming reality of the disasters we are living in. They knew that continuing to burn oil would lead to the forest fires that burnt my friend’s house to the ground, the floods that destroyed the coastal California city I lived in, and the …

January 4, 2023

I have a new rule: any day that’s warmer than the historic average is a day to take climate action. In Northern Maine today, the temperature is a nippy 31 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s still cold, but the historic average is a frigid 14.4 degrees.

October 30, 2022

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. You can find it as a pdf here. _____________ “Chickadee Evans, come back here and honor the ancestors!” My mother’s holler startled the silence of the dark cemetery, sharp with exasperation. “No!” I yelled back, smacking into a gravestone as I craned over my shoulder. …

June 15, 2022

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 of smokestacks. I was running, searching for sanctuary from the toxic waste. Nowhere was safe. It’s 2022. I’m turning forty this summer. The climate crisis is crashing down in cascades of disasters – forest fires, torrential floods, crop failures, ferocious hurricanes, heat domes … the …

February 19, 2022

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 near Nuru’s apartment into the “Jewel of Nairobi”. Nuru’s blood boiled at the thought of the twenty-story skyrise, full of expensive apartments and shops and offices. In Nuru’s view, the empty lot was already a jewel, a diamond in the rough set in the heart …

February 19, 2022

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 the house, water buckets in each hand. If she hurried, she’d beat the long line and return in time for school. She was lucky. Her family apartment was close. Other students, Halimah and Laela, had stopped coming to class entirely. The well was a long …

February 19, 2022

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 that chattered in the wind. She was born in this valley shaped like a bowl. She did not want to move to the city and leave behind her Abuela Jacinta and her aunts, uncles, and cousins. It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t her fault the thin …

February 16, 2022

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 through the underbrush at the edges of the fields. Dev’s father and the other farmers stood guard in the rice paddies, firing guns at the sky, blazing bright headlights from the trucks, hurling explosives and fire crackers at the massive creatures, trying to scare them …

February 6, 2022

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 ruffled the golden grasses along the Italian coast’s pale cliffs. Many boys would be happy to be fishing with their father on such a beautiful day. But those boys were not Leo. “If I miss school again,” he complained loudly over the rumble of the …