Category: Uncategorized

We may be months away from ending the US military draft, once and for all.  After a court ruled that the male-only draft was unconstitutional, a Congress-appointed Commission has been studying whether or not to draft women into the US military. They make their report in March, and will likely either advocate for expanding draft […]

This is an excerpt from Desert Song: A Girl in Exile, A Trickster Horse, and the Women Rising Up. You can get a copy here. When the first touch of lengthening shadow broke the afternoon heat, Ari Ara forced herself through a set of training exercises in the Way Between. She missed Emir and Shulen so […]

by Leah Cook You can find the Ari Ara Series here. Just looking for the first book in the series? Visit my online store. Let me tell you what’s really cool about this series: 1. It’s written for young adults (the kid characters are ages 11-13 so far), and the kids feel *real* to that […]

This excerpt is from Desert Song by Rivera Sun. You can get a copy here. Thank you! A stunning view spread before them. The city’s dwellings ended abruptly at a chest-high stone wall. Cliffs plummeted down a hundred feet to a narrow lake fed by the river that cascaded over the precipice in a thunderous […]

Wage Peace! Women vs. the War Machine.How women – in fact and fiction – push back against war. As I ship out stacks of books that celebrate the heroics of waging peace, I’m struck by how relevant and real these stories are. On the pages of Desert Song, women are rising up to keep a […]

On Nov 13th, 2019, I delivered a statement to the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service opposing the expansion of the draft to women, and demanding the ending of the draft for all genders. The NCMNPS is a court-ordered, Congress-appointed commission charged with finding out if the US public would support expanding the […]

Desert Song: A Girl In Exile, A Trickster Horse, and the Women Rising UpYou can get a copy here. Ari Ara chewed her lower lip, thinking. The Way Between could be used physically to interrupt fights and stop violence, but that was just the beginning. There were inner and outer practices. There were individual and collective […]

This is an excerpt from Desert Song by Rivera Sun. You can get a copy here. The night pooled around Mahteni, magnificent in its depth. Moonlight silvered the wide plain. The wind rippled the grasses like marsh reeds quivering in the currents’ flow. Piles of rock and a few twisted old trees dotted the flat […]

An excerpt from Desert Song: A Girl In Exile, A Trickster Horse, and the Women Rising UpYou can get a copy here. At dawn, they stumbled into a slot canyon, staggering with exhaustion. There, they dismounted and walked with the horses, allowing them to rest. “If it rains, we will be trapped,” Emir cautioned, glancing […]

This is an excerpt from Desert Song by Rivera Sun. You can get a copy here. CHAPTER ONE. . . . .The Ancestor Windby Rivera Sun The Ancestor Wind played across the mountains. It leapt the peaks and tickled the bellies of the valleys. It was the breath of the world, from a newborn’s first […]

Change doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Resistance is a continuum. Nonviolent movements arise amidst the efforts of many other struggles. The knowledge of how to organize for change is a global legacy passed between movements and generations of activists through lineages of inspiration that stretch through hundreds of years. (The first recorded strike happened in […]

by Rivera Sun, Editor of Nonviolence News In times like this, many of us feel powerless to do anything about the political, social, and environmental injustices we face. But, power is everywhere. Like sunlight and solar panels, it’s a question of tapping into it. Accustomed to the top-down power of presidents and CEOs, most of […]

Rivera Sun’s novel, The Lost Heir: an Unruly Royal, an Urchin Queen, and a Quest for Justice, is now available in print and eBook formats on her website and all other online bookstores, including Amazon. Thanks for spreading the word! The following Author Q & A appears in the end matter of the First Edition […]

By Gayle Morrow I am not a devoted fan of the fantasy genre so did not expect to care for this first in a series work by Rivera Sun. Instead I was captivated almost immediately. The premise is a “lost heir” of a dead queen turning out to be a pixie, fairy-like young girl; fairly […]

A Review by Rivera Sun “When everyone knows how to plan, you start to get strategic behavior.” These words from Ivan Marovic serve as my mantra as I facilitate trainings in strategy for nonviolent campaigns. When I met Marovic at the James Lawson Institute in 2014, he impressed upon me that everyone should understand strategy, […]

Review of The Way Between by Liz Moon The Way Between is a thoughtful story which infuses rich fantasy and nonviolent action principals, together. This combination not only draws you into the storyline to learn more about the characters and how they intertwine with both their shared and individual history, but also allows you to […]

An Essay of the Man From the North by Rivera Sun A nation built on greed is not a nation; it is just a legal framework for rape and pillage, slavery and exploitation, theft, murder, and genocide. A nation whose primary function is to protect the exclusive right of the rich to engage in those […]

An Essay of the Man From the North by Rivera Sun The tools of nonviolent action and the skills of struggle are as vital to these times as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Training to use them is as essential as learning how to use a computer. The ability to boycott and strike is as important […]

An Essay of the Man from the North by Rivera Sun If we, the people, wrote a constitution now, what would go in it? Equal rights for women, men, non-binary, and undefined? Caps on wealth tied to poverty levels? Rights of nature? Reparations for past crimes, wrongs, and thefts? Limits on military spending? A free […]

The Lost Heir: Ari Ara Is Back! An Unruly Royal. An Urchin Queen. A Quest for Justice. Are you ready for an adventure? The Lost Heir, sequel to The Way Between is almost here! In less than one month, the next part of our remarkable shero’s journey from mountain shepherdess to warrior’s apprentice to royal heir will be […]

“The Universe is made of stories, not atoms,” said Muriel Rukeyser in The Speed of Darkness. View this email in your browse What Do Hit Movies, Feminist Classics, & Rivera Sun’s Newest Novel Have In Common? They all weave the story of the world, for better or for worse. Confession: I watch movies. I check out amazing […]

July 29th thru August 2nd, Steam Drills ebook will be available at HUGE discounts to celebrate Author Rivera Sun’s Birthday Countdown Sale. Enjoy! https://www.amazon.com/Steam-Drills-Treadmills-Shooting-times-ebook/dp/B00B41B1T8/   CHAPTER ONE: The Front Line of Birth & Death It begins. The world is sleeping. Solitude sinks down around the contours of the mountains. Silence dusts the city. Daybreak’s bustle threatens […]

#WritingTips – I’ve been watching my process, and I’ve found a few practices that I love in writing. Here they are … now go off and write some fabulous essays or novels or books for me to read! 1) Take your time. Savor the process. Don’t rush. (I never work under deadlines. I don’t relate well […]

(Stormy over the mesa this afternoon. Here’s my writing “sketch” of the day. Enjoy.)   Sitting down to other writings, all that comes is the lonely haunting of a woman. Not a fragile willowy woman. A glimpse of powerful grace in the darkness of a foggy night, beyond the edges of firelight.   She has […]