River River Books is publishing our first anthology this fall! In this collection, the third entry in our Plainwater Nonfiction Series, twenty-nine contemporary authors consider rivers, language, and the relationships between them.
We’d love to have your support for this project—backers can receive a copy of the anthology, a beautiful broadside featuring an excerpt from Molly Spencer’s essay “My Rivers” (see below!), and/or a personalized poem. Read more about the Kickstarter and why we’re doing it below!
Contributors: D.W. Baker ~ Tara Shea Burke ~ Lauren Camp ~ Christian Collier ~ Lilly Dancyger ~ Natalie Diaz ~ Sam DeFlitch ~ J.D. Ho ~ Amy Honeywell ~ Caitlin Horrocks ~ Sarah Bethan Hudis ~ Amorak Huey ~ Karl Knights ~ Deborah Miranda ~ Pablo Peschiera ~ Beth Peterson ~ Mary Robles ~ Catherine Rockwood ~ Erin Ruble ~ EB Schnepp ~ Leonora Simonovis ~ Tom Snarsky ~ Natalie Solmer ~ Molly Spencer ~ Danika Stegeman ~ Jennifer A Sutherland ~ Han VanderHart ~ Lisbeth White ~ Zoë Ryder White
Description: Rivers as historically and geographically disparate as the Colorado, Rappahannock, Orinoco, Caroní, Mississippi, Shenandoah, Tuolumne, Dart, Blyth, Río Chincha, Rio Grande, Cowlitz, Cahaba, Ohio, and St. Joseph flow through these essays—essays that turn to both the river and its absence (the arroyo) to consider form in writing: the sentence, the stanza, the poetic line, genre, metaphor, and more. These writers go down to the river to contemplate language and migration, Native and colonial names, childhood and age, queerness and rural landscapes, memory and elegy, environment and climate crisis. Flooding and meandering, the river carries and connects it all, as embodied and essential as language itself.
Via this Kickstarter campaign, we're raising $1800 toward the costs associated with adding a book to our catalog: paying our designer, the amazing Alban Fischer, whose work makes our books look good inside and out, printing at Bookmobile, and new title distribution at Itasca Books. Both of our editors volunteer their time, and we don't have big donors or institutions behind us—we are a small, independent literary press.
As the arts and human expression feel increasingly under siege in our contemporary moment, both editors at River River believe more than ever in the work we do: supporting authors and their work, building community, and connecting words and ideas with readers. This anthology fits our mission so deeply in its consideration of what it means to be human, what it means to live and love and grieve on this planet, amidst its landscapes and rivers.
As is true of any small press, we could not do this work without our community: friends, family, readers, writers. We are grateful, always, for your support.
