Hello, My Name Is River

Stepping into the expanse and accepting myself as I am

(this post is long, and it may be cut off by your email. best to open it fully before reading)

At the beginning of the pandemic, in May 2020, I came out as nonbinary. You can read about that here. My pandemic experience wasn’t typical (if one could say any pandemic experience was, which is debatable). I had been isolated for months beforehand, pet-sitting by myself in Europe. In late summer 2019 I was given the incredible opportunity by the Fulbright Association to work as an English Teaching Assistant in the Czech Republic. A few months earlier, in May, I’d sold my book, HOTSHOT (still in revisions) to Grove Atlantic, so the decision to accept the Fulbright was a very difficult one because I had one year to write a full draft of my book (I’d sold it on proposal) and I knew the Fulbright would be demanding.

As a child of two high-school dropouts, the Fulbright was a huge honor, and I couldn’t bring myself to turn it down although I knew that doing both things— the book and the Fulbright…