Year: 2019

Here’s the good news: The debate is over. 75% of US citizens believe climate change is human-caused; more than half say we have to do something and fast.  Here’s even better news: A new report shows that more than 200 cities and counties, and 12 states have committed to or already achieved 100 percent clean electricity. This means that […]

Author’s Note: This excerpt is an example of the kind of compelling fiction we can write when we integrate the current best practices and experiments in conflict resolution. In the story, the Atta Song (Apology and Forgiveness Song) is part of Harraken culture, a way of admitting wrongs and making them right. This tradition is […]

This is an excerpt from Desert Song, a novel by Rivera Sun. You can get a copy here. Up a long, winding ravine, tucked into a pocket meadow, lived a seer named Throw-the-Bones. Her home – if you could call it that – was a hide-covered lean-to half dug into the earth. A sod roof […]

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 […]

Editor’s Note from Rivera Sun: Each week, I read hundreds of articles and survey close to a thousand headlines in search of the stories I feature in Nonviolence News. Finding these reports bolsters my heart.  In New Zealand, 10,000 weapons have been turned in through a buy-back program after the Christchurch massacre.  In Brazil, Indigenous women […]

From Qatar to Honduras, People Take Action.Nonviolence News: Aug 10th, 2019 Editor’s Note from Rivera Sun: In Nonviolence News this week, you’ll find some powerful stories.  Thirteen victories, large and small, show how change is being made step-by-step. Georgians, Russians, Hondurans, migrant workers in Qatar, and Irish and British airport workers are all striving for […]

by Rivera Sun, Editor of Nonviolence News If you want to make change, think outside the protest box. It’s easy to get hung up on protests. We’ve heard about them, they’re highly visible, and they’re relatively easy to pull off. The problem with protests is that – all too often – they’re easily ignored. Creativity […]

Can Peace Novels Make a Difference? You bet.Build peace by helping Ari Ara’s new novel reach thousands of new readers. It’s Launch Day for The Lost Heir! It’s also Memorial Day Weekend. The sound of motorcycles rumbles in the distance. The RVs are lumbering up the highway. The barbeques are firing up for the season. And, the war […]

by Rivera Sun It’s rare to hear business magazines admit the power of nonviolent action. As the editor of Nonviolence News, a service that collects and shares 30-50+ stories of nonviolence in action each week, I often see business journals minimizing the effect of activism. Usually, industry tries to conceal the impact nonviolent action has on […]

Note: This chapter is excerpted from The Lost Heir:  An Unruly Royal, An Urchin Queen, and A Quest For Justice by Rivera Sun. You can purchase the book here. And find the eBook version here. Hours later, exhausted and happy to her bones, Ari Ara slipped through the side gate of the House of Marin with Emir. […]

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 […]

May 11-18, 2019 Editor’s Note from Rivera Sun: By the numbers, Nonviolence News covers stories that involve millions of people. Civil disobedience arrests are happening by the dozens. Demonstrations involve thousands. Strikes include hundreds of thousands. This week alone, Nonviolence News is covering stories about 100-200,000 French protesters, 300,000 teachers on strike in Poland, thousands […]

A Poem by Rivera Sun Learning words for landscapeplace-terms in the language of geologyan incantation linking my wayward soulwith tenterhooks and spiderwebshair-thin roots and curling pea shoot tendrilsanchoring my humanity to this earth:tuckamore, vly, chockstone, fen. Can you feel the wilds awakeningwithin you at their sound? Stirring like spring,fertile and feral:hummock, loess, nickpoint, pediment,oxbow, portage, riprap, scarp. […]