River 瑩瑩 Dandelion (he, him, keoi 佢) walks with his ancestors. He is a practitioner of ancestral medicine through writing, teaching, energy healing, and creating ceremony. As a poet, he writes to connect with the unseen and unspoken so we can feel and heal. Winner of the 2024 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers, River is the author of remembering (y)our light, a debut chapbook on honoring matriarchs and ancestors across generations. A Tin House resident, Lambda Literary fellow, and Kundiman fellow, River facilitates creative writing workshops, where participants connect with their own inner and collective power. He has taught at Rutgers University-Newark, Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, Restorative Justice Initiative, Lambda Literary, Museum of the City of New York, and elsewhere. Thrice-nominated for Best of the Net, River’s work is published or forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, Bellevue Literary Review, The Margins, Mizna, The Offing, Asian American Journal of Psychology, and anthologized elsewhere. He loves to swim and does this work for queer and trans ancestors and descendants to come. For more, visit riverdandelion.com.
