Jess Perri (she,her)

For me, River Writing is a lifestyle choice. The practice creates a dedicated space for writing to discover what’s true now, in a kind circle, season after season. I have a wild adoration of language, which is to say a love of human creativity when doing the work of communication.

From fiction and poetry to theoretical linguistics and natural language processing, I love exploring this living thing. We are all making it together, all the time. You are part of this too. From a quick exchange at the grocery store, to the best joke you’ve ever heard, to tender murmurs to a child, we are cobbling this thing together to decipher our world. Deciphering our world is serious business. We need to tell our stories to understand who we have been, or might be now, and what is possible in the future.

By telling our stories we can create medicine and forge weapons. Telling our stories gives us ballast, lets us pull our own swords from the stone, buoy us up, and sets us free. I facilitate river writing because I hope to grow the spaces for kindness and truth-telling in the world.