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Christina Rivera

christina rivera // essayist & author // MY OCEANS @ NUPress Sp'25

Door Closed, Door Open: Notes on Literary Friendship & Residency — A Guest Blog Post on LightHouseWriters.org

on December 19, 2018 in the writing life

Had a good deal of fun working with Courtney Zenner on this guest blog post for LightHouseWriters.org on the topic of our shared writing residency experience. Head on over to read it!

Door Closed, Door Open: Notes on Literary Friendship & Residency

By Courtney Zenner & Christina Rivera Cogswell

p.s. If you are in Colorado and seeking literary friendships, Lighthouse is THE place to find them!

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My book’s submission cycle to big publishers was

My book’s submission cycle to big publishers was fucking brutal. Authors don’t talk enough about how hard and bad it is. Because everyone wants to celebrate where—and that—their book finally landed. Which is cool. Me too. I always knew my book (experimental, lyrical, unconventional, subversive) didn’t suit the profit motives of the commercial world. But still, getting slapped in the face repeatedly with rejection hurt. Editors at university & independent presses, though, saw differently. Many welcomed conversations about this unconventional book shape and vision, and I will never (ever) forget that. Which is why I think I treasure this Pushcart Prize (“a labor of love and independent spirits”) so much. The timing of the win along a (treacherous) literary path was critical to couching my self doubt. Anyway, I want to throw some snaps to Bill Henderson and the ongoing imperative of the Pushcart Anthology: "Oligarchs pick our entertainments, our celebrities, our presidents and our wars […] Spirit will never be quelled, certainly not by big bucks and bluster.” It’s a WILD honor to share pages with this cohort (including my friend @samkeckscott !). And if you are a writer/reader and don’t yet know this: the works collected in this anthology are JAW-DROPPING. I’m going to read this 2024 edition from cover to cover and I can’t recommend any other reading more highly. I’ve put the order link in my bio. Would love to hear what you think if you read it! #pushcartprize #anthology

Oh yes I did: Created a Substack newsletter! Will

Oh yes I did: Created a Substack newsletter! Will you please (free) subscribe so I can feel like I’m writing directly to friends as I pursue this experiment?! ❤️ link in my bio ☝️😍

The Maiden Voyage of Moby Bytes: A monthly dispatch from the silty sea floors of eco-grief, extinction crisis, hydrofeminism, and writing from the Abyssal Zone (with, of course, bonus underwater Creature Features.) If you need more “pod” in your life, please join me. 🐋❤️🐋

#myoceans #substacknewsletter #christinarivera

#blueplanet #extinctioncrisis #ecogrief #marinelife #oceanlove #saveouroceans #oceans #oceanconservation #writersubstack @substackinc

in case that wasn’t clear

in case that wasn’t clear

This book began as a poem I couldn’t finish. I w

This book began as a poem I couldn’t finish. I wrote the first lines in the back of a classroom at my first #writing craft talk seven years ago. I couldn’t finish the poem, because I couldn’t stop choking on my tears. I have, since, written seventy thousand words into that unfinished poem. It still chokes me—over and over and over. But that unfinished poem was a portal (thank you @lidiamiles) to a #book of #essays that will now have a real cover (wings!) and land on #bookshelves in March of 2025. I have felt so cradled by this literary and extended digital family of extra soft hearts: thank you for holding and supporting me on this path. Cheers to everything born of wet pages and the doors we find in the middle of poems we can’t finish and special gratitude to my agent @juliestevensonpfarr & editor @marisaemily who both saw through me and my work and declared (with the confidence I would later find myself): “No, you don’t need to make this book narrative. This IS an essay collection.” 😍😍 As I’ve written in the introduction, this book was never a “collection” of things scattered, but always a “book of essays”; “each piece born under the same moon. Fragments, yes. Because womanhood is fragmented, and motherhood is fragmented, and my understanding of my place in nature is as of one of billions of faceted fragments, and it was only through my fragmentation that the distinction between Earth’s womb and my own receded.”

Special hugs of gratitude to the mentors who helped me find my voice (@bklorenbooks, @kate_moses_writes), the magazines who first published essays from this collection (@orion_magazine @terrain_org @kenyonreview @catapult, @batcityreview @atticusreview), all those in my cherished residencies (@millayarts and @craigardan) and DIY-MFA writing communities (@lighthousewriters, @catapult *RIP*, @corporealwriting, @grubstreet), and to my pod of family and besties who have held me through all the twists and tears of this writerly-path especially @slade.o @parkecogs @caitlin @courtneyzen @k.homes @jade.mariposa @emily_braucher. Your names are my mantra of gratitude!

#bookdeal #bookstagram #myoceans

My #bookcover concepts/ideas are due to my publish

My #bookcover concepts/ideas are due to my publisher in 149 days and I’m now on Day 2. Yep. Going to WRING this process of every drop of joy. Cause I’m surrounded by designers and artists (@slade.o , @k.homes , @970_design ) and also have a sneaking feeling that the best part of birthing a #book into the world IS devising an image to wholly represent its world of words? Like picking through baby names? Anyway, today I’m sharing 10 BOOKS I’D BUY JUST FOR THE COVER (but also for the sentences inside). These covers all made my heart skip with crush-at-first-sight. ❤️ (Authors tagged in the images where possible) Ps. If there’s a book cover that’s made you stutter & swoon, please share…

#bookstagram #bookcoverdesign #bookcoverlove

“Explaining” this would be like explaining poe

“Explaining” this would be like explaining poetry. So the images will have to stand! ❤️ Happy 30th Birthday @wheretherebedragons

I did not know you could drive THROUGH a rainbow.

I did not know you could drive THROUGH a rainbow. Which seems as fine a moment as ever to announce: I won a Pushcart Prize?! Question mark for suspended-disbelief. In the meantime, sending my sloppiest gratitude to @terrain_org for nominating me, and to @kenyonreview for publishing the essay, “Two Breaths,” that won the prize (and yes, if you are nominated you are invited to submit up to three pieces published that year; Who knew?) and more sloppy love to all the people who left their marks (including paw & splash) in the margins of any of my writing/life, ever. When I got the news, I sat in the woods, cried, splashed my face in a spring creek, and recited your names like the mantra you all are.

#pushcartprize

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