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Rivers Solomon

Biography

Rivers Solomon

Rivers Solomon writes about life in the margins, where they are much at home. In addition to appearing on the Stonewall Honor List and winning a Firecracker Award, Solomon's debut novel, AN UNKINDNESS OF GHOSTS, was a finalist for a Lambda, a Hurston/Wright, an Otherwise (formerly Tiptree) and a Locus award. Solomon's second book, THE DEEP, based on the Hugo-nominated song by Daveed Diggs-fronted hip-hop group clipping, was the winner of the 2020 Lambda Award and shortlisted for a Nebula, Locus, Hugo, Ignyte, Brooklyn Library Literary, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy award.

Solomon's short work appears in Black Warrior Review, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Guernica, Best American Short Stories, Tor.com, Best American Horror and Dark Fantasy, and elsewhere.

A refugee of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, Solomon was born on Turtle Island but currently resides on an isle in an archipelago off the western coast of the Eurasian continent.

Rivers Solomon

Books by Rivers Solomon

Model Home
by Rivers Solomon - Fiction, Horror, Supernatural Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things --- the strange and the unexplainable --- began to happen in their house. Whatever it was, the Maxwells stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home. As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a “natural” death for their parents. But was it supernatural?

Sorrowland
by Rivers Solomon - Fiction, Gothic

Vern --- seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised --- flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes. To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past and, more troublingly, the future --- outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.

The Deep
by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes - Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, Science Fiction

Yetu holds the memories for her people --- water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners --- who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone except for the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu, who remembers for everyone, but the memories are destroying her. So she flees to the surface and discovers a world her people left behind long ago. Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past --- and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity --- and own who they really are.