Note: In print material, please write my name with the Chinese characters, as written in publications: River 瑩瑩 Dandelion. Read aloud, my name is pronounced: “River Ying Dandelion.”

Bio:

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. As a shamanic energy healing practitioner, he guides people through transformation. Winner of the 2024 Lambda Literary 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 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. He has also been awarded residencies and fellowships from Baldwin for the Arts, Bread Loaf, Caldera Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, Monson Arts, Ragdale, Tin House, Vermont Studio Center, and more.

Thrice-nominated for Best of the Net, River's work is twice-published in Best New Poets, and appears in Apogee Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, Bellevue Literary Review, The Margins, Mizna, The Offing, POETRY, Asian American Journal of Psychology, and anthologized in international publications. He loves to swim and does this work for queer and trans ancestors and descendants to come.

Select Fellowships and Awards 

2024 Lambda Literary Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers
2024 Baldwin for the Arts Fellow
2024 Vermont Studio Center (VSC) Artist-in-Residence, VSC Fellow
2024 Monson Arts Artist-in-Residence
2024 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Poetry Workshop, Katharine Bakeless Nason Participant Scholar
2024 Headlands Center for the Arts Artist-in-Residence
2024 Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference Poetry Scholar                    
2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship Finalist
2023 Lambda Literary Poetry Fellow
2023 Tin House Resident
2023 Fulbright U.S. Student Award Semi-Finalist
2023 Third World Newsreel Production Workshop Fellow
2023 Plentitudes Journal Poetry Top Prize Winner
2023 Fine Arts Works Center Summer Workshops Scholar
2023 Bellevue Literary Review Poetry Prize Finalist
2023 Bellingham Review 49th Parallel Award in Poetry Prize Runner-Up
2022 AWP Kurt Brown Prize Winner
2022 & 2024 Best of the Net Nominee
2022 Roots. Wounds. Words. Speculative Fiction Fellow
2022 Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholar
2021 & 2024 Best New Poets Anthology
2021 The Shade Journal THEE SPACE Poetry Prize Finalist
2021-2023 Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow, Rutgers University-Newark
2021 Eckerd College Writers’ Conference, Carlson Fellow
2021 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship Finalist
2021 DreamYard Radical Poetry Consortium Fellow 
2020 Kundiman Mentorship Lab Poetry Fellow
2020 Pink Door Fellow
2020 Pao Arts Center Artist-in-Residence
2019 The Poetry Foundation & Crescendo Literary Poetry Incubator Fellow                                                                   
2019 Asian Prisoners Support Committee Writing Mentor
2019 Pearl River Mart Artist-in-Residence
2018 Voices of Our Nations Arts (VONA) Foundation Alum
2018 Asian American Writers' Workshop Open City Fellow  
2018 Kairos Fellow
2018 Manhattan Neighborhood Network Field Production Fellow
2016 Knafel Traveling Fellow
2016 Wellesley College Durant Scholar
2016 Arthur O. Norton Prize in Recognition of Meritorious Research and Writing in the Field of Education
2016 Africana Studies Department Ella Smith Elbert Essay Prize
2016 American Education Research Association Undergraduate Fellow    
2015 Phi Beta Kappa
2015 National Fellowship for Asian American Organizing & Civic Engagement
2015 Chinese Department E. Tu Chinese Essay Writing Prize
2015 National Dollars for Scholars Volunteer Award
2014 Mellon Mays Fellow

Full Bio:

River 瑩瑩 Dandelion (he, him, keoi 佢) is a practitioner of ancestral medicine through writing, teaching, energy healing, and creating ceremony. River’s poetry, organizing, and facilitation work lives at the intersections of personal and societal transformation. His body of work centers race, gender, migration, and intergenerational healing. He writes to reveal the heart of what needs to be said, and facilitates workshops where participants connect to self, lineages, and community. River believes social change and the work towards liberation must also begin within.

River has been awarded residencies and fellowships from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Baldwin for the Arts, Bread Loaf, Caldera Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, Lambda Literary, Monson Arts, Ragdale, Tin House, Vermont Studio Center, VONA/Voices, and more. He has presented and performed his work at literary festivals, grassroots organizations, and universities internationally, including Dodge Poetry Festival, Museum of the City of New York, and the University of Havana. River is at work on his debut full-length poetry manuscript that explores matriarchal legacies, self-remembrance, and unwritten queer and trans lineages.

Thrice-nominated for Best of the Net, River's work is twice-published in Best New Poets, and appears in Apogee Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, Bellevue Literary Review, The Margins, Mizna, The Offing, POETRY, Asian American Journal of Psychology, and anthologized in international publications. River has also taught poetry as a lecturer at Rutgers University-Newark, where he graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing and served as a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow.

As a scholar, River’s interests include ethnic studies, Asian American history, culturally responsive education, healing justice, somatic embodiment, and collective healing from racialized trauma. River’s work draws from methodologies that include ethnography, oral history, and archival research. at its core, River’s work is about making research and knowledge accessible to communities who hold the expertise but have historically been marginalized and excluded from academic spaces.

As a grassroots organizer, River has worked on campaigns for education, immigration, and housing justice. He has been trained in digital and grassroots organizing through the Kairos Fellowship, and Seeding Change National Fellowship for Asian American Organizing & Civic Engagement. River worked for several years as the Research and Policy Analyst at the NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools to advance racial equity in public schools locally and nationally.

In 2016-2017, River was awarded the Knafel Fellowship to travel to Chinatowns in eight countries around the world, where he used oral histories and poetry to document stories of migration and resilience across the diaspora. Since then, he has been invited to serve as an artist-in-residence at The Pao Arts Center and Pearl River Mart, where he curated two multimedia art exhibitions using photographs, oral histories, and archives to highlight stories of migration, displacement, and everyday resilience in Chinatowns around the world that debuted from 2020-2021.

River graduated summa cum laude from Wellesley College with a B.A. in Ethnic Studies and Education. He was the first to graduate with an Ethnic Studies major since the college's inception and co-ignited a student movement for ethnic studies on campus.

formerly known as huiying b. chan.