Rivera Sun’s passion for her work as an author and an activist inspires others to become peacebuilders and changemakers. She writes about nonviolence, organizes protests and rallies that bring people together, and offers nationwide training for nonviolent movements. And she is just getting started. 

Sun claims that her first nonviolent action was picking potatoes on her family’s organic farm in northern Maine when she was a young teen, as this is when she became interested in joining the local food movement. Later Sun attended Bennington College on a writing scholarship and then ran her own dance company for seven years in California. In 2011, during Occupy Wall Street’s efforts to address inequality, Sun connected to the power of nonviolent action and became inspired to write fiction around this theme.

Knowing she wanted to write about nonviolent action, Sun researched and read about different moments in history when the power of people peacefully taking a stand generated positive change. She studied people like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and began to discover the depth and breadth of nonviolent movements. She also watched closely to see what her nieces and nephews were reading, and learned how to write compelling fiction about heroes who act with peace and love instead of violence. 

To date, Sun has published two series: the Dandelion Collection trilogy and the Ari Ara series, with two publications (of eight) in the Ari Ara series forthcoming. She has also written a book of published essays, a handbook about how to enable change through nonviolence, two books of poetry, and eight plays. Her published works include a variety of genres and are intended for readers of different ages, from middle grades to adulthood. The message they share is that humans are powerful, and that change is possible; the common thread is the idea that the heroes of our time are the ones who stand up for social change. As Sun says, “If our children and our communities are to be trained for the world that is emerging, then we must put the tools of peace and active nonviolence in their hands, hearts, minds, dreams, and stories.”

In The Dandelion Insurrection, the first book in a trilogy about a nonviolent revolution in the United States, Sun writes, “when fear is used to control us, love is how we rebel.” Often, people think courage is the natural response to fear, but Sun believes that love is the essential ingredient that shifts fear toward courage. “If we dig into love, we find something lasting, something we can use powerfully,” she says. 

Love, passion, and peace guide Sun’s other forms of activism, as well. Years ago, she joined Campaign Nonviolence, a project of Pace e Bene (Peace and All Good) Nonviolence Service. This organization mobilizes approximately five thousand events each year across the country to promote peace, economic equality, racial justice, and environmental healing. Sun is also the editor and founder of Nonviolence News, a thoughtfully curated newsletter that brings thirty-to-fifty stories about nonviolent action happening around the world to readers each week. Through Nonviolence News, Sun’s goal is to show people that “it’s not just Gandhi, and it’s not just King. There are so many people who are enacting change in nonviolent ways all around the world.”

Looking at the world we live in today, Sun recognizes that we are up against steep odds. If there is any hope for humanity, she says, “it will be found in each of us saying, ‘I am no longer willing to do nothing.’ The more we can popularize the effectiveness of nonviolent direct action, the more people will use it.” Through her novels and her other activist work, Sun endeavors to empower the kind of heroes who are rooted in justice, armed with nonviolence, and practicing peace instead of war. Given the number of crises we currently face as a nation and as a global society, from climate-related catastrophes to gun violence to racial inequality and more, Sun believes we need all hands on deck and that we need to continue to mobilize people to act. ”If we didn’t live in the time we are living in, who knows what I would be writing?” Sun says. “But I feel like, as an author, I need to listen and respond to what I see.” As she points out in her novel Steam Drills, “There can be no more life as usual. We have to live a life unusual . . . and get ready for the adventure of a lifetime.”