River Coello, an Ecuadorian nonbinary person with long wavy hair, sits in front of a blurred background.

Photo by Ian McLaren

River Coello is a Guayaquil-born cultural weaver based in Orlando. They are proudly Andean, kariwarmi, kuir, and disabled. River is the author of the multimedia collection HAMPI (For the Birds Trapped in Airports, 2024), for which they received a Florida Book Award, an International Latino Book Award, and an Independent Publisher Book Award, and a Nautilus Book Award. River’s poetry is featured in various anthologies, including Emerge (Lambda Literary, 2025), eXpuestXs (El Beisman Press, 2024), and Sweeter Voices Still (Belt Publishing, 2021). Their previous chapbooks, faith/fe (2021) and self/ser (2019), were published by Homie House Press.

River has received creative support from the Canada Council for the Arts, Lambda Literary, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Jack Straw Cultural Center, among others. They are a Trustees Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida.