River Meets the Sea

RACHAEL MOORTHY is a writer of mixed heritage who still hasn’t figured out how to answer the question “Where are you from?” She is passionate about telling stories from the perspectives of people who, like her, have complex and tangled roots (namely, melanated, diasporic, and displaced Indigenous identities). She hopes to carve out a community of belonging for the aporia caught in the liminal aftermath of colonialism, whose ancestral and cultural connections have been fractured because of foster care, adoption, and genocide. She believes she is best able to remain humble as an advocate in the dialogue surrounding Indigenous sovereignty by standing firm in her fluidity as a multi-ethnic person raised in a Eurocentric, assimilated context. Rachael has a bachelor’s of writing from the University of Victoria and is pursuing a master’s in multi/interlingual literary studies at the University of Basel. She was shortlisted for the 2020 Far Horizons Award for Poetry, and her fiction has appeared in publications such as PRISM international, SAD Magazine, and Revue Zinc. Born in Matsqui, British Columbia, she lives in Switzerland.

"Brilliant and inventive, River Meets the Sea is elegantly told in heartrending poetry. Moorthy’s protagonists, Chandra and Ronny, feel familiar in their search for meaning and belonging, even as they grapple with the implications of race and masculinity. With exquisite prose in which water becomes just as much a character as Chandra and Ronny, River Meets the Sea flows smoothly between the protagonists’ histories, the forces that propel them, and their inevitable meeting." —Francesca Ekwuyasi, author of Butter Honey Pig Bread