River Coello

River Coello is a Guayaquil-born cultural weaver based in Orlando. They are proudly Andean, kariwarmi, kuir, and disabled.

River’s multimedia and multilingual collection, HAMPI (For the Birds Trapped in Airports, 2024), received a Florida Book Award, an International Latino Book Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, and a Nautilus Book Award. It will be exhibited in Seattle at Jack Straw Cultural Center and in Orlando thanks to United Arts of Central Florida. River was also an Orlando Poet Laureate finalist and received an International WCS Award in media and creative influence. They have received additional support from the Canada Council for the Arts, Lambda Literary, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among others.

River’s work is featured in the anthologies Emerge (Lambda Literary, 2025), eXpuestXs (El Beisman Press, 2024), and Sweeter Voices Still (Belt Publishing, 2021), as well as the University of Chicago Magazine, ICONIQA Mag/Book, and the Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Corner in the Chicago Reader. Their previous chapbook-length collections, faith/fe (2021) and self/ser (2019), were published by Homie House Press.