Ryan Rivas
is the author of the text-image book Nextdoor in Colonialtown (Autofocus, 2022), the novella Lizard People (ThirtyWest, 2023), and the surreal suburban gothic novel The Estuary (forthcoming fall 2027 from Texas Review Press). He is a Macondista, the Publisher of Burrow Press, and the Publishing Coordinator at Stetson University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. He writes on substack about Florida, history, the gothic, colonialism, literature and art – and in 2026 is running a haunted house book club.
Lizard People
“AN EXQUISITELY STRANGE NOVELLA.”
–Caroline DeBruhl, Creative Loafing Tampa
All his life, the unnamed narrator of this darkly comic and deeply strange novella has believed he’s a lizard person. After an incident at work, he’s sent to a coastal resort for intensive therapy to confront the truth of his peculiar identity. But amid days of lounging by the pool with his fellow recoverings, intensive sessions with a therapist, and the appearance of a love interest with ill intentions, his self-discovery remains elusive.
Nextdoor in Colonialtown
“BY TURNS A DOCUMENTARY ON THE PERSONAL, A DARK COMEDY OF MANNERS, AND AN EXTRAORDINARY EXAMINATION OF WHAT IT MEANS TO LIVE IN AMERICA.”
–Patrick Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace
Ryan Rivas has lived in Orlando’s Colonialtown North neighborhood for over a decade. In Nextdoor in Colonialtown, he pairs photos of the neighborhood with conversations assembled from the area’s Nextdoor.com posts. The result is at turns absurd and abject, goofy and gothic, paranoid and profound. By displacing his familiar surroundings, Rivas evokes the broader White imaginary underlying colonialism and suburbanization.
Dispatches from Colonialtown
MY FREE, MONTHLY-ISH SUBSTACK
Here you’ll find photos and writing at the intersection of Florida, history, the gothic, colonialism, whiteness, visual art, and literature. Dispatched once or twice monthly from my physical and metaphorical location in Colonialtown..
Short Fictions
SELECTED STORIES & PERFORMANCES
TEXT-IMAGE: Nextdoor in Colonialtown (excerpts)
Autofocus, July 2021
FICTION: Buenos Aires
Necessary Fiction, June 2021
FICTION: The Ambivalent Bridge
Queen Mob’s Tea House, May 2019
FICTION: The President is Missing
Scoundrel Time, April 2018
FICTION: The Fire, or Live, Round-the-Clock Coverage of Kierkegaard’s Parable of the Clown
Ghost Parachute, Nov. 2016
FICTION: South Beach
Annalemma, online + print Issue Eight, July 2011
+ Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012
FICTION: Around the Lake
decomP, November 2010
This is the end of the website.
Ryan Rivas dot net 