books & cults & books & cults & books & cults & books & cults & books & cults & books & cults & books & cults & books & cults & books & cults 

Hi, I'm Rie. I grew up closeted in a high-control environment, and then I wrote a book about it.

That book, Vessel -- a young adult dystopian novel featuring a queer girl who offers herself as a human sacrifice to her post-apocalyptic cult so that she can escape an arranged marriage to a boy -- recently won a 2025 Literary Global Children's Book Award. I'm probably a little too obsessed with cults and almost definitely on some kind of FBI watchlist for researching pipe bombs, but that's just what makes me quirky, right? 

I'm an alum of the MFA at EWU and currently pursuing an MLIS focusing on the intersection of trust and information. 

Keep in touch! 

VESSEL: a novel