Parlei Rivière is the penname of Jamiella Brooks, an academic living in Philadelphia, PA. As a Black mother-scholar, daughter, and descendant, she explores the intersections of language, anti-colonialism, and space. Her nonfiction scholarly work is published in numerous academic spaces, including Faculty Focus and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Her creative fiction stories, “Space Treads,” and “Redshift ||| Shiftred” can be found in Uncanny Magazine. She is also the winner of the 2023 Canopus Award for sci fi writing, a Hurston-Wright Summer 2023 Writing Fellow, a 2024 Periplus Collective Fellow, and attended the 2026 Pentaculum residency.

Why the name Parlei Rivière?

The name is a homage to the Langston Hughes Poem,

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

By Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.