Hello—this is the cover of my new book, Is A River Alive?, which is published next May. It’s taken me 3 1/2 years to write this book. I’ve poured all I have into it. My notebooks were always thirsty; I filled over 20 of them while on fieldwork. It’s become the most political, personal & (possibly) poetic book I’ve written. If you’re a reviewer/editor/other who’d like an ARC/proof, please let me know in a reply/message & I’ll try to get one sent to you in the next few weeks. The original artwork for the cover is a vast, sinuous linocut by the legendary @StanleyDonwood of Radiohead et al, who’s now jacketed most of my books. I love working with Stanley & his punk-pop-pastoral genius.   Stan & I are both admirers of Fisk’s Mississippi meander-maps. To us, meanders are vivid expressions of a river’s wilful, cursive, animate presence in the land: an alive, enlivening force—a silver god. Developing the design with @RichardBravery, we studied Fisk’s maps & @geo_coe’s radiant LiDAR images of meanders, which also emblazon the book’s endpapers.   Stanley conjured this glowing, interlaced image: at once river, vein, artery, smoke & guts. All of them—because rivers run through us as surely as they run through places.   The rivers who flow through this book’s pages are my co-authors. I wrote & thought it with them; I acknowledge that collaboration throughout. Around the world, rivers are dying. This is a failure of imagination as well of organisation. Is A River Alive? seeks to imagine rivers—& life itself—otherwise. To see what follows if we take seriously the idea that a river is alive. Doing so can help us revive rivers—& rivers revive us. I travelled with some of the most extraordinary people I’ve ever known, inc. @Giulifungi, @Yuvan_aves & Rita Mestokosho. As for what happened to me ten days down the last, biggest river I followed; well, I think I will always be coming to terms with it.   The book is out 1 May in UK with @HamishH1931 & 20 May in US/Canada from @wwnorton & @PenguinRandomCA. It can be pre-ordered via the Linktree in my bio. As any writer will tell you, pre-orders make a huge difference to a book’s life. Oh — and many thanks to many people here for all the encouragement along the way. Rob