JJ Niveh is a new, up-and-coming author whose first works are centered on the life experiences of the women — both kith and kin — who raised him to be the better man he is today. He’s a luckily-married Rhode Island Millennial grateful to be born in the diverse suburbs of Chicagoland. JJ is blessed to be able to use that rich cultural experience to inspire meaningful writing that will either resonate with many or change the way others perceive the world around them. A change that, he hopes, will be freely and frequently gifted to those who may need it even more.

Once a class clown. Then, a bullied chubby-cherub of a teen. Even through these awkward, demanding years, his want to be a reader — a real one — grew high. His ability, however, floundered about this way and that, each and every year. He’d continue to ride a rollercoaster of highs and lows throughout his latter schooling that constantly pushed and pulled him between reading and writing and all else. Regardless of anything, he just never felt sufficiently confident to say he was “good enough;” not for others, not for himself, not for anything.

Eventually, that all changed. He grew, and grew some more. Studies snatched him up, times began to change, he was tossed around a few times, and then he — stupidly — allowed Religion to babysit him. Many things may have taken up his day, but reading and writing would still squirm in and find their place. Soon, he’d be able to say, “I read three books!” And, yeah, okay, three books. It’s not high, but, as Arsu Ne’Jia (The Husk Queen’s protagonist) once said,

Three will forever be something. And something is something because it’s not simply nothing.

And now, thanks to the family who held him high and the friends who held him close, he is able to live brightly enough to focus his love for change into his adoration for writing. In that, he gets to be something.

And that will never be nothing.