The author
Cody Riddle writes in the dark.
Poet. Essayist. Founder of Riddle Publishing Company — a small press for quiet, carefully made literary work.
Cody Riddle is a writer, community organizer, and grassroots activist based in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the author of 10 Months of Grief: Poetry on death, grief, and betrayal, a debut poetry collection navigating heartbreak, loss, mental health, and healing. The book draws from nearly a decade of personal experiences — including the death of his father, religious struggles, failed relationships, and the quiet resilience needed to survive in the dark.
He writes primarily in verse but moves easily into essays, letters, and the small, strange forms in between. His work draws from the gothic, the Romantic, and the unembarrassed melancholy of writers like Edgar Allan Poe — poetry that doesn't try to fix the dark so much as keep you company inside it. He presents his poems not as a neat guide with easy answers, but as a mirror for the wounded to help readers feel less isolated in their own pain.
Outside of his creative writing, Cody is heavily active in regional grassroots organizing and LGBTQ+ advocacy work throughout Kentucky. While the poems exist in the darkness that forged them, he looks back at those periods with clarity and the hope of rebuilding.
Riddle Publishing Company — a DBA of Remember Ray LLC — began as a way to house this work and to make room for what's coming next: companion editions to 10 Months of Grief, new poetry, and an upcoming coffee table volume designed to be lived with rather than just read.
- Based in
- Louisville, Kentucky
- Working in
- Poetry · Essays · Activism
- Published
- 10 Months of Grief (2024)
- Next
- A coffee table volume