White desk with pink notebook, roses, keyboard, and gold paperclips that Francesca Varela uses to write environmental fiction

BLOG

  • How To Find The Winter Constellations

    659 words

    Finding Orion – The Hunter Orion is one of the most prominent constellations in the winter sky, and it’s bright enough to be seen in even the most light-polluted cities. The easiest way to find Orion is by looking for its belt—three bright stars in a diagonal line, cutting through the middle of the constellation…

    Read more…

  • Night Sea

    158 words

    The cedar tree holds up the night, its branches the dark blue of early dawn in those pre-pink momentswhere it is neither night or day,and behind it the mountain sleeps in shadowlike some deep-sea giant peeking through gold curtains of silt and seaweed, the wind carving against it, onto the backs of birds and whales…

    Read more…

  • The Woven Tree

    185 words

    I know two trees that are woven together, fiber by fiber, root by root, braided together after countless days, and moments, and centuries, holding onto each other, their branches shimmering together in every wind. Their canopies are a tapestry, their roots indistinguishable from one another, like a basket holding the world in, tucked into clay…

    Read more…

  • Leaf Rain

    148 words

    You stand under the big leaf maples, in the same place where, months earlier, you watched threads of sunlight weave between branches, catching on threads of spider-web, everything floating and filmy and lit by the sun. Today, the sky is cut-through, opened, revealing itself for the first time in a year, and you notice that…

    Read more…

Learn more about Francesca Varela's novels