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

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  • River

    1–2 minutes

    We walk in the time before sunset. “River,” we ask. “River,” we call. The air smells of sagebrush, that fresh after-rain perfume. We don’t see the rain but the wind speaks of it– the warmth it holds, the velvet-soil fragrance, the red paintbrush and wild peas. “River,” we sing above the wind-flow and the slow-moving

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  • Still Life of a Bedroom

    1–2 minutes

    A jar full of shells. A beeswax candle. A jellyfish captured in glass. A paper lantern from Seattle; its cranes, yellow, splashed by the sea. Dried lavender in a vase, the flowers still purple, the stems both brittle and damp. A carved wooden owl. A Himalayan salt lamp. A carton of pencils made to look

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  • Concrete Fields 

    1–2 minutes

    Every time I return to the town where I grew up, another field has died. I think, “They can’t build anymore houses. There isn’t any room.” And then they find room. The grassy lot, once rich with goldenrod and dandelions. The meadow, once overrun with blackberries but open, muddy in the rain, perched over by

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  • Summer Rain

    1–2 minutes

    How soft the rain sounds, like pebbles flushed through a stream, click, and click, then all at once, like the inside of a wave as it breaks, polyphony, the voices and their colors. the shifting powders of soil, the ants and pill bugs drowned in soup-like puddles, the robins warmly puffed up, their eyes crossed

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Learn more about Francesca Varela's novels