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

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  • The First Falling of Snow

    37 words

    Low winter light buried by snow, all sounds threaded in gracile knots, while the trees drip, while we tingle with silence, we breath again, as though we have come up for air in a world that was once underwater.  

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  • The Death of the Coyote’s Song

    327 words

    I remember the night we heard the coyotes. It was summer, or almost summer, and I was still a teenager. Although long past sunset, the sky wasn’t yet at its darkest, and the air through my open window smelled like dusk. As I tried to sleep I listened to the outside. Car brakes. Fountain. Creek water…

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  • Listen

    293 words

    I wrote this book when I was living in a college dorm-room. That was my sophomore year, so I guess I was 19 and 20? I finished it by summer break, then set it aside to prepare for the release of my first novel, Call of the Sun Child, which came out in March 2014. And now, nearly…

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  • As All Fields Are Vulnerable

    132 words

    What I want to know is, when will it be enough? When will the fields be safe? The sun caught in the grasses, and the deer, silent in the dry fall wind, following shadows to the yellow oak tree, everything still mysterious at mid-afternoon, And the throat-soaked crow songs, like every moment is heavy with the abruptness of…

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