I write, teach, and make magic to answer this question:
How will we bring forward a just, regenerating world?
My contributions:
I write hopeful, solarpunk futures
My debut solarpunk novel The Working is available now! It embeds tools for resilience and hope—so important for current times. Consider ordering it through your local bookshop or library.
A modern coven must thwart a looming eco-cataclysm and find the key to the bright futures we need.
Fans of The Once and Future Witches and The City We Became will love The Working for its feminist, justice-seeking, ensemble cast. Readers hail The Working for its diverse characters, real magical practice, and tilt towards hope.
“In The Working, BrightFlame shows us why she’s a master of climate fiction and lunarpunk. Her novel is a compelling narrative following five witches seeking to repair what’s wrong with the world. I was left wanting to have a meeting with this coven. Highly recommended!”
—Renan Bernardo, Nebula and Ignyte finalist author of Different Kinds of Defiance
“All the witches are very different people, but they treat each other like sisters, which was nice to see. They felt like real people to me.”
—Alina Leonova, author of Wild Flowers, Electric Beasts
“BrightFlame’s writing is a joy and a gift. The Working stays grounded in actionable solutions to the existential threats of corporate greed and climate change, with the characters fighting for better futures on both the physical and metaphysical planes.”
—Sarena Ulibarri, author of Another Life
“A heady mix of magic and environmental activism, written by a real Witch who knows her stuff and has a gift for embedding knowledge of trance and ritual into fiction.”
—Starhawk, author of The Fifth Sacred Thing
Learn more about my published fiction and nonfiction on my Writing page.
I teach to change the world
My workshops for magical and mainstream audiences boost interconnection and help us stay centered and resilient. I craft experiential and acclaimed sessions whether teaching at a Reclaiming Tradition Witchcamp, offering a weekend with Starhawk, or working with public school teachers to bring climate imaginaries to the classroom.
Next up: I’m a panelist at the stellar feminist fantasy & science fiction convention, WisCon—online this year 23 – 26 May. I’ll be offering a session on Solarpunk Witchcraft at SpiralHeart Witchcamp in June. See my Schedule tab for the latest and watch for online and in-person workshops aligned with the magic of The Working.
I particularly enjoy offering Storying Regenerative Futures as I did recently at Easton Book Festival and through Columbia University to international sustainability educators and public school teachers.
I make magic for the world as a Solarpunk Witch
Solarpunk? Search “solarpunk” on my site for much more information. You might start with this post. Many have asked why I use the word Witch. See this post for more on that. Like others, I reclaim the word Witch as a descriptor of my Earth-based spiritual path. I’m proud to be part of the non-hierarchical, ecofeminist, antiracist, activist, evolving Reclaiming Tradition.
More about me HERE
For Bright Futures!
p.s. I’m on Mastodon! See all my socials up top or in the footer.
Fiction fills me with wonder, possibilities, truth, wisdom, beauty, hope. Following are books I commend to you. Some of my all-time favorites stay at the top of the list, particularly solarpunk:
- A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys is one of the best solarpunk books I've read. Keeping at top of list!
- Different Kinds of Defiance by Renan Bernardo. Amidst climate-changed Brazil, Renan drills deep into characters as he offers #solarpunk tech for the future. Touching and amazing stories that I highly recommend!
- Be the Sea by Clara Ward. I highly recommend this eco-lit, climate fiction with diverse (including neurodiverse) characters. The author weaves in marine biology and offers sea creature points of view in a very immersive way.
- The Madonna Secret by Sophie Strand is a potent historical retelling: Jesus turns away from Mary Magdalene's affinity with Nature and the Earth to step into patriarchal culture. And we know how that ended up.
- Troubled Waters by Mary Annaïse Heglar is based on her family's history of Black resistance and desegregation in the 1950s, told within a story of modern-day climate crisis.
- Private Rites by Julia Armfield is intense psychological family drama in a drowning city. Chilling & dystopian.
- All City by Alex DiFrancesco is solarpunk reminiscent of Doctorow's Lost Cause. Community created by those left behind after Brooklyn floods.
- The End of the Ocean by Maja Lunde is set in the fjordes of Norway as humans cause the destruction of aquifers and waterways. A call to climate action!
- Sordidez by E.G. Condé is a wonderful Taino/Indigenous Futurist read where Indigenous folx survive and ultimately reclaim their lands from settler-colonists. Shows what's truly important in the world.
- Weird Fishes by Rae Mariz is eco- and climate fiction at its best from nonhuman views including cephalopods, sea mammals, and coral. Incorporates science and Indigenous lore
- Another Life by Sarena Ulibarri is an excellent solarpunk novella by an author-anthologist who has helped shape solarpunk
- Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins is a haunting tale once unrelenting drought transfigured Southern California into a surreal landscape who reads as a living being. Explores the myths we believe about others and ourselves, and the shape of hope in a precarious future that may be our own. Chilling.
- The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow offers some actionable solarpunk for our current world. A lot of dialogue and philosophizing amidst a feasible storyline to in-fill urban areas to accommodate climate refugees and build resilient communities.
- The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monáe et al is Afrofuturistism exploring different threads of liberation--queerness, race, gender plurality, and love. A wonderful, thought-provoking set of connected stories!
- The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz is an excellent solarpunk read: who is a person? how might we create regenerative, mutual societies?
- The Fifth Sacred Thing and sequel City of Refuge by Starhawk are classic solarpunk from before we called it that
Find the full list with book annotations: HERE
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Imagining bright green futures is the first step in getting there. In this post I share the future I desire and inspirations for my stories.
Beech trees offer a spark of inspiration. Some thoughts on how to be bright, how to catch inspiration.
'Tis the season for speculative fiction award nominations, including the biggies: Nebulas, World Fantasy, Locus, and Hugos. My debut novel The Working and my short fiction "Thank Geo" are eligible.
I began writing The Working when the self-help book The Secret was all the rage. An alternate title for my novel: The Real Secret.
I don't feel ready for Samhain and communing with my Ancestors. Plus, from Tower to Star: carrying the elixir of hope.
Here's a supplement to my novel, The Working---a gift to my readers! I deleted this backstory sequence from the final version of The Working. It describes how Betsy became part of the coven.