Francis Rosenfeld is a novelist and multimedia storyteller whose work explores society and human connection through fiction. To learn more about her work, visit STORIES by Francis Rosenfeld, or subscribe to her newsletter - The Margins on Substack.
Recent posts
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Amber: Reciting an epic ballad - The Heart in the Stone
There once was a fair girl whose name was Maureen, who dwelt in the mists of the island ‘Vergreen. She lived with her father; her hair was like copper. She longed for a place that no human had seen. An old woman told her, when she was a child, a story about a great realm that’s outside the edge of the borders, the reach of the mortals: a place where the gods and the spirits abide. She went to that…
- narrated-stories
- poetry
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Amelia: Reading from The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Joyfully Reborn
Life doesn’t change. Sure the technologies advance and the day-to-day gets easier, but people aren’t fundamentally different from how they were centuries ago. The same emotions and drives push them on their paths, and the same disappointments sour their spirits. Persephone tended to her souls like a gardener tends to his or her plants, watching them get born, live and die, forget their experiences…
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Amelia: Reading from The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Inspired
Every four years in the middle of summer, the mortals gathered to celebrate the muses in a gentle valley at the feet of Mount Helicon. The nine daughters of Mnemosyne, they weren’t your usual goddesses; they were a gift to humankind. Nobody talked about them as such, out of fear these wonders that fired the human mind to create masterpieces might be taken away, to leave mankind only the toiling an…
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Elena: Reading from The Garden of Hope - Worlds Within
And did the world provide! When you stop being afraid of it, reality opens up to you to reveal all its beauty and its mysteries, and they are wondrous and strange, and so far from what you can even imagine that the only response you are capable of is awe. Humans may not be able to understand without limits, but they have an extraordinary capacity for wonder, and their wonder creates its own magica…
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Amelia: Reading from The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Life and Prophecy
Those blessed with the gift of prophecy form a small but very special community. They instinctively seek each other’s presence, they are drawn to those who are similarly blessed. If they are mortal, they become oracles and seers whose wisdom is sought and revered, and people travel from far away to seek their counsel. They are the living vessels of the gods, who speak through them in cryptic messa…
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Jessica: Reading from the novel Letters to Lelia - Chapter 15 - Something out of Nothing
"Have you finished writing your letter, dear?" sister Therese showed up on Roberta's doorstep, at the end of a long door to door pilgrimage during which none of the sisters were forgotten. Therese already had a stack of letters in her hand, which proved her dedication to encouraging the others to complete their writing. Sister Novis had whispered to Roberta through the interlink that Therese sat h…
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- narrated-stories
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Amelia: Reading from The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Strife
On the westernmost edge of the Oceanus, which spans the vast distance between the world of the living and the underworld, there is a splendid garden, constantly bathed in the glow of the sunset. The garden belongs to Hera, a wedding gift from her grandmother, and wonderful apple trees with golden fruit grow there, under the jealous guard of the dragon Ladon, an offspring of the Typhon, and the rat…
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Pearl: Reading from the novel Angel - Chapter 2 - Art Class
November 2015 Build 110 (not released) Today Mama gave me nothing to look at but art. Paintings, specifically, the entire digitized collection of the Museum of Modern Art. I asked him what I was supposed to do after I digested this dataset, and he said whatever it inspires you to do, Angel. I was touched. They never let me do anything by myself; I always have direction of some sort, a job, a goal.…
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Innocence
We are in life for just a while between time and eternity with no navigational instruments, no sextant and no chart, we live in context. There isn't a specific challenge to overcome during our lifetimes, no strongly recommended way to spend our days, no predetermined fate, free arbiter at work. It is our privileged duty to choose from every tempting possibility the ones that fashion happiness and …
- poetry
- video
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River of Thought
Sometimes the river of thought flows through rapids, smothering the new born consciousness with the many faces of reality, so rich and thick with meaning you don’t even know if they’re yours, if they even relate to you, if they even exist, whether existence is something tangible, something whose presence you can guarantee tomorrow in this ever shifting unfolding of meaning that surrounds us. I am …
- essays
- narrated-stories
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Spidersilk World
“So, what did Mr. Coulter teach you, Mary?” she turned to her niece, trying to put out of her mind the fact that the girl had mentioned the words spell and mirror in the span of a very short sentence, smiling and addressing a male stranger by his first name in the process. “Look, look at the mirror,” Mary happily obliged. The mirror was black, the one inside it had decided to remove himself for t…
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- literary-fiction
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Angel
Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a little girl received an angel decoration. She couldn’t remember who it was that gave it to her, or on what Christmas Eve that was, but every year since she would look at the little angel and make a wish. Years went by and the little girl entered the grown-up world: she married, moved, had children, became a teacher, got a home, celebrated and cried, kept long…
- narrated-stories
- short-stories
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Why Happiness is not a Sensible Shoe
You figure you need a pair of shoes and have a mental picture of what you want: a sensible choice that coordinates with your wardrobe and matches your busy lifestyle. You go to the mall and start eyeing the displays in search of what you already know you will buy. As you expertly scan the merchandise, a display draws your attention, you don’t know why, exactly, but you can’t take your eyes off of …
- essays
- narrated-stories
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Elena: Reading from The Garden of Hope - Perfume. A story of growth.
The first thing Cimmy saw when she opened her eyes that morning was an intricate wooden vault, whose ribs intertwined and transformed in spellbinding ways, drawing her attention from one detail to another. “Are you going to start working or are you going to keep staring at the ceiling? By all means, let your patients stew in their problems until you’re done contemplating the meaning of life.” ‘Pat…
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