arielle šŸ¦‡

@ariellemdevito.bsky.social

181 Followers 221 Following

Writer, seamstress, freelance editor, theatre technician, circus artist. Philadelphia. Aspiring to become a mouse with a tiny helmet and sword šŸ šŸ—”ļø ariellemdevito.com

Photo of a desk with a fluffy cat sitting directly on top of a binder full of paper and looking back at the viewer. Also on the desk: a mug, a water bottle, a cup of pens and pencils, and various pieces of paper and journals.
Photo of a person with a mohawk wearing a black tank top and black and red pants doing a back balance on a red aerial rope hung outdoors. They are holding a nectarine with a bite taken out of it
Photo of a secretary desk covered in stuff including a binder, a book called The Medieval Household, a notebook full of handwriting, a binder with typed double-spaced pages, a mug with an S on it, scissors and scotch tape, a pen, a green vase with dried baby's breath in it, and a bunch of pens in a cauldron.
A screenshot of a personal website. One half has a woodblock print of a gnarled forest in bright primary colors. The other half has a long text which reads as follows: Old Growth: A Novel Old Growth is a novel-in-progress that Iā€™ve been working on since 2023. In newly Christian 11th-century Sweden, a small village nestled in deep forest faces the changes brought by two missionaries sent from Uppsala to convert them. Hundreds of years later in the same spot, an ash tree recounts its life, from a struggling seedling just breaking the earth to a hundred-foot tall tree watching its kin be torn down to make way for buildings and roads. Alternating between these two narratives, Old Growth explores humanityā€™s relationship with nature and how it changes through time as our sense of our own place in the universe shifts. The book takes us into the heart of a tree and imagines its networks and its memories, its relationship to time and the way it conceptualizes the space between itself and the forest as a whole. In the village, the bookā€™s rotating perspective lets us learn each villagerā€™s struggles and yearnings: their stillbirths and their love affairs, their squabbles and their quiet deaths. Iā€™m interested in eco-fiction that avoids typical cli-fi narratives. Instead, I want to explore the possibilities that open up through embodying nonhuman narrators. What becomes of stories when they are told through the forestā€™s multiplicity of voices? What becomes of self-concept when we begin to think of all entities as truly intertwined? The first draft of the novel was completed in February 2026 and Iā€™m now about a quarter of the way through revisions.
Typed text that reads: but then would come morning and I would leave these memories aside and put myself towards important things: the metabolization of light, the storage of sugar in each cell, the extra attention to healing deep cracks in bark, and on this morning the Sun lanced through the cool air to my half-bare branches and I basked in the feeling of it and of the sweet breeze that flicked the undersides of my branches so much was I lost in these crown-feelings that I was not among the first to notice the change on the groundā€”the way that the shadows thinned and curled in on themselves, the familiar dappling twisted into a thousand feathered crescent-moons of light in the gaps between branches and when I pulled my attention back up to the sky, it was an unimaginable thing: the Sun was less than It had been only minutes ago, being eaten away by a huge black parasite, and even now was shrinking away, and Its light that should have poured down onto us was quickly lessening
Text that reads: which calmed us to see, and so even as the waning sliver thinned and the world dipped into viscous sepia, even as the clouds cleared from the dark sky and yes, the stars popped out again, We held ourselves tense against fear and lived these memories again and again, the whole process in reverse, the return of light, the return of warmth, the awakening of the animals and when daytime clicked back into its appointed place We had settled ourselves into something resembling calm and We welcomed the sun with our leaves turned upright and our branches stretched wide and
Photo of a lamppost with snow pea plants twining up it. The photo is mostly leaves, with one pink and one purple flower visible.
Photo of a notebook leaning up against a tree on a ridge, with a view of many distant pine trees in the background.
A page of double-spaced typed text with handwritten crossings-out and additions in black pen.
Photo of a fold-out secretary desk with a binder laid on it and a journal balanced upright, both covered in cursive handwriting. Also on the desk: a pilot fountain pen, a mug of tea, a cauldron-shaped pencil cup, a vase with baby's breath flowers, and two birthday cards.
Photo of an outdoor cafƩ table with a binder of lined loose leaf paper, a notebook, a pen, and an iced chai latte.
Photo of a stack of library books sitting on a desk. Bottom to top, they are: On Morrison by Namwali Serpell, Underland by Robert Macfarlane, The Genuis of Trees by Harriet Rix, Hild by Nicola Griffith, and The Hounding by Xenobia Purvis.
Photo of a cat standing on one of many piles of printed manuscript on the floor.
Screenshot of a word count box in google docs. Text reads: Pages 237; Words 79,891; Characters 428,465; Characters excluding spaces 349,267
Screenshot of a Google Doc showing the last paragraph of a novel and the word FIN at the bottom. The paragraph reads: and from the cracks of the poisoned wood We began to see that inevitable grey creep, the branching arms of soft rot, which held the wood and caressed it from within, and began the work of eating away its sharp edges and solid insides, and then there came the green cast on the surface of the path, the shallow wrinkles of algae, which bloomed larger and larger across the treads, which were caught in the pads of paws and the soles and scuffed away, but which grew back again regardless.
Photo of a margin note in the Elder Edda that reads "noble leek = sword?"
Photo of a desk with a writing tablet with keyboard, a pair of glasses, and an open book with marked-up poems, sticky notes, and a pencil lying on it.
Photo of a fluffy caramel-coloured cat standing on a secretary desk, blocking the view of a writing tablet. Also on the desk are a journal, a pair of wire-framed glasses, a teapot, and a cup of tea.
Photo of a tablet at a cafƩ table, with a glass of hot chocolate to one side and a notebook with cursive handwriting to the other.
Photo of a cat sitting in a chair at a dining table. The cat is grey, extremely fluffy, and is sticking out her little pink tongue sort of sideways.
Photo of a notebook propped up against a car passenger seat dashboard. The car is driving down a tree-lined highway, and the notebook has a handwritten chapter outline in cursive.
Photo of an outdoor table and chair overed in graffiti with leaf-shaped backpack on the chair and a tablet on the table, all in dappled light. In the background, a sunny park with grass and trees.
Screenshot of a word document with the following text: When Harald is dead, Pedr digs beneath the snow to find the layer of wet leaves slick on the ground. He takes everything that will not rot quicklyā€”Haraldā€™s bronze medallion, his leather shoes, his knifeā€”and uses the knife to dig a hole deep enough to bury them. Then he covers the body in leaves and snow, piling them on the legs and trunk but, when he reaches the face, placing each leaf carefully and smoothing it over the cold skin. He does not bother to close the eyes, which sag half-lidded, only covered by leaves as they creep from one side of the face to the other. Then Pedr packs on snow, and then more leaves and sticks. A makeshift cairn that will become a part of the ground as the body does. Pedr does not think of the carrion-eaters, the scavenging birds which will thrust their claws through to the flesh and destroy this resting-place. He does not know about the tiniest scavengers, the bugs and bacteria, which will eat their way into the corpse and grow and multiply. He thinks in clean absolutes: this unsaved soul will find no redemption after death. This body of dust returns to dust, and so there shall be an end.
Photo of a fluffy cat behind a window screen, with her ears flattened back and her green eyes very wide.
Photo of a table with a tablet, a notebook, and a tray with an empty food basket on it and a few sandwich crumbs.
Photo of a hand holding a notebook full of cursive handwriting up in a forest, with a background of trees and sky.
A fluffy long-haired cat curled up on a leaf-shaped cat bed on the floor. Her eyes are half-closed like she's about to fall asleep.
Photo of a table outdoors on a porch on a city street. In the background you can see trees and tomato plants climbing the porch railing, and on the table is a tablet with typed text, a floral teacup on a matching saucer, a green teapot, and a jar of brown sugar.
Photo of a secretary desk open to show an open notebook with handwrititing, an open book with a circular diagram on the page, and a tablet with writing on it.
A photo of a table at a cafƩ with an iced chai latte, a hibiscus iced tea, a cookie, and a chocolate croissant. Sitting across the table is a person (face not visible) typing on an iPad.
Photo of a wood secretary desk with four large drawers up against a wall. The desk has carved detailling and decorative metal drawer pulls. Sitting on top of it is a paper organizer, a large blue mug, and a small cauldron with pens and quills in it. Beside the desk is a standing lamp, and above it is a houseplant on a windowsill.
Photo of a desk with a large empty mug, an open tablet on a page full of text titled "Chapter 16: The Summer Stead," and an open notebook with handwriting. In the desk's shelves are more notebooks, a jar, bottles of ink, and a fabric roll of pens.
Photo of a long-haired caramel-and-grey coloured cat laying on a table next to a tablet with its keyboard open, a bottle of fountain pen ink, and a laptop. The cat has an alert, mischievous expression and a really fluffy neck.
Photo of a table that has a sleepy long-haired cat lounging on it, behind a tablet, a notebook with writing in it, and a bottle of fountain pen ink.
a small knitted frog wearing overalls sitting cross-legged in front of a landline phone
photo of a zine maquette titled STARTER HOME with rough sketches of what will appear on the pages
Typed text that reads: I made a game of putting my feet as close together as I could, placing the heel of one sneaker almost on top of the toes of the other, watching the ground. My footsteps would make one perfect continuous line, which I pictured in clean white paint, across the sidewalk from then to now. I made people step out of my way instead of breaking the line. The city always made me feel like lines were important.
photo of a bookshelf, with a fluffy grey-brown kitten laying on a stack of books on one of the shelves
A painting (Roe Deer in Snow by Gustave Courbet) of a rocky autumn landscape covered in snow, with two roe deer emerging from the distance along a path.
A small, fluffy grey kitten sitting on a table behind piles of yarn skeins.
A photo of a folded zine. On the front is a blue-and-green woodblock print of wood grain, and in chunky printed text, the words STARTER HOME Issue 1: Minnows, 2/50.
A table mostly covered in sheets of paper, some folded half, which are variously covered in typed text and black and blue block prints of bodies and forms of waves or wood grain.
photo of a person wearing an off-white granny-style vest that ties in the front with dark red ties and edge binding. the body of the vest has stripe with images of apples and apple blossoms.
a collage with text that reads: "GOLEM by Arielle M. DeVito". images include a pool of thick mud, a body made from clay, and a face overlaid with the texture of moving water.
a photo of a person wearing a navy blue, calf-length cape with a V-shaped closure in the center front and a high collar on the back of the neck. there are arm slits visible at elbow height on each side, and gold braid trim running up the center front.
a curled up dead wasp on top of a gloved hand. the wasp is large and mostly black, with some pale yellow segments on the head and abdomen.