Novela — A maintained Gatsby theme fork

With minimal styling and maximum features — including multiple homepage layouts, built-in social sharing and dark mode — Novela makes it easy to start publishing beautiful articles and stories with Gatsby.

Novela was originally built by the team at Narative, and built for everyone that loves the web. This fork continues maintenance under the @pewriebontal/gatsby-theme-novela package.

Special thanks to @narative for this awesome project and @jpvalery for helping maintain Novela.

Maintenance

This fork is actively maintained for compatibility fixes, bug fixes, and focused improvements that keep Novela usable for Gatsby sites. The original Narative project is no longer actively maintained by Narative; please open issues and pull requests against this fork.

Why use Novela?

There are many Gatsby themes to choose from. Here’s why we think you won’t regret choosing Novela:

Multiple Homepage Layouts

Choose between a variable width grid or a simpler list style to display each story.

Mailchimp integration

Start building an audience and grow your blog subscribers with Mailchimp.

Toggleable Light and Dark Mode

Out of the box, Novela includes both light and dark designs that can be toggled by the user anywhere across the site.

Simple Customization with Theme UI

Consistent, easy-to-read code lets you quickly customize every color and setting.

Show code effortlessly

High quality embedded codeblocks that make authoring technical blog posts a breeze.

Highlight-to-Share

Users can select text within an article to copy or share to platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn.

Read Time and Progress

Read time is automatically generated for each article based on length, with an animated bar tracking the reader’s progress through each piece.

Accessibility in Mind

Navigable by cursor or keyboard, readable via screens and screen readers, Novela ensures everyone on the web can read what you write.

The Future

Novela remains a Gatsby theme for long-form publishing. The maintenance goal is to keep the theme stable, modernize carefully where needed, and preserve the original editorial feel that made Novela useful.