Current
William Rubel, Executive Director.
William is founder of Stone Soup and the Children’s Art Foundation. In 1972, he gathered together a group of fellow students at the University of California Santa Cruz who shared his vision of creating a magazine written by and for children to highlight their creative talents and inspire them.
William is also an author specializing in traditional foodways, the history of bread, and Early Modern British kitchen gardens. His book on hearth cooking, The Magic of Fire (2002), was a World Gourmand Cookbook award winner and a James Beard nominee. His second book is Bread, a global history (2011). He is currently writing a history of bread for the University of California Press.
William lives in Santa Cruz with his daughter, Stella, and their cat, chickens, rabbits, and aviary birds. You can read more about his other interests at his personal website.
Emma Wood, Editor in Chief.
Originally from New York City, Emma holds a BA from Harvard in Russian History & Literature and an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she taught literature and poetry writing. Her poetry has received fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, in addition to appearing in a number of literary journals. She has worked previously as an editor for the online magazines The Morning News and The Rumpus.
Her first book, A Failed Performance: Collected Plays of Daniil Kharms, a collaborative translation with the poet C Dylan Bassett, was published in 2018.
She currently lives in the redwoods of Santa Cruz, CA, with her husband, baby daughter, and their two dogs, Franny and Charlie, and is working on her PhD and teaching at UCSC. You can read more about her on her personal website.
Sarah Ainsworth, Blog Editor & Special Projects.
Sarah joined the Stone Soup team after graduating from UC Santa Cruz in 2017, and is now attending graduate school at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, studying to become an archivist. She was an avid reader of Stone Soup when she was young and submitted work, although–unlike her sister–she was never published! Amongst other responsibilities, Sarah is editor of our blog, ensuring that the work of today’s Stone Soup bloggers and reviewers find its way out into the world, and also works on special projects such as our forthcoming Podcast series.
Jane Levi, Operations Manager / Managing Editor.
Jane has worked with Stone Soup since 2016 and–pandemic permitting–will once again spend time in Santa Cruz with Stone Soup colleagues. She lives in London, UK, with her cat, Kimchi. You can read more about her on her personal website.
Laura Moran, Refugee Project & Book Club.
Laura joined the Stone Soup team in early 2020 as coordinator of the Refugee Project. She also facilitates the Stone Soup Book Club and taught the Society of Young Inklings and Stone Soup 2020 summer writing workshop, Anthropology at Home: The Art of Creative Nonfiction.
Laura is a cultural anthropologist with a PhD from The University of Queensland, in Australia, and a master’s degree from Oxford University, in the UK. Her research is on refugee youth and racial identity and she teaches anthropology at universities in the Boston area. Her first book, Belonging and Becoming in a Multicultural World: Refugee Youth and the Pursuit of Identity, was published in 2020, by Rutgers University Press.
Laura currently lives on the Northshore of Boston, MA with her husband, young son, and 11-year-old daughter, an avid reader and published Stone Soup author!
Caleb Berg, Video Editor & Writing Workshop Assistant.
Caleb joined the Stone Soup team in August, 2020 as a video editor. In April he will start working as a Writing Workshop assistant. In addition to his work for Stone Soup, he also provides video editing and works on special projects with Stone Soup Founder and Executive Director, William Rubel.
Caleb lives in Santa Cruz with fellow member of the Stone Soup team, Tayleigh Greene, and is finishing the last year of his BA in literature with a focus in creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
You can find some of his published writing at Chinquapin Literary Magazine and at Emerge Literary Journal
Tayleigh Greene, Customer Service.
Tayleigh joined the Stone Soup team in August, 2020 as a customer service representative. She also works as a personal assistant to Stone Soup Founder and Executive Director, William Rubel.
Tayleigh graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz in December, 2020 with a BA in History, with a focus in Mediterranean (especially Italian) history. She lives in Santa Cruz with fellow Stone Soup team member, Caleb Berg.
On her days off from Stone Soup, you can find Tayleigh working at The Garden Company, where she and William first met and bonded after having both bought Oncidium Moon Shadow ‘Tiger Tail’ orchids.
Conner Bassett, Creative Writing Instructor.
C Dylan Bassett has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is currently a PhD candidate in literature and creative writing at UC Santa Cruz. His fiction and poetry are published in Chicago Review, Iowa Review, The Literary Review, and elsewhere. He started teaching a regular series of Stone Soup Writing Workshops and a Summer Camp class in 2021.
Past
Gerry Mandel, Editor Emerita.
Gerry served as editor and co-director of Stone Soup for more than 44 years, from its inception in 1973 through the publication of the July/August 2017 issue. In addition to her editorial work, Gerry oversaw the design and production of each print issue of Stone Soup and managed the day-to-day operations of the business. She stepped down from these roles in 2017 and currently serves as Operations Manager for the Santa Cruz County Youth Symphony.
You can read about the current and former Stone Soup interns here.
