As you may have noticed just from holding it in your hands, this issue is longer than usual. That’s because in addition to the regular forty-eight pages of writing and art, you’ll find an extra ten pages of art in this, our new art edition of the magazine. We’ve decided to make a special art issue at least an annual event. Why? Because art submissions have really exploded in the past couple of years; we get so much wonderful art that we love and want to publish, and it’s difficult to find space for it alongside all the incredible writing we also love and want to publish. So, instead of temporarily suspending art submissions or accepting even less art, we decided to make space to publish as much as we can. The art in this issue represents the full range of work that we publish—you’ll find photographs, paintings, pencil drawings, pastel drawings, digital art created with Procreate. You’ll find work from our Refugee Project, portraits and landscapes, pastorals and street scenes. Thank you to all of our artists—past and present—for bringing us inspiration and beauty. Happy new year! And happy FIFTIETH birthday to Stone Soup!
Letter From the Editor
Editor’s Note
Memoir has the spotlight in this issue. In these pages, you will find Georgia Marshall’s interview with her grandfather, which is at once a tribute, a biography in miniature, and a thoughtful reflection on what makes a good life. You will find two personal stories, Louise Johnson’s “Unconditional” and Misha Joksic’s “The Deadly Pain”—both difficult stories to live through and to tell, both fully and beautifully realized. Finally, you will find Noah Xia’s “The Magic Desk,” a lovely meditation on the object at the center of the writer’s creative life. I hope you will read these pieces and be reminded of all the forms and subjects you can address in nonfiction! Lastly, I want to call attention to this month’s incredible cover art by Ivory Vanover, which—in addition to being just a beautiful, intricate painting—captures the way one’s mind fills with images and action when reading a very good book, or writing one. There is so much more amazing work within our pages this month—enjoy it all. Happy holidays!
Editor’s Note
What is home? A sanctuary, a place of rest, a feeling, a family, a specific house or town or state or sky. Home is the way you feel when you feel “at home”—relaxed, comfortable, open. It is in our homes where we are most physically vulnerable—taking showers, getting dressed, going to the bathroom, eating—and also where we are most emotionally vulnerable as well—where we yell and cry and hug, celebrate and grieve. In many ways (and especially in a pandemic and post-pandemic world), home is where life happens. The art and writing in this issue circles the idea of home—what makes a home home—and also celebrates the idea of home, and the joy of the homecoming. There is nothing like returning home after a long trip—or of finding one’s new home. From my home to yours,
Editor’s Note
Every October, I aim to bring a tiny bit of spookiness to Stone Soup. We tend to think spooky means ghosts and witches—and there is one witch in this issue!—but it is also so many other, subtler things: shutters banging against the side of a house, a lone owl on a branch in a silent forest, a mysterious note left in our favorite haunt. And this issue is full of those slightly spooky moments. But this issue is balanced with humor as well—I especially love the lighthearted energy and inventiveness Aaron Bogner brings to the world he creates in “Qrange’s Predicament,” starting with his characters’ names, of which he writes: Qrange took great pleasure in playing with his friends. Their names were Iooooooop and Uf. They sound like weird names to us, but then we don’t live there. They might say our names sound weird! I laughed out loud at these names, but also appreciated the sentences that followed. While I may never meet anyone from another planet, I will meet people from other countries, with names that sound as strange to me as “Uf” or “Iooooooop.” Like every inspiring piece of science fiction, Bogner’s bizarre world helps us to better see our own. Look around and see if there’s something you can, through your art, make similarly strange. Happy Halloween from Stone Soup!
Editor’s Note
“‘What’s the point of always wanting to do something more? It’s all going to disappear when we die, anyway. Why can’t I just be happy as I am?’” asks Simon, the main character in Phoebe Donovan’s story “Delay.” Simon is an adult, but he doesn’t (much to his mother’s chagrin) have a career or a family; he is single and makes sandwiches at a deli. But he has friends, he’s part of a community, and he feels fulfilled in his life—and for him, that’s enough. As someone who has always had trouble being “happy as I am,” I needed to read those words—and I’m sure I’m not the only one who does. And as a writer, I admire Simon as a character; he is three dimensional, fully developed—I feel like I could bump into him at the grocery store. For any of you attempting to write characters, I encourage you to read Phoebe’s story and to pay particular attention to the way she builds the characters of Simon and his mother. I have learned from her, and you will too! I hope you enjoy all the rich characters and sentences and stories in this issue!
Editor’s Note
And the flies were dancing and buzzing, and joining in, and there was some sort of silent party with no music, because the only sounds were the birds and we wanted that. We never wanted it to stop, just wanted to stay, my mother and father with their wine, laughing, me, running, slipping in the wet grass, laughing at the chickens. In this excerpt from her magnificent poem “On an Equestrian Farm [1],” Emma Hoff perfectly expresses the feeling of being on vacation (and especially a lazy July and August kind of vacation!)—sitting outside, listening to the flies and the birds, laughing, being together, and never wanting it to end, while also knowing it is so perfect and wonderful in part because it will end. This summer, I hope each of you enjoys at least one day that makes you feel this way. And then consider writing about that day or that week, turning to Emma’s poems— she has written two about her time on an equestrian farm with her family—as examples. In both, she captures the place and the way she related it, masterfully mixing mundane details with more philosophical observations.
Editor’s Note
It is June. I feel like sighing with relief even writing those words. There is something about summer, even when you’re no longer in school, that just makes you relax. The heat makes everyone slow down, I guess—and people take vacation, which means the working world can’t move at its usual pace. Even though I had so much time in the summer growing up, I always found myself gravitating toward poetry and shorter books during June, July, and August. Short but serious. Pieces that I could read quickly, as if they were melting popsicles. So, this June, here is an issue of shorter pieces to dip in and out of as you finish school and make your way to the beach or pool. I love how so many of these pieces focus on the smallest moments in our lives—like taking a test—but in a way that turns them into unusual, and in some cases even fantastical, events. Read! Write! Relax! Enjoy the start of summer.
Editor’s Note
When was the last time you made a mistake? How did you react? In the first story in this issue, “A Leopard’s Spots” by Juli Hiramatsu, the leopard May makes a terrible mistake: she breaks a promise to an old, old friend, doing something that can’t be undone. While May can’t undo her actions, or make them right, she knows that she must face her mistake, and she does what she can to make things right with her friend—and with her own conscience as well. In many of the stories and memoir pieces in this issue, the characters and narrators navigate how to react when they, or others, make a mistake, whether it’s very big or very small. I encourage you to use this issue as an opportunity to reflect on a time when you made a mistake and consider how you responded to it. Maybe you are proud of your reaction, or maybe you have regrets. Write directly about the experience, or use it as a launching pad for a fictional piece or a work of art that captures the emotional truth of your experience. Till next time,
Editor’s Note
This issue has two central threads running through it: cats and . . . sports. When I am working on an issue, I always look for both obvious thematic links—like subject matter, like cats!—and then also something less tangible and easy to describe, something maybe about the energy of the pieces that seems similar, or the style, or simply a subtler theme. For me, the stories and poems in this issue share a certain light energy and even zaniness, as well as a concern with the animal—whether that takes the shape of an actual animal, like a cat or a dog or a squirrel or a snail, or whether that is about tapping into the animal within each of us. Our raw athletic energy, for instance. These two themes meet each other particularly well in Leo Roiphe’s story “Squirrel,” where a boy actually turns into an animal, experiencing a few hours in the intensely physical, reactive life of a squirrel. I also love how the animal perspective is depicted in Sevi Stahl’s poem “Roo’s Song,” written from the point of view of a dog, and with a notable lack of punctuation that perfectly captures that breathless canine excitement. This month, taking inspiration from these pieces, try your hand at channeling some animal energy—and remember, you don’t need to inhabit an animal to channel one! Enjoy the April showers,
Editor’s Note
Ah, spring! Or as Grace Zhuang writes in her poem “Spring” in this issue: Winds are running around Telling everyone the good news, “Spring is coming!” “Spring is coming!” That stanza captures the atmosphere I tried to create in this issue—one of lightness, whimsy, excitement, and happiness. The writing and art here bubbles (sometimes literally—as in Enzo Moscola’s photograph!) with smiles and imagination, even when dealing with difficult experiences—like breaking an arm, or, you know, saving the world from a cloud of doom. One of my poetry teachers once gave us this assignment in the spring: to go out and listen to a flower growing, then write a poem about it. This month, I ask you to do the same. Although, depending on where you live, it may admittedly be a bit early to hear the flowers, you can go out and listen to the plants and the Earth—then document it in art, in whichever medium you prefer. Till next month,
Editor’s Note
A rainy day, a classroom, a special hill, Mars, Ancient Greece—this is an issue that celebrates place. The stories and much of the art—especially Delilah Prager’s landscape paintings and Jay Nimchonok’s photograph Northern Ontario—all provide a vivid sense of being in a specific place, whether that’s a dry, lifeless planet or an idyllic forest. I love works of art—in all mediums—that celebrate place. They tend to be very simple and yet surprisingly profound and beautiful, even if the setting is mundane or even ugly. But they remind us that we are rooted in space and time, that we are a part of the world even when we retreat from it, and that our surroundings influence how we think and feel. Finally, paying close attention to them—especially to the outdoors—can soothe us and lift our spirits, grounding us in more ways than one. As you read this issue, please be attuned to how these writers and artists depict place, and then go out and try to do the same in your own work.
Editor’s Note
The stories in this issue (one of which is a play!) span a range of styles and subjects—from an old-fashioned gothic ghost story to a political allegory that helps us better understand our own politically divided times, a war veteran reminiscing on a lost friend , and the brave revolutionary uprisings of the Arab Spring. But what unites these pieces is their focus on friendship and connection. Friends lift us up personally and, on a broader level, social ties between people—our community—is what enables political movements and social change to happen. The pandemic has been so difficult in large part because it cut off those ties. Yes, many of us were FaceTiming and Zooming with friends and family, but we lost all those other moments for random connection—the stranger who smiles at us in a coffee shop, the shared joke, the pleasantries exchanged in the park. At first, everyone became suspect, making the idea of community seem like a memory. After reading this issue, I hope you’ll be motivated to pick up a brush or a pen and create something that captures the vital necessity of friendship, or community more broadly. Happy reading!
