Living in isolation, often with just our families, has meant that many families have spent more time together than ever. I have experienced this on both ends—as a parent and as a daughter. This summer, we braved the flight out east to stay with my parents in Connecticut for six weeks. It was the most time I had spent with them since I lived at home right after college! It was a very special visit because, after months of waiting, they got to meet their granddaughter for the first time. Seeing them as grandparents, and becoming a parent myself, has made me appreciate all they have done (and continue to do!) for me. Parents have a central role to play in all the stories and personal narratives in this issue— and not always a positive one. Leo Tolstoy famously opens his novel Anna Karenina with this maxim: “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But I disagree—I think every family, happy or unhappy, is unique in its own way. I hope this issue inspires you to reflect on your own family—or to dream up a story about a fictional one!!
Letter From the Editor
Editor’s Note
I have been thinking a lot about time in these past few months. Like all of you, I have been living in quarantine—the days blending into one another more than usual. But I also became a mother in April. And time changed. I would wake up before the baby and look at the clock (6:00 a.m.) then close my eyes for what felt like mere seconds and wake to her crying—suddenly it’s 7:30 a.m. I’d say to myself, “I’m going to bounce her for five more minutes.” I’d bounce and bounce and bounce and yet when I looked at the clock not even a full minute had passed! Which is to say that time seems so objective and yet our experience of it is entirely subjective. Or, as Sofia Dardzinski writes in her poem “Decisions,” A clock tells time I believe it tells time from its perspective Every clock is different Every clock has a different view of things The poems, stories, and personal narratives in this issue are all thinking, in their own way, around this idea of time, and often of loneliness, too—a condition that makes us even more attuned to the clock than usual. I hope reading this issue will allow you to experience a time distinct from the time of your daily life!
Editor’s Note
This year, we began publishing nonfiction in the magazine. In this issue, I am excited to finally share the winners of the Personal Narrative Contest we ran with the Society of Young Inklings last fall. These three narratives give us a sense of the scope and range of narrative nonfiction. In “Locked Out of Kindergarten,” Kateri Escober Doran recounts a single, indelible memory from kindergarten, blending thoughtful reflection on the social world with detailed, poignant scenes. In “Swirling Arabesques,” Zoe Kyriakakis demonstrates the poetic possibilities of prose. And, finally, in “Gratitude,” Alicia Xin shares the lessons she learned after spending a summer immersed in a different culture. I hope by reading these narratives, and the ones we have been publishing in the magazine this year, that you are beginning to understand that nonfiction can be just as “literary”—as strange, as beautiful, as descriptive, as interesting—as fiction! And that it certainly need not end with a clear “lesson” or “moral.” I also hope you will enjoy the art, poetry, and two very fictional stories in this issue—both of which, in contrast to the nonfictional narratives, focus on human-animal relationships. Welcome to fall!
Editor’s Note
In our double summer issue, we are thrilled to share not one but two books of poetry that placed second in our 2019 Book Contest: The Golden Elephant by Analise Braddock and Searching for Bow and Arrows by Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer—two equally talented yet entirely distinct young poets. Braddock’s The Golden Elephant is a wild circus of a book populated with elephants, mice, space beasts, clowns, teachers, strongmen, lion tamers, and planets. Her poems are profound, contradictory (“You are always never alone”), dark, strange, and always playful (“Tigers are boss. / Leave them alone.”). Reading her poems makes me acutely aware of the mysterious relationship between language—grammar, rhythm, rhyme, and word choice—and thought. Shrayer’s Searching for Bow and Arrows is about the weight of history—one’s own personal, familial history as well as the history of politics and nations—and a nostalgic longing for a homeland that both is and isn’t home. In her spare, formal poems, Shrayer probes the thin veil between the past and present, focusing on the natural world as a bridge between the two: “Drops / of saltwater / arranged / like letters / on an ancient scroll.” Till September!
Editor’s Note
Because of our production schedule, I am writing you this letter a few months in advance of when it will be published. It is now mid-March, and many of us are just beginning an indefinite period of staying at home as much as we can to protect ourselves and our communities from COVID-19. I tend to think of home as a magical, comforting place. But when I’m home too long, or when I’m forced to stay home, it can start to seem more like a jail than a haven. The two short stories in this issue, both of which revolve around leaving homes and creating new ones, helped remind me of how lucky I am to still be in my familiar, comfortable home—or, as Juliet Del Fabbro writes in her poem “morning,” in “the warm calming cave / that is my bed.” And this month, the last installment of the novella Elana ends—like many stories—with a homecoming. We hope you have enjoyed reading about Elana’s adventures! Finally, whatever is going in the world, it is still almost summer vacation—yay! If I were a kid again, I would be spending these hot, lazy days writing, drawing, reading, and playing outside as much as possible. Till next time,
Editor’s Note
This issue is a bit diff erent than usual for two reasons. First, we have started to serialize Hannah Nami Gajcowksi’s fantastical novella, Elana, which placed third in our 2019 book contest. Elana follows the extraordinary adventures of a “furow” girl who lives on Neptune and has an important destiny to fulfill. We will be publishing Elana in three installments in our April, May, and June issues—we are sure you will be waiting impatiently for the next installments each month! Second, it is National Poetry Month again! For this reason, we have chosen to showcase the work of two young poets. We hope you will enjoy reading this larger selection of work by a single poet (as well as an additional short story), and that you will take the time to read and reread these pieces. Poems may take less time to read than stories, but they are meant to be read many times. Until next time!
Editor’s Note
A man and a bird. Two young dancers. Two chess-players. A “furow” and a fairy. This issue explores what, other than blood and kinship, binds us to others—even, in the case of the fi nal poem, “To Those in a Cage,” to strangers. As Lydia Iliff asks in her poem “Why are friends like that?”: What is the point of friends? Are they supposed to make you laugh? Cry? Are they there for you? These stories and poems will help you answer some of these questions, though I hope Iliff ’s words will also inspire you to draw on your own well of personal experience. When I was a child, my best friend and I would pretend we were twins because that was how we close we felt. The word “friends” didn’t seem adequate for us! Is there someone like that in your life? Maybe your best friend is your twin! Regardless, what can you express—whether through words, painting, or photography—about what a friend is to you? I look forward to reading what you come up with soon!
Editor’s Note
This issue explores the extremes in nature—from the terrifying peaks of the mountains and the towering peaks of ocean waves to storms capable of wiping out an entire group of soldiers. The stories, poems, and art here all remind us of the awe-inspiring power latent within the earth, water, plants, and rocks that surround us. The Earth has seen it all. As Zeke Braman writes in his poem “Mountain”: The footprints that have faded leave their story, The birds have an article that they will share, The trees have old legends Of kings and queens and knights, The ground has an account The Earth holds and remembers our stories—in the form of fossils and artifacts, of course, but also in the landscape itself, which we have so drastically changed. We have transported plants and animals from their natural habitats to new ones. We have dug lakes and built mountains and created snow. And now, through climate change, we are causing fires to rage, oceans to rise, and storms to flood our cities. What “account” will the ground have of us in the next decade, the next century? This month, I encourage you to explore the landscape around you—however ordinary it might seem—and to find the extreme, and also the beauty, within it. Till next time, Emma Wood
Editor’s Note
How would you react if your parents abandoned you and the only home you had ever known burned down? Or if your closest friend were being bullied at school—and you felt powerless to help? What would you do if your mom didn’t show up to pick you up after school, or if you found out you needed surgery to remove a tumor on your head, or if your very best friend moved hundreds of miles away and into a different time zone? The stories and personal narratives in this issue all wrestle with experiences that push their characters and narrators to the limit—that test them and, in most cases, ultimately make them stronger. These pieces felt appropriate for our February issue. Winter, as a season, always reminds me that life can be cold, lonely, and difficult. That the flowers won’t always be blooming, the sun won’t always be out. As we see in Rachael Ding’s “The Old Woman” in this issue, the seasons are the most essential metaphors for the seasons of our life—the seasons that come as we age, but also as we go through different phases of life. Some phases are full of life and happiness, and some are full of difficulty and even loss. The pieces in this issue remind us of that—and show us the life and strength that exists even within the winter.
Editor’s Note
We often think technology has made our lives better. We can easily heat up our leftovers in the microwave, dictate our papers and letters into our phones, take photos of anything we want, and FaceTime with family and friends who are far away. But instead of celebrating these conveniences, the stories and plays in this issue note the price that we pay for them. Technology— and all the power our devices require—has sucked the beauty and color from our planet. It has replaced humans in their jobs, creating endless, and endlessly frustrating, telephone calls with robots. It has become so addicting and seemingly necessary that it even seems to control us, rather than the other way around. Though the days are now getting longer, January is a dark month, and the poems, stories, plays, and art in this issue are all dark—sometimes darkly comic!—and extremely thought-provoking. I hope reading these stories will prompt you to reevaluate the role of technology as well as the role of nature in your life. As always, we encourage you to write these thoughts down and share them with Stone Soup in whatever mode of expression you prefer. Finally, welcome to 2020—we’re excited to share another year of Stone Soup with you!
Editor’s Note
Sometimes not a lot happens in the stories we publish. This is not the case in this issue! In these stories, a young boy, still reeling from his father’s death, fights to save the world; a journalist travels to a refugee camp in war-ridden Syria; a Parisian street orphan befriends an old woman who has many crazy stories; and a Spanish nobleman finds an ancient fossil. The poems and the art we’ve included have a similarly lively energy—from the snow falling in Hannah Parker’s “A Glimpse of Winter” to Santa Claus making his rounds in Gianna Guerrero’s “A Christmas Poem.” We hope this action-packed issue will keep you entertained during the long December nights! Emma Wood
Editor’s Note
What is home to you? Is it a specific place—a whole country, state, or city? Is it a whole house or just a room? Is it being with certain family or friends? Or is it simply a feeling you get—of comfort and belonging—regardless of where you are? For me, home is not just one of these things: it is all of them. It is my childhood bedroom in my parents’ New York City apartment and New York City and the U.S. and my family, my dogs, and my closest friends and a feeling I sometimes get, even when I’m far from all of these places and alone. The pieces in the issue all explore different ideas of home—as well as what it means to leave home, how one can make a home, and even what happens when someone enters that home uninvited. I hope you will feel “at home” in this issue!
