This issue is unusual: it is made up of a novella (a short novel) and a cycle of poems. When I came across the novella Dancing in the Rain, I immediately sat up. I loved the clarity and simplicity with which Harper Miller, the author, set up scenes, not only creating a picture in my mind but evoking a mood. As you read her book, you will notice that, though she is tracing a single central plot—the drought—Miller is not afraid to let her story meander a bit. A cycle of poems is simply a group of poems on a single subject or in a single form. Vidhat Kartik’s cycle is about the four seasons. I loved the playfulness and inventiveness of his rhyme and the way certain motifs (like the “hose”) resurfaced throughout the pieces. There is so much incredible artwork in this issue, as well—from the incredibly detailed “Four Seasons” drawing to the mysterious rock formations framed so beautifully in the photograph, “Canadian Beach.” Happy reading and looking!
Letter From the Editor
Editor’s Note
In January, the days are already getting longer but it doesn’t feel that way! This issue has some short short fiction—the winners of our 2018 contest—to match the season’s short short days, as well as wintry, dark landscapes in both art and poetry. It also has three longer stories that matched the seasonal mood in a different way; their “darkness” is more metaphorical, but each one still leaves you with a feeling of hope and the presentiment of longer, lighter days ahead. Here’s to some fireside reading!
Editor’s Note
In January, the days are already getting longer but it doesn’t feel that way! This issue has some short short fiction—the winners of our 2018 contest—to match the season’s short short days, as well as wintry, dark landscapes in both art and poetry. It also has three longer stories that matched the seasonal mood in a different way; their “darkness” is more metaphorical, but each one still leaves you with a feeling of hope and the presentiment of longer, lighter days ahead. Here’s to some fireside reading!
Editor’s Note
During the holidays, when cookies, cake, and hot chocolate seem to be everywhere, we tend to think of food as a comfort and as a delight. We don’t often talk publicly about the many anxieties surrounding food, about the allergies, intolerances, and religious or ethical dietary choices that can make it difficult to enjoy a meal with one’s friends and family. In this year’s food issue, some of our young writers explore this darker side of eating, alongside its joys. We also have six delicious recipes to share with you, and hope you will enjoy sharing your kitchen with each other and with Stone Soup this holiday!
Editor’s Note
During the holidays, when cookies, cake, and hot chocolate seem to be everywhere, we tend to think of food as a comfort and as a delight. We don’t often talk publicly about the many anxieties surrounding food, about the allergies, intolerances, and religious or ethical dietary choices that can make it difficult to enjoy a meal with one’s friends and family. In this year’s food issue, some of our young writers explore this darker side of eating, alongside its joys. We also have six delicious recipes to share with you, and hope you will enjoy sharing your kitchen with each other and with Stone Soup this holiday!
Editor’s Note
Imagine if animals could talk: what we would learn, and how we might be different, and how much chatter we’d hear every time we entered a forest! In the fantastical stories in this issue, there is a talking, magical butterfly and a shape-shifting goddess of the forest. There are gods at war with humans over leaves. And there is a lovingly reared pig, who must be sold at auction. In the poems, there is nature in its real—and ever-strange and unknowable—state. In the art, fantasy and reality meet. I hope you will enjoy the magical, the animal, and the natural in this issue! Best, Emma
Editor’s Note
Imagine if animals could talk: what we would learn, and how we might be different, and how much chatter we’d hear every time we entered a forest! In the fantastical stories in this issue, there is a talking, magical butterfly and a shape-shifting goddess of the forest. There are gods at war with humans over leaves. And there is a lovingly reared pig, who must be sold at auction. In the poems, there is nature in its real—and ever-strange and unknowable—state. In the art, fantasy and reality meet. I hope you will enjoy the magical, the animal, and the natural in this issue! Best, Emma
Editor’s Note
I remember the first time I sat down in a room different from the room where I’d grown up, in my parents’ house, and said, “This is home.” I was in college, and it was a strange feeling—to feel at home away from home. What is home anyway? Is it a planet, a city, a feeling, a person, a piece of furniture? Each of the pieces in this issue wrangles with the idea of “home” in an interesting, exciting way. I hope they will inspire you to write about your own home as well!
Editor’s Note
I remember the first time I sat down in a room different from the room where I’d grown up, in my parents’ house, and said, “This is home.” I was in college, and it was a strange feeling—to feel at home away from home. What is home anyway? Is it a planet, a city, a feeling, a person, a piece of furniture? Each of the pieces in this issue wrangles with the idea of “home” in an interesting, exciting way. I hope they will inspire you to write about your own home as well!
Editor’s Note
I’m thrilled to finally share the winners of our Science Fiction Contest with you, in this special Science Issue of the magazine. Each story is inventive, strange, suspenseful, and “scientific” in its own way. “Middlenames,” the winning story, imagines a society that assigns you a middle name—which determines your identity for life—at birth. “Young Eyes” explores the dangers of technology, while “Mystical Creatures of Blue Spout Bay” and “Sunk” take on the environment. This issue also features nonfiction writing on scientific topics—from the solar eclipse to organ transplants—as well as three poems that engage with scientific topics and ways of thinking. I hope this issue serves as a reminder that writing and literature don’t happen in vacuum; they aren’t separate from other subjects like algebra, physics, or biology. As you read, I want you to think about your largest, non-literary passion. How can you engage it in your own writing? As always, send the results of your experiment to Stone Soup! Enjoy—
Editor’s Note
Stone Soup was co-founded by William Rubel 45 years ago this year at Porter College at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). This past semester, I got to work on this issue with a group of eight students in a Porter College classroom at UCSC. It was exciting to hear their ideas for the magazine and to discuss their reactions to submissions as we went through the difficult process of selecting pieces for the issue. I’m very proud of the result. What ties these pieces together is a spirit of experimentation and adventure. I hope this issue inspires you to try new things—whether that’s a screenplay, a review of a TV show, or a short poem. For those of you reading online, a few of these pieces also include audio of the writers reading their work!
A Note from the Stone Soup Test Kitchen
For the last few weeks the Stone Soup test kitchen has been filled with delicious smells, from melting cheese and savoury tomato sauce, via sweet baking rich with fruit and chocolate, to refreshing smoothies and celebratory spiced punch. Every one of these smells and tastes evokes a memory or a feeling, and each one of the recipes in the Food Issue tells a story–of family, of inventiveness, of literary inspiration, of home, of friends, or what happened the last time our writers tasted or made this or that. We’ve loved reading the recipes’ stories as well as making—and eating—every one of them, and we hope you do, too. Write and let us know the new stories they inspire as they travel from our writers’ kitchens and into yours. Let the culinary adventures begin!
