Stone Soup Editors

“In the Wind” Photograph by Abigail Craven, 13 (Harland, WI) Published in Stone Soup Magazine June 2020 A note from Jane Welcome to summer The work we are highlighting in this week’s Newsletter, both from the fabulous June issue of the Magazine, are all about summertime. The bright red of the basketball hoop against the blue sky and high clouds in Abigail Craven’s photograph above; the poetic evocation of summer nights “cool like ice cubes / melting in your mouth” in Juliet del Fabbro’s poem below. Most of you in the USA are now finished with school for the year, and it’s the start of summer vacation; for others, holiday time is not far away. It’s the start of an unusual summer for everyone, with many of the plans we’d made and things we’d normally do thrown into question by the pandemic response. But this poem and photograph in their different ways focus our minds on some of the timeless, unchanging things about the different season, things that we can always enjoy and respond to: the weather, the color of the sky, the feel of the summer breeze. We wish all of you a happy, creative summer. To help with that creative summer, our weekly Book Club meetings and Writing Workshop are continuing through the summer, free to subscribers. If you do not have a digital or print+digital subscription to Stone Soup, you are welcome to try out the class before you commit to a monthly or annual subscription. We look forward to seeing you all and working with you through the summer! Printer running late Like everyone, we have had to face a few obstacles at Stone Soup in recent months. Most of our work is already automated, so we’ve been luckier than most small non-profits. But one big area that has been disrupted for us is the printing of physical issues and books. Our printer has increased its lead times not once, but twice, since the start of the pandemic–both times, without notice. The time between our sending them the files, to the issues being printed ready to be shipped to our mailing house (who then sends them on to all of you) has gone from 5 days before March, to 10 days in April, 15 days in May, and now to 22 days! This means that although the issue was ready and our print order went in even earlier than usual, it was still too late for us to guarantee the issues being ready to send out to you on June 15th as normal. At this point, we think we will not have the issues ready to ship until the end of the month, so print subscribers will probably receive the July/August Summer double issue in the second week of July. We are very sorry; and we assure you we are going as fast as we can. We’ll let you know how it progresses and what to expect. Summer camp Last week I was lucky enough to be the Stone Soup team member who got to drop into the first week-long writing summer camp with the Society of Young Inklings, to chat with Naomi Kinsman, the incredible leader of the sessions, and the participants. I arrived on the day that everyone had dressed up as the main character in their fantasy novel: the costumes were amazing, and I was so envious of how much fun everyone was having! Congratulations to everyone in the class–we can’t wait to read what you’ve written. To all of you booked in to future camps in June–you are in for a treat. For everyone else, we will try to get some additional dates organised as soon as we can–more news on that next week! Weekend project This weekend, to celebrate the freedom of mind that comes with the end of school, I want you to work on something free form and abstract. Try making some marbled paper, like the kind in old-fashioned book end-papers or on beautiful stationary. There’s a technique for doing that (as well as some other fun stuff) at the Tate website. Then, spend some time really looking at the patterns and color combinations you have made. What does it bring to mind? A poem, a piece of prose, an idea, a portrait? Whatever it is, write or draw it on that same piece of paper.  Let yourself be free to express whatever you feel, and make something beautiful to inspire yourself through summer. Until next week, Winners from Weekly Flash Contest #10 Weekly Flash Contest #10: Write down 5 ideas for some impossible characters – space frogs, singing clocks, walking cactuses – the more unlikely the better. Pick 2 of them. What would happen if they met? Write a story about it. The week commencing June 1st (Daily Creativity prompt #51) was our tenth week of flash contests, and our entrants rose to the double challenge of inventing some crazily impossible characters, and putting them together in bizarre situations. Well done everyone for your wildly creative stories and ideas! This was such a strange and fascinating group to choose from, that we found it just too hard to narrow down the number to share with you. So, this week we have 6 winners, whose work is published below, and 4 very honorable Honorable Mentions. Congratulations to them all! You can read the winning entries for this week (and previous weeks) at the Stone Soup website. Winners Isabel Bashaw, 10, Enumclaw, WA Lucy Berberich, 11, Oxford, OH Federico Lynch Ferraris, 11, New York, NY Lila Laton, 10, New York, NY Tilly Marlow, 10, Bristol, United Kingdom Alice Xie, 12, West Windsor, NJ Honorable Mentions “Enchanted Woods” (story and drawing) by Amelia Barth, 10, Elgin, IL “The Mathematician and the Songstress (A Story Told from 2 Points of View)” by Anna Haakenson, 12, Beach Park, IL “Polka Dots” by Samantha Lee, 10, Thomaston, CT “The Eerie Cat-Man Thief and the Gucci Bunny” by Daniel Wei, 13, Weddington, NC Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book