Lighthouse in the Rain (iPhone 8, Lightleap) by Tatum Lovely, 12; published in Stone Soup November 2022 A note from Laura Moran Dear Friends, As William mentioned last week, with the end of the year upon us, we at Stone Soup, are turning our attention to the annual fundraising drive. This year is a very special one as we mark the Fiftieth Anniversary of Stone Soup! This is cause for both celebration and determination. We celebrate the monumental achievement of showcasing and inspiring the vast literary and artistic talents of young people across the globe for fifty years and counting. In marking this moment though, we, at Stone Soup, must also focus on our determination to ensure another fifty years of this important work. Hence, this moment is a call to action as we turn to you, our Stone Soup supporters and donors, to help us reach our fundraising goal of $125,000. This money is pivotal to upholding the crucial platform Stone Soup provides for developing young writers and artists. A prominent element of Stone Soup, and one that is close to my heart, is The Stone Soup Refugee Project. The core goal of the Refugee Project is to extend the opportunities provided by Stone Soup-namely, publication, training, and creative engagement-to displaced youth across the globe. In other words, through the Stone Soup Refugee Project, we aim to provide a forum for these young people to tell their own stories, in their own voices. Compared to the broader Stone Soup project, the Refugee Project is still in its early, developmental phase-but what we have achieved in a short span of time is also cause for celebration. We’ve forged connections with ten plus organizations working on-the-ground with refugee youth worldwide, and through these connections, we’ve collected over three-hundred pieces of writing and artwork created by refugee youth. We’ve displayed some of these pieces in our print magazine, and all of them in our newly created Refugee Project web portal, which was built from scratch since the inception of this project. We’ve been able to connect, in real time, with refugee youth in one of the world’s largest refugee camps, Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya to deliver a series of creative writing workshops via skype. And finally, we’ve begun to explore forms of engagement and creative exchange between refugee youth and the broader Stone Soup family, through endeavors such as the Half-Baked Art Exchange, launched in June of this year with partner organization, the My Start Project. While we take great pride in celebrating these milestones, in order to ensure the continuation and expansion of the important work that we have embarked upon with the Stone Soup Refugee Project, we need the financial support of you, our Stone Soup supporters. We are beyond grateful for your support thus far, without which none of that described above would have been possible, and we humbly ask for your continued support to enable the expansion and continued development of these important endeavors central to the Stone Soup Refugee Project. In particular, funds raised in this drive will allow us to implement an expansion of the Refugee Project web portal in order to display the outcomes of a creative exchange between refugee youth and Stone Soup readers through the newly launched Half-Baked Art Exchange, as well as to support the expansion of this program. The newly created webpage will: detail the process of this exchange; display original pieces of artwork by youth in Kakuma Refugee Camp; display collaborative pieces of artwork in which our Stone Soup participants had the chance to learn about life in camp for these young refugees as they built upon their artwork; and finally, artist’s statements written by participants. This workshop was a powerful and unique experience and we hope, with the aid of your contributions, to extend the opportunity for many more to participate and display the results of their artistic collaboration. Thank you, once again, for believing in us and our mission. Your continued support has made this project possible. And to all who celebrate, wishing you a relaxing Thanksgiving and time spent with loved ones. With warmest wishes, Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498.
Newsletter
Saturday Newsletter: November 12, 2022
Beyond the Horizon (iPhone 12 Pro) by Aditi Nair, 13; published in Stone Soup September 2022 A note from William Rubel Dear Friends – I would like to announce the opening of our 2022–2023 Fiftieth Anniversary Drive. In the closing months of this year, and throughout next year, we would like to gather our community of Stone Soup supporters and donors to see us on our way to the next fifty years. Our goal for this drive between now and December 2023 is $125,000. It is a lot! But that amount will provide us with the foundation we need to thrive in the decades to come. Many of us have a set of charities that are important to us and to our families. If you have the means, then I ask you to discuss with your family making Stone Soup one of your primary charities for this year and next. If any of you would like to speak with me directly, then please write to me. I’d be happy to talk to you about Stone Soup and our plans for the future. Thank you. Until next time, William’s Weekly Project I am taken with Aditi Nair’s photograph, Beyond the Horizon. I’ve read that one of the biggest differences between how we are now, we of the mobile phone era, and how we used to be is that we spend less time doing nothing. Less time thinking. We don’t just stand in line at the grocery, we pull out our phones. All of us, of all ages, do this! The title of Aditi’s photograph evokes the unphotographable—a place that cannot be captured on camera and can only exist in our imaginations, our dreams. A place beyond what we can see. The photograph offers us a rare opportunity to ponder. Let yourself be drawn in by this photograph. Spend some time with it. Let your eye wander the vast expanse of water to the point where sky and water converge on the horizon, beyond which is a place of infinite possibility. Aditi invites our contemplation through the placement of the figure looking out to sea. The boy in the photograph offers us a point of entry and helps us see ourselves standing there, looking, and absorbing the moment. I have been focusing my newsletter projects on photography because now almost everyone has a camera, either a stand-alone camera or one in a phone. I want you to find something to photograph that leads to a mystery—something that cannot be wholly captured by the lens of your camera. I will say no more. This is a very big challenge. Good luck! And, as usual, if you like what you achieve, please submit it to Stone Soup. Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498.
Saturday Newsletter: November 5, 2022
Horse in Dreamland (oil pastel) by Tutu Lin, 13; published as the cover for Stone Soup November 2022 A note from Caleb Greetings! This week I have the pleasure of announcing our December 10 reading for Writing Workshop students: Blame the Squirrels, and Other Stories. The event is our first formal reading for Writing Workshop students in over a year. As a proctor for Conner’s workshop, I can’t wait to listen to the students I’ve gotten to know this session read their work, as well as have an opportunity to listen to the magnificent work of the students in William’s workshop. As writers, reading our work aloud is the culmination of hours and hours of effort, and there is no greater feeling than facilitating the measured silence of an audience and receiving raucous applause. So please, mark your calendars for 10 – 11:30 AM PST on December 10, and come out in support of our terrific writers—your presence goes a long way. The event is free to attend. I also wanted to talk briefly about the blog, namely in order to highlight the recent undertaking of one of our most prolific contributors, Emma Catherine Hoff. On top of having published multiple poems in Stone Soup magazine and numerous reviews and opinion pieces on the blog; on top of being one of our longest standing Writing Workshop students; and, on top of just being announced as a winner of our most recent Book Contest for her book of poems An Archeology of the Future (please scroll to see our winner in fiction, as well as the other finalists), Emma, 10, has created a podcast called Poetry Soup, in order to “share [her] love of poetry, and inspire others to read more of it.” She has already released two fantastic episodes, the first about John Ashbery’s sestina “The Painter”, and the second about the poem “The Keeper of the Sheep” by Fernando Pessoa, written under the heteronym Alberto Caeiro. Her third episode will go live either next week or the following, so make sure you take a visit to the Stone Soup blog, where these episodes exclusively air. Until next time, Announcing the 2022 Annual Book Contest Winners! We’re thrilled to announce the results of this year’s Stone Soup Annual Book Contest. It was a pleasure and an honor to read and consider all the manuscripts as well as incredibly difficult to select our two winners. We are excited to share more about the authors and their books in the coming months—stay tuned! ♦ Winners ♦ Poetry An Archeology of the Future, Emma Catherine Hoff, 10 Fiction The Handkerchief Woman, Lily Jessen, 14 ♦ Finalists ♦ Poetry REALITY IS HERE FOR YOU, Analise Braddock, 11 Imagination, Bethel Daniel, 12 Sunny Fitting Sangeeta, Raeha Khazanchi, 13 Simply Complicated, Madeline Male, 14 Scenes From Before, Pauline McAndrew, 14 Fiction Cousins, Emily Chang, 14 Let Me Go, Ariadne Civin, 13 Shattered Moon, Ivy Cordle, 13 Autumn Floods and Winter Fires, Nami Gajcowski, 12 In the Secret Cedar Woods, Elena Gil, 13 The Roaming Realm, Madeline Longoria, 14 Norcelia, Sabrina Lu, 14 These Words That I’ve Written, Jenna Reenders, 14 Maple of the Moss Folk, Kana Shackelford, 13 Overthrowing Antecessum, Isabella Washer, 13 Sparks, Eleanor Wernly, 11 Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498.
