Newsletter

“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

The Little Princess Acrylic painting by Rebecca Wu, 9 (Medina, WA) Published in Stone Soup June 2020, illustrating Part Three of Elana: A Novella by Hannah Nami Gajcowski, 9 (Bellevue, WA) A note from William New June issue: don’t miss the latest issue—which includes the final of the three parts of Elana, the novella that won third place in last year’s book contest. This final instalment of Hannah Nami Gajcowski’s novel is highlighted below. Congratulations, Hannah! I have been enjoying reading your work. Black Lives Matter. As readers, writers, artists, as citizens of the world, we cannot ignore what is happening in the United States right now. Many of us are at home self-isolating, and for this, and reasons that are obvious looking at news videos, are not directly taking part in demonstrations even though our hearts are with the demonstrators. For students all the way up to middle school age, we recommend that you look at the website for Illustoria. Illustoria and Stone Soup share common goals with respect to creative young people. They have good projects this week to help you safely participate in social action. The post that I include a link to here is a letter-writing campaign. Real letters. Real stamps. Real mail. It seems old fashioned. It is. And yet, over time, letter-writing campaigns have proven effective forms political protest. Summer school programs. Our Society of Young Inklings and Stone Soup summer writing workshops are now full with waitlists—except for the newest class that we opened for our own Stone Soup’s Laura Moran. Laura’s class has space for more students. It a class that is very different from what creative writing classes for young writers are usually about. So! If you want a challenge, if you want to be stretched as a writer in ways you may not have previously been stretched, sign up for her class. As with the other workshops, the cost is $200. Laura is a cultural anthropologist. In this class you will write about your COVID-19 experiences using the techniques that social scientists use when doing field research. This is an unusual, innovative class. Laura is a wonderful teacher. You cannot go wrong taking Laura’s class. Registration is through the Society of Young Inklings. Friday Writing Workshop. The Friday writing workshop is open to young writers ages 8 through 14. The new time is 9 a.m. PDT. It will run at this time on Fridays through July and it will then shift to Saturday for the duration of the 2020/21 school year. The work these students are producing is extraordinary. This workshop is free—it is a service provided by Stone Soup. We are posting written work by the students on our blog, which we encourage you to read (see link below). We are also working on posting stories read aloud by the class on our YouTube channel. In the meantime, please trust me. This is a class not to be missed. It is made up of a very strong group of young writers. I am usually the instructor, although sometimes we have guest instructors drawn from the students in the group. Get your Zoom invitation by signing up for the Daily Creativity Prompts—link at the bottom of the page. Saturday writing project. With so much terrible happening around us, I suggest this weekend that we all take a few moments to explore a completely different mental space. I want you to go outside—wear a mask if going anyplace public—and sit where there is a spot of nature. Whether that is in your yard, a park, or even some weeds growing through a crack in the sidewalk, I want you to sit, be quiet with yourself, and see what you see. A line of ants. A bee. A hover fly. A cloud passing over casting its shadow. Focus. Pull your mind away from the pandemic, from political and social unrest, from the fact that school just ended (or is just about to), and focus on what you are seeing. I don’t mean stare. I mean look and open your mind and imagination to the world around you. And write what comes to you in that time. As always, if you like what you write, then please submit it to Stone Soup so Emma, when she returns from maternity leave, will be able to consider it for publication. Until next week, Winners from Weekly Flash Contest #8 Weekly Flash Contest #9: Write a mystery story.  The week commencing May 25 (Daily Creativity prompt #46) was our ninth week of flash contests, with another record number of entries. It was also the second contest based on Stone Soup contributor and reader Anya Geist’s writing prompt, which meant that we got to work with her again to judge the contest. Anya’s prompt inspired a really terrific batch of entries, and all the judges were impressed with the diverse ways in which the entrants approached the idea of writing “a mystery.” Thank you, Anya, for wise judging and for setting a great writing challenge! Congratulations to our winners and honorable mentions, listed below. You can read the winning entries for this week (and previous weeks) at the Stone Soup website. Don’t miss out on these posts: the writing is really great!Winners Isabel Bashaw, 10, Enumclaw, WA Nick Buckley, 12, Needham, MA Liam Hancock, 12, Danville, CA Enni Harlan, 13, Los Angeles, CA Michelle Su, 13, Sudbury, MA Honorable Mention Amelia Barth, 10, Elgin, IL Amelia Pozzo, 11, Arnold, MO Mihika Sakharpe, 11, Frisco, TX Sophia Stravitsch, 10, Katy, TX Michela You, 11, Lexington, MA Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! We published another cartoon by Natya, 12, about how things have changed because of COVID-19. In this case, Natya illustrates how graduation ceremonies have changed. Kat, 10, wrote a song called “I’m Fine,” which we’ve posted to the blog and our Soundcloud page. Take a listen and let us know in the comment sections what feelings the songs evokes for you. With his poem about the pandemic called

Margot Smiling. Editor Emma’s baby daughter Margot (and her bunny) A note from William Top Stone Soup news! Margot is smiling! What a more wonderful story can there be than that? I remember those early months with my daughter, Stella, when I would just sit and watch her. I was mesmerized. A life awakening. They are small, but powerful! I know that Margot will already have Stone Soup Editor Emma, her father Conner, and that little pink rabbit fully tied to her orbit. Thank you, Emma, for sharing Margot’s picture with your extended Stone Soup family. I am asking all of you a favor. Please read and share “A Child’s View of the Death of George Floyd,” by Amara DeLong. This is an extraordinary reflection on the murder of Mr. Floyd.  Amara’s piece is that rare kind of writing that is created in response to an emergency: It is literary, it is well thought out, it makes you think, it won’t become dated. Amara is nine years old. This is profound writing by a young person. This is what Stone Soup is about–whatever your age, Amara has something important to say and she says it well. Amara, we thank you sincerely for sending your work to us and making us think so deeply. Amara calls the murder of Mr. Floyd a lynching and refers back to the groundbreaking work on lynching done by Ida B. Wells in the early 20th century. I learned a lot about Ida Wells last week when my daughter brought her up in the context of an eighth-grade homework assignment. If you don’t know who Ida Wells is, then please read her Wiki entry.  Summer Writing Camp The joint Stone Soup & Society of Young Inklings Summer writing camps are open for enrollment. The program is administered through the fabulous Society of Young Inklings. Naomi Kinsman Downing, the Society’s founder, is teaching several of the workshops. She read Stone Soup as a child, so we feel very good about our association with Naomi and her organization. She helped us with our first personal narrative fiction contest last fall. We were so impressed with her that we are collaborating with her on this summer program. Classes have already met their minimum enrollment numbers, so don’t delay too long before registering! For those of you who are interested in our now second annual long-form fiction contest, one of the summer workshops is in writing long-form fiction. This is also a specialty of the Society of Young Inklings, so I recommend this class for those of you who are already working on your novels. Our own Laura Mason, a Stone Soup parent, writer, and my colleague who runs the Wednesday Book Club is also teaching one of the Summer classes through our joint Stone Soup & Society of Young Inklings program. Nothing like the class she is offering has been done for young students before, ever! Here is what she says about it: “I’m Laura and I’ll be offering a new Stone Soup summer camp! Some of you know me from Book Club. I’m also a cultural anthropologist. In the camp, Anthropology at Home: Young Ethnographer’s Writing Workshop, I will teach the art of ‘autoethnography,’ a creative nonfiction form of personal writing used by anthropologists in their research. Part memoir writing, part early introduction to social science research, young writers will use autoethnography to construct their own personal narratives in the context of the current global pandemic. I hope you’ll join me!” Friday Writing Workshop Our free Friday Writing Workshop, originally scheduled to run until yesterday, will continue by popular demand (from us and the participants!). It shifts to 9 a.m. Pacific Time through July and then shifts to Saturday at 9 a.m. for the remainder of the year. We hope the earlier time will allow some of our subscribers in Europe, who had wanted to join, to be able to do so. We look forward to welcoming everyone who can make it starting next Friday! The Friday writing workshop does not conflict with the more intensive summer writing programs, so you can do both. Until next week, Winners from Weekly Flash Contest #8 Last week’s Flash Contest (#8) was based on one of Stone Soup reader and contributor Molly Torinus’s daily creativity prompts—and it was certainly a popular one! We had a record number of entries with some very funny and imaginative stories and poems about what superheroes and supervillains do in their time off. It was great fun for us to read and judge all the entries alongside our reader judge. Thank you for your great decision-making and enthusiasm, Molly! This week we also unexpectedly received a few art entries responding to the writing prompt, and we have chosen one of those as a special honorable mention for art, as well (Wonder Woman is stuck trying to get into a Zoom meeting, a familiar situation for lots of us non-super-heroes right now!). Congratulations to all our winners and honorable mentions, listed blow. You can read the winning entries for this week (and previous weeks) at the Stone Soup website. Well done everyone, and keep on entering! Winners Enni Harlan, 13, Los Angeles, CA Julianna Muzyczyszyn, 13, Warsaw, Poland Lucy Berberich, 11, Oxford, OH Samuel McMullin, 10, Portland, ME Sophie Yu, 12, Houston, TXHonorable Mention (writing) Alice Xie, 12, West Windsor, NJ Yutia Li, 11, Houston, TX Daniel Shorten, 9, Mallow, Ireland Isabel Bashaw, 10, Enumclaw, WA Em Jay, 10, Austin, TX Honorable Mention (art) Chloe Mancini, 9, Glenside, PA Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Ben, 12, wrote a poem called “Believe,” with encouraging words about getting through this pandemic. In “It Was,” Grace, 11, writes a short but powerful poem about the beauty of the world, though it feels so far away from what we’re experiencing right now. Micah, 11, composed the very impressive “Moonlight Waltz.” Listen (or try playing it yourself!) on the blog. Anya, 13, pairs a poem about seeing a situation in two different ways with a lovely composite photograph of a tree. Check out “Perspective” here. Need more positive news