Saturday Newsletter: August 19, 2023

A note from Laura Moran

Hello all,

I start this week’s newsletter with exciting news! Refugee Project contributor Parwana Amiri, has just published her collection of poems, We will fly higher. Parwana is a young refugee poet from Herat Province, Afghanistan. Her book is available at Barnes & Noble and other major booksellers. Congratulations on this exciting achievement, Parwana!

I imagine the majority of our readers will receive this week’s newsletter on the cusp or at the start of a new school year! I can also imagine the myriad of emotions that accompanies this time of year. Indeed, I don’t even have to imagine—the air is thick with nerves and excitement in my house as my daughter is about to begin her first year of high school and my son is set to enter the third grade, both in new schools.

Whether you are excited or nervous, or a bit of both, I hope you had a fun and restorative summer. One of the highlights of my summer was teaching Anthropology of the Everyday as an offering of Stone Soup's Young Author's Studio Camps hosted in collaboration with Society of Young Inklings. It was inspiring work to see what students came up with as they set out to explore and think critically about their everyday lives and environments. I am so excited to be working with our new Refugee Project collaborating organization, Humanitarian Service Team, to offer elements of this workshop to young people in Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Uganda this fall. Following the workshop, we hope to provide an opportunity for young writers in both sessions of the course to share their work with one another. I look forward to telling you more about it soon!

Until then, best of luck with the start of your school year, and while you’re feeling that tangle of emotions that comes with new beginnings, why not take a moment to write a poem about your experiences? As always, if you like what you've written, we hope you consider submitting it to Stone Soup.

Best wishes,

From Stone Soup
July/August 2023

The Sun's Sister

by Katja Muckle Eizenberg, 9

I am the sun
So big and bold
My seeds leave me
When I’m old
I stand and sway watching them fly away to freedom
Bobbing in the breeze
And finally landing in the shade beneath
The trees
But now it is Spring
And I am blooming bright
Now it is Summer and I am still a lovely sight
Fall is here and I look like the moon
All of my seeds will leave me soon
Soon is here as they blow away
Soon is here as one little one stays
The moment is here
The moment is sad but happy
Bad but good
The moment is here as the last seed blows away
The moment is here as I close my eyes
And enter a long winter’s sleep

Click here to read more from the July/August issue...

Don't wait until it's too late!

This fall, we're offering an all new course: Novel Writing! Class begins Saturday, September 16th at 11:00 a.m. Pacific time, and seats are filling up quickly, so register today!

Join us this fall for Novel Writing, a multi-week, virtual course instructed by writer, translator, and professor Conner Bassett that will teach you how to write a novel. We will focus on the basic techniques and tools of good storytelling: voice, description, setting, character, plot, conflict, and dialogue. The course will consist of brainstorming activities, in-class writing exercises, readings, and workshops. By the end of our time together, you will have a complete novel draft.

Register now!