Stone Soup Classes

Stone Soup’s creative writing classes are paused. We resume in the Fall of 2025. I will be offering several single-subject workshops. If you want to receive updates then please write to me at education@stonesoup.com with the subject: Class Information.

I founded the Stone Soup project in 1972. I was a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz teaching children in a Saturday morning writing and art program for children. Working with the children gave me the idea for a magazine of writing and art by children. That is how I started Stone Soup Magazine (1973-2024).  I have been teaching creative writing on-and-off since the early 1980s.

I love teaching. I learn so much preparing for my classes, and from my students. My own writing has changed since through my experience teaching kids. My classes are many-layered. In addition to working from literary models, I  explore literary ideas through  paintings, photographs, music, dance, and movies.

About William Rubel, Founder and Creative Writing Instructor.

William is the founder of Stone Soup. William’s inspiration for Stone Soup, originally a print magazine, was his experiences teaching writing and art to children while he was a student at the University of California Santa Cruz. William resumed teaching students with classes in 2020. When he left Stone Soup for two years he continued teaching, but in a private capacity. He will be resuming teaching for Stone Soup in the Fall of 2025.

Besides being Stone Soup’s director, he is an author and an artist. William writes literary nonfiction, as well as short short stories. His book on hearth cooking, The Magic of Fire (2002), was a World Gourmand Cookbook and l’Ordre du Mérite agricole award winner and a James Beard nominee. His second book was Bread, a global history (2011). He is currently writing a history of bread for the University of California Press. Will has contributed many articles to Mother Earth News on range of subjects from heath cooking to kitchen gardening to making breads with beautiful stencils. William also writes about wild mushrooms and Early Modern Kitchen gardens.

William brings a love of writing — he writes every day — and a love of literature, music, art, and theater to his classes. His teaching style is multi-disciplinary. William lives in Santa Cruz with his daughter, Stella, and their cat, chickens, rabbits, and aviary birds. You can read more about his other interests at his personal website.