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.
blog
Saturday Newsletter: October 1, 2022
Fire Eater (Nikon d3500) by Aaron D’Souza, 9; published in Stone Soup February 2022 A note from Caleb Greetings from Houston! The last time I wrote to you all I was still living in Santa Cruz, California, where Stone Soup got its start. I have since moved to Houston to pursue an MFA in fiction writing and, six months in, I couldn’t be happier with the program. This week I have the pleasure of talking about the blog which, since late summer and since I’ve begun grad school, has slowed down some, though with your help I hope to ramp things up. Simply, we need and want more bloggers. I want to publish all of your Covid related work—poetry, fiction, art, music, anything at all! I recently published a sprawling piece of Covid poetry in six installments, which you can read here, here, here, here, here, and here. Or, if you’re submitting to the blog, I want all of your creative non-fiction, whether in the form of book, movie, album, or game reviews—like Abhi Sukhdial’s comprehensive review on the power of storytelling in video games—or an essay like Anirudh Parthasarathy’s deep dive on the initial alliance between Stalin and Hitler, or a memoir or personal narrative piece like Jacob Chan’s “Flamethrower,” excerpted below. Ideally, I’d be so overrun with submissions from full- or part-time bloggers that I’d be publishing five pieces a week! So, if you’d like to submit your work to the blog, or become a full-time blogger (around two submissions per month), please submit your work via this Submittable link for the Covid blog, and this Submittable link for the regular blog, keeping in mind that we no longer publish fiction or poetry to the regular blog unless as part of the monthly flash contest. Until next time, From the Stone Soup Blog Flamethrower By Jacob Chan, 11 I was almost 11 in the warm windy fall of the year 2019, when my baseball team, the Bulldogs, were playing in the little league semi-finals. But still, I couldn’t help but want to crawl under my bed, where I would be safe. I couldn’t even bear to glance at the opposing pitcher’s deep blue eyes. His fastball was so fast that if you rode on it around a highway, you would get fined for speeding. My team crammed in the dugout before the game started, each of us getting to know one another way more than we wanted to. I swear I smelled vomit on the jersey of one of my teammates. “Listen up, Bulldogs!” My coach Adam began to yell. “It’s the semi-finals—if we don’t win this, each of you owe me five laps around the field!” Everyone groaned. Everyone, with the exception of me, and a few other boys. Not that we wanted to run laps, mind you, but because we were staring at the five-foot-seven kid on top of the mound warming up. He was literally throwing fireballs into the catcher’s rusty old, well-patted, brown mitt, with the glove strings tightly knotted. For a second, I didn’t care about the 10 pound gold trophy sitting on the table behind the dugout that would be handed out to the winner. I just cared about not getting plunked in the face by a 70 mph fastball thrown by the 11-year-old Godzilla. Alright, alright, call me a scaredy cat, but let’s face it—you would be freaking out, too. The tap of Bowen Orberlie, one of my teammates, brought me back to reality. More… 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.
Spring
I sense a fragrance Like old memories and new Peace drifts through the air Cherry blossoms bloom With memory of winter Lingering softly Lush meadows grow tall As nature opens its eyes Leaves of spring glow green