An Archeology of the Future by Emma Catherine Hoff. Cover art by Rebecca Wu, 9. A note from Emma Wood Hello, Stone Soup readers & writers, Earlier this month, we announced that Archeology of the Future by Emma Catherine Hoff, the poetry winner of Stone Soup’s 2022 Book Contest, was released and is available for purchase! Please support Stone Soup and Emma by buying her book today. If you have participated in one of our writing workshops recently, you have likely met Emma! Likewise, if you have been reading Stone Soup for the past couple of years, you will have encountered many of her poems (and maybe one of her photographs!) on our pages. I wish Stone Soup could take credit for making Emma into the poet she is today—and surely we have played some small role—but she came to our classes and our submission pool already a very mature poet with a strong voice and sense of style. I remember being astonished when I first encountered “The Ambassador” in our submission pool—it was dark, surreal, moving, strange. (To me, “strange” is the highest compliment any poem can receive—denoting both originality but also complexity and mystery; a “strange” poem always demands rereading.) Emma was eight years old when she wrote it, and it was the first poem of hers that we published. We are so proud, three years later, to be publishing her collection of poems, which has garnered the advance praise it deserves. Read on for a taste of what others are saying about her collection and further, to read a poem from the collection. Like the Surrealists before her, Hoff can see into the emotional lives of the things we use every day, things we toss around carelessly… If one of my friends had written this beautifully when I was starting out, I would have probably quit, and doffed my cap to her and said “you go on ahead” or more likely, “you’re already there.” — Matthew Rohrer, author of The Others Emma Hoff is a rare poet. And one of my favorites.I am tempted to use the words visionary, otherworldly, untimely, genius. I am tempted to say she flies above the earth. When I read Emma Hoff for the first time years ago, I thought: She’s not from this planet. I thought: She does not remind me of other poets; she makes me forget them. — Conner Bassett, author of Gad’s Book This collection is a garden of eurekas, a cavalcade of astonishments as, stanza by stanza, Hoff delivers the musings of a subtle intellect fed by a deep and abiding empathy for this world. The deftness of the prosody is only matched by its variety. Open it, and read for yourself. — Carlos Hernandez, NY Times bestselling author of Sal and Gabi Break the Universe The delights to be uncovered in An Archeology of the Future strike me with awe, urgency, solace, and compassion. How daring, how beautiful, how extraordinary it is, in this moment of the world when our world feels so broken, that Mt. Parnassas is still at work, and Hoff is a voice so richly sowed. — Jenny Boully, author of Betwixt and Between: Essays on the Writing Life From An Archeology of the Future The Lamp by Emma Catherine Hoff, 1o The light shines innocently, but it blinds me, my eyes become red. I shy from it and still it follows me with its intense gaze boring into me as I walk around the room. I feel the hot bulb, sense the lamp melting and perspiring under its own fever, its own light. The business is done, I think, but my dreams that night are of that still figure creeping up on me, and the next day, I find the lamp standing again. It glares at me and whispers in my ear, burning it, telling me that the sun’s light is not enough. I ask it how it knows, but the sun dies and the lamp is still glowing and I am grateful for it now. We make our way through the darkness until it parts with me, saying it must go, its filament cannot take the strain anymore and that the darkness isn’t as bad as people think. Click here to purchase An Archeology of the Future. 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.
book contest
Stone Soup Author Interview Series: Sarah Hunt Discusses Her Debut Novel, Foxtale
A conversation between Sarah Hunt, winner of the 2021 Stone Soup Book Contest, and Tristan Hui, former Stone Soup contributor and winner of the 2020 Stone Soup Book Contest, about Sarah Hunt’s debut novel, Foxtale. Foxtale was also a finalist in the youth author (under 25) category for the 2023 Indie Book Awards. 0:34 — What does Stone Soup mean for you? 1:31 — What was the hardest part of the publishing process? 2:32 — How did you come up with the idea for Foxtale? 4:13 — Was there anything you read during the writing process that inspired you? 5:07 — Do you have a favorite character from Foxtale? 5:41 — What impact do you hope Foxtale will have on your readers? 6:53 — During the editing process, how did you decide what to cut and what to keep? 8:42 — Can you talk about your writing process? 11:46 — What advice do you have for other young readers? 12:42 — Has your belief that you’re your own target audience helped to deal with outside criticism? 13:33 — What are your future writing goals?
Saturday Newsletter: March 18, 2023
Dream Dream (oil) by Sophia Zhang, 12; published in Stone Soup March 2023 A note from Emma Wood Hello, readers! I am sitting in the attic of our house with the wind blowing so hard that it is shaking the whole structure. It’s a cold, blustery day, and yet it has been raining not snowing—so not that cold. It has been a strange winter here in coastal Connecticut, in the village where we are living for the year. I can count on one hand the number of times it has snowed. And I have been experiencing some climate grief (and not for the first time). Margot, my daughter, loves snow—it dominates her imaginative play—and yet she has barely gotten to play in it. As my husband said, “She’s young!” But (I countered) she is only two this winter, and this winter, she didn’t get snow in a place where you are supposed to get snow! The image I selected for the newsletter is spring-like, however, because my thoughts have been tending that way as April, Easter, and the spring equinox approach. Soon, we will put winter, and my sadness about the lack of snow this year, behind me and enjoy warmer weather, green grass, and flowers. One of the best things about becoming a parent, for me, has been how it renews the world: seasons, holidays, simple errands—all those things that had lost their luster are once again imbued with meaning and magic. This month, I encourage you to write about an event or an activity that was once special to you, but which you now take for granted. Can you write about it in a way that makes it strange and exciting once again? As for Stone Soup business! We have a number of announcements this week. Regarding our classes: For anyone interested in getting a taste of our writing workshop in advance of our spring series, we are offering free attendance to the makeup session of the Winter 2023 Workshop, taught by Conner Bassett, on April 1st at 11:00 a.m. Pacific time/2:00 p.m. Eastern time. You can sign up here. Our spring session is also now open for enrollment. You can purchase tickets here. We decided to cap enrollment at 20 students and to increase tuition accordingly. While we would love to work with as many students as possible, our instructor has found larger class sizes limit his ability to connect to his students and offer feedback. This was the reasoning behind our registration cap. And to make the change sustainable, we needed to increase tuition. Subscribers will now pay $22 per session and non-subscribers will pay $27.50. Please write to stonesoup@stonesoup.com with any questions or concerns. Regarding our book contest: Our 2023 Book Contest has officially launched! If you haven’t already started working on your manuscript, now is the time! If you’d like some help kickstarting the project, we encourage you to sign up for the Design a Novel workshop, run by our partner, Society of Young Inklings. Till next time, 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.
