We’re thrilled to announce the results of our 2021 Book Contest. It was a pleasure and an honor to read and consider all the manuscripts, and incredibly difficult to select our two winners. We are excited to share more about the books and the authors with you in the coming months! Winners Fiction Foxtale by Sarah Hunt, 14 Poetry Remember the Flowers by Enni Harlan, 14 Honorable Mention Days of Freedom, a novel by Sophene Avedissian, 13 Twenty Moons, poems by Maggie Berkson, 10 Adventures with the Robot of 1920, a novel by Srija Biswas, 13 A Lonely Lullaby, poems by Analise Braddock, 10 The Hotel Bellboy and Other Tales, stories by Steven Cavros, 10 The Legends of Atruviia, a novel by Ayesha Faruki, 13 Heart of Stars, a novel by Lillia Hamilton, 12 The Immortal Jellyfish, poems by Emma Hoff, 9 A Tale from Inside the Book, a novel by Jaslene Kwack, 11 Reunited, a novel by Olivia Lee, 10 Answering the Moon, a novel by Serena Lin, 10 This is the Song the World Needs Now And Other Poems, poems by Nova Macknik-Conde, 9, and Iago Macknik-Conde, 14 Book Zero, a novel by Leo Michelman, 11 Rainbow, a novel by Aanya Pandeya, 11 Serpent Throat and Other Stories, stories by Tayen Withrow, 11 The Poisonous Gift, a novel by Alice Xie, 13
book contest
Stone Soup Author Interview: Tristan Hui
Stone Soup contributor Lena Aloise, 12, talks with Stone Soup contributor and winner of the Stone Soup Book Contest 2020 Tristan Hui, 14, about her novel The Other Realm, published on September 1st, 2021. The two also talk about the value of Stone Soup, the nature of inspiration, and the importance of writing as a means of exploring foreign concepts. If you’d prefer a more streamlined video, take a look at Tristan’s book page. 0:20 — How did you first get involved with Stone Soup 1:11 — When submitting to the magazine, would you say you prefer to submit writing, art, or both? 1:57 — What do you feel was the most important skill you learned from the Writing Workshop 2:40 — Where do you get your inspiration, more specifically for your novel The Other Realm? 4:22 — Is there a specific play or theater production from which you draw inspiration? 5:35 — Are characters such as Azalea Morroe inspired by people in your own life? 7:09 — Has writing always been a part of your life/how long have you been writing? 8:39 — Was The Other Realm the first novel/long form fiction piece you’d ever written? 9:28 — What was the biggest challenge you faced while writing The Other Realm? 11:31 — What advice would you give your past self in order to help yourself get through the hard parts? 12:41 — What was your favorite part about writing The Other Realm? 14:01 — Not including your revising processes, how long did it take you to write your novel from start to finish? 15:41 — What would you say is the primary thing you want readers to take away from The Other Realm? 16:48 — If you could tell somebody about Stone Soup, what would you say?
Saturday Newsletter: July 31, 2021
Forest Creature (collage) by Eva Stoitchkova, 11 (Ontario, Canada), featured on the cover of the March 2018 Issue of Stone Soup A note from Tayleigh Ciao for now! We are taking a vacation from our weekly newsletter for the month of August. Don’t worry—we’ll be back in September with a brand new (and better than ever) format. In the meantime, be sure to check out book reviews, writing, and art on the Stone Soup blog. And remember that the deadline for the annual Stone Soup book contest is August 16th. We will select two winning manuscripts—one in fiction and one in poetry—to be published and distributed by Stone Soup in both print and ebook forms, available for sale on Amazon, in the Stone Soup store, via our distributors, and advertised along with the rest of our books. This is a contest you don’t want to miss. So, good luck, and happy writing! Selfie Contest Since Stone Soup’s last selfie contest in 2017, the selfie has taken on a new form: the masked selfie. That’s why we’re enlisting you to participate in our 2021 Selfie Contest: With and Without Masks. For more information on how and what to submit, please visit our Submittable form. Weekend (August) Project Now, I’d like to draw your attention to Eva’s breathtaking collage, Forest Creature. As collages do, this piece creates an image, in this case a raptor, out of something else. But what distinguishes Eva’s piece from the standard collage, and what I admire most about it, is the fact that she has used clippings of a forest, the bird’s habitat, in order to create its form. Moreover, Eva has made the white space work for her, allowing the viewer’s mind to fill in the gaps of the image. In this sense, Eva has managed to enhance the relationship between viewer and art, allowing the two to work together, not unlike the forest and the raptor. All in all, what we have is a work of genius whose primary concept works on multiple levels. Rainer’s poem, “Rainer’s Mind,” is similar to the collage in content and form. To start, both works feature a forest as the setting, and a bird as subject. And, in both works, a bird is born from the fecund combination of forest and mind. The key difference, however, is that in Rainer’s poem, the mind consumes its creation, a metaphor for its endless capacity to entertain itself. But the brutal action of the poem calls into question this cannibalistic ability. The poem’s speaker appears cognizant of this brutality (“I didn’t even say hello”), yet helpless to change it (“I just walked home”). In short, Rainer’s poem builds off of Eva’s collage, posing questions about the mind’s tendency to create beauty for its own consumption—questions well worth considering. Taking all of this into account, I would like you to spend the month of August meditating on why it is that you create art. Then, I want you to choose a magazine—maybe an issue of Stone Soup—and either make a collage that utilizes white space to fill in the gaps of its image, or write an erasure poem by blacking out selected chunks of text. Until next month, Book Contest 2021 For information on submitting to the Stone Soup Book Contest 2021, please click here. To submit your manuscript, please visit our submittable site. Highlights from the past week online Don’t miss the latest content from our Book Reviewers and Young Bloggers at Stonesoup.com! Young Blogger Mason Li wrote about his experience running a triathlon! New blogger Anirudh Parthasarathy wrote about why he finds Bobby Kennedy inspiring. April, 13, reviewed Alexandra Bracken’s new novel Lore. Daniel, 12, reviewed S.E. Hinton’s classic novel The Outsiders. From Stone Soup June 2021 Rainer’s Mind By Rainer Pasca, 14 (Bay Shore, NY) I was in a forest with nothing but my mind. It opened a little bit— lifted its mouth like a shark. Suddenly, a bird. Snap, said my mind. Delicious! I didn’t even say hello. I just walked home. …Read more from the June Issue of Stone Soup, including more of Rainer’s poems 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. Stone Soup’s Advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia & Joe Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, Susan Wilky.
