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
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Flash Contest #48, October 2022: Start the first line of your story/poem with a word chosen randomly from the dictionary—our winners and their work
Our October Flash Contest was based on Prompt #223 (provided by Stone Soup contributor Molly Torinus), which asked that participants randomly choose a word from the dictionary and use that word to start their story or poem. A welcome change from some of our more specific prompts, this open-ended prompt led to far and away the most submissions we’ve ever received for a Flash Contest: 62! As such, it felt fitting to select six winners and six honorable mentions instead of the usual five. Among the plethora of submissions was a poem that plumbed the depths of mythological oceanic lore, a story written from the perspective of a creature who claimed to live inside of computers, and a story featuring a race against time in which the dwindling hours punctuated every section of the narrative. As always, we thank all who submitted and encourage you to submit again next month! In particular, we congratulate our Winners and our Honorable Mentions, whose work you can appreciate below. Winners “Ghost Ash” by Josie Barrer, 11 “Finding Permanence” by Joshua Gordon, 13 “Uranomancy” by Emma Hoff, 10 “The Dream” by Mika Lim, 12 “Bittersweet Star” by Vanaja Raju, 11 “Plum” by Melody You, 12 Honorable Mentions “Reunited” by Wenonah Brewer-Nyborg, 12 “The Countdown” by Sophie Li, 11 “Football” by Jeremy Lim, 10 “Orange” by Lui Lung, 13 “Fathom the Depths” by Nova Macknik-Conde, 11 “Into Your Computer” by Aryaman Majumder, 11 Ghost Ash Josie Barrer, 11 Hypnotized by the alluring mountains before me, I stepped toward the edge of the cliff. The anabatic flow balanced out the humidity in the air. The trees confined the moonlight, also blocking the clear sky and the vacant clouds. The stars glistened in the empty night sky. Words could not describe the view that was put before me. I turned my back toward the breath-taking sight. The woods stretched far beyond the eye could see. The trees came apart at a narrow trail, creating a path for me to jog. I stopped suddenly, as the path before me turned to darkness. An icy chill sent a shiver down my spine. The campsite where I stayed for the night seemed to be miles away. “Dad!” I shouted, in a desperate wail of help. I froze, as the bush right beside me moved. I had an insecure feeling I was being watched. A faded body, shining in the dark night rose from the bushes. It wore a white cloth and its face was expressionless. I was too terrified to move. My heart and breathing stopped as the mysterious creature lurked before me. Reality snapped back to me and I ran down into the darkness. I tumbled and landed on the hard, rocky surface. I screamed. A loud and deafening scream. The human-like creature floated toward me, noiselessly. It rose higher into the sky and now came directly above me. It looked down at me for a harsh second. I closed my eyes and turned my head to the floor. I waited, a second, then a minute, then turned to see a pile of dust on the ground. Finding Permanence Joshua Gordon, 13 Permanent. That’s what I thought my life would be. I thought I would always have my loving mother’s sweet giggle, my lionhearted father’s bellowing laugh, Jack the dog’s big slobbery kisses, and me in the middle of it all in our small blue house on Elm Avenue, smiling until my mouth hurt. But, back then, I was just an innocent little kindergartener, unaware of the impending disaster. That disaster was the car accident. I was safely snuggled up in bed, sleeping, when my parents died. Somewhere along Highway 20, an intoxicated driver slammed into my father’s van coming home from an evening party. It was all over in a few minutes. That’s all the police at the front door could say before my wailing drowned out their voices that told me what they had told so many other people, not stopping even when their strong arms picked me up and hurried me into their car. That was the end of my life at Elm Avenue. As I moved from foster home to foster home, from Birch Street to Oak Boulevard to Maple Way, each night I lay on my back, unable to sleep in the alien environment, picturing that fateful night. The swerving car, the unsuspecting van, the ambulances and police cars with sirens blaring, rushing to the scene to try to save my parents. How they couldn’t. Now, once again, I was being relocated, as the woman in her white uniform informed me. Relocated like an object, I thought. An object nobody wants. This time, the reason was that my foster father had accidentally overwatered my beloved ficus plant. I had, of course, been reasonably mad. I just might have been too mad. One thing led to another, and he decided that caring for a foster child was too much work. In an instant, that impermanent life was gone forever. A gentle knock on the door startled me from my thoughts. I gingerly placed my new Boston fern that I had been clutching in my lap on the waiting room desk. I inhaled deeply, then slowly let the air out through my nose. I had done this before, but that same nervousness possessed me every time, that small flicker of hope impossible to extinguish that my new parents might truly love me. “Come in,” I squeaked feebly. The door swung open, revealing a single woman. Her short blond hair fell in curls to her spotless white lab coat. Our eyes met for a few seconds, and I realized she was almost as nervous as I was. Then she spoke. “What a nice specimen of Nephrolepis exaltata!” She exclaimed, noticing the plant on the table next to me. “Did you know that, according to old folk tales, Boston ferns are a sign that there are fairies nearby?” She looked around as if the stories were real before
Flash Contest #46, August 2022: Write about a utopian city and a dystopian city that are right next to each other—our winners and their work
Our August Flash Contest was based on Prompt #214 (provided by Stone Soup intern Sage Millen), which asked that participants channel their inner Dickens and write about two cities—utopian and dystopian—that were right next to each other. We received a wide breadth of submissions (including a couple poems), all with brilliant world-building. Two of the winning submissions were epistolary, though their plots were completely different; one was a letter from a condemned father to his saved daughter and the other was a series of letters between strangers turned friends. Many submissions decided to flip the trope of “utopia,” crafting utopian cities with sinister motives, while others stuck to the literal definition. Others took their cities into space as well as the future. As always, we thank all who submitted and encourage you to submit again next month! In particular, we congratulate our Winners and our Honorable Mentions, whose work you can appreciate below. Winners “Tend to My Grave” by Sophie Li, 11 “The Unknown War” by Evan Lu, 13 “The Oasis” by Lui Lung, 13 “Magic Wands” by Pranjoli Sadhukha, 12 “Crimson Messenger” by Olivia Yu, 13 Honorable Mentions “The Peacemakers and the Jupiters” by Arnav Bansal, 12 “A Glimmer of Hope” by Reena Bao, 12 “The Light in the Darkness” by Samantha Lee, 12 “Where the Utopian Meets the Dystopian” by Aryaman Majumder, 11 “Two Worlds” by Madeline Male, 14 Tend to my Grave Sophie Li, 11 Dear Amelia: I am your father. You may not remember this, but when you were ten years old, you were kidnapped and brought to the bottom of a strange mountain. I tracked you down but when I arrived, your captor had been killed and you had disappeared. All evidence pointed to you traveling up the mountain, so I went up. It was a long and perilous journey and I had begun to fear that you had died along the way, but I continued up the mountain. When I reached the top I was engulfed in blackness for approximately 25 seconds, which left me extremely disoriented. There was a man at the top who asked me who I was, and I remembered, but just barely. He told me I could not enter Paradise because I remembered my name. He was about to push me off a cliff when I asked him about you. It turns out that you had your memory wiped only one hour before I came, and you had been admitted to Paradise. I was too late. You no longer remembered who I was. Paradise is not what it seems. They have given you a new identity and a wrong sense of the world. You do the small duties in exchange for the most luxurious place to live. It is the closest ever to a utopian world but you have missed out on the more beautiful part of life. There is no love in paradise because love can create conflict. You may miss your family if they are not all there. There are no ideas in paradise because ideas can create disorder. There is no choice in paradise because you may choose wrong. And there is no memory because you may long for the past. But by removing these elements, they are also removing the rewarding parts of love, ideas, memory and choice. But paradise cannot have a fault, cannot have unhappiness. The man pushed me off a cliff, but I did not die. Instead, I found myself in the opposite of paradise. It was an overcrowded nation where everyone lived in dumpster-like conditions. A cruel government killed anyone who resisted the government’s orders. The health conditions were disastrous and society was riddled with robbers, bandits, murderers, and illegal drug dealers. Tomorrow I will die at the hands of the government. I have received the death sentence and I need your help. But you will not understand. I am a stranger to you. To you, I am lying about a made-up world. To you, what is love? What is thought? What is choice? You will stay in paradise, while the father you once loved will die. I hope that when this reaches you, you will know, and one day you will break free of the bonds that hold you to Paradise and tend to my grave. If you will ever love again, Dad P.S. Your real name is Rose. The Unknown War Evan Lu, 13 Another dreadful morning for David. Prince David. The Utopia City had been ruthless to them these past few days, and today might be one of the worst yet. While both cities were monarchies, Utopia seemed much more lax in keeping their citizens in check compared to Dystopia. Forty-seven years prior, Dystopia had been forced to sign a peace treaty, which strictly required them to be amiable with their former adversary. Today, however, things had gone sour. The two cities hadn’t had many recent problems, but there didn’t seem to be an easy resolution for the current obstacle. “David! Are you there?” “Oh yes, Dad!” David brought his attention back to the present, “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.” David’s father, Christopher Thompson, oversaw and managed most things that happened in Dystopia. Being the king, he was tasked with today’s meeting with the Utopian government to ensure the prosperity of their own people. Today was going to be a big day. A day that could change everything for the rundown, desolate little city. “Dad, promise me you will stay safe meeting with them. Okay?” They both looked down into the courtyard where the local Utopians were shouting at the Dystopians who had traveled up from their canyon home to bear witness to the meeting. No one really knew how the two cities had originated, but perfectly settled in the recesses of the ravine was Dystopia City while perched on the precipice above laid Utopia City. The geographical difference of their locations had caused quite a bias to form, and had caused them to be at odds with
