interview

Stone Soup Author Interview Series: Sabrina Guo Discusses Her Debut Chapbook Catalogue of Ripening

A conversation between Sabrina Guo—activist, former Stone Soup contributor and current Refugee Project Consultant, and nine-time national medalist from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards—and Shivanshi Dutt, poet and former Stone Soup contributor, about Sabrina Guo’s debut chapbook Catalogue of Ripening. 0:23 — What first sparked your interest in language and writing? 1:28 — Did certain pieces of literature or media act as inspiration for your chapbook? 3:05 — What is the message behind your poem “Altar for Daughterhood”? 4:29 — How did your voice develop as you wrote Catalogue of Ripening? 5:59 — What was the most memorable part of writing/publishing Catalogue of Ripening? 7:19 — Which poem from Catalogue of Ripening resonates with you the most? 9:28 — What message do you want to convey with Catalogue of Ripening? 10:19 — What advice would you give to aspiring writers? You can purchase Catalogue of Ripening via our Amazon storefront, here.

Saturday Newsletter: May 20, 2023

We interviewed critically acclaimed author Joanna Ruth Meyer as part of Fifty Years of Excellence: From the Archives. Illustration by Madeline Clark appeared alongside Joanna’s short story “The Hummingbird” in the May/June 1998 issue of Stone Soup. A note from Sage Millen Hi everybody! As you probably know, this year is Stone Soup’s 50th anniversary. Because Stone Soup has been such an important part of my life over the past five years (I was a frequent contributor and am now an intern), I wanted to do my part to ensure this wonderful organization has the resources to keep going for another fifty years. So, in about November of 2022, I started brainstorming fundraising ideas with my mom. We settled on a silent auction. My family had held two successful auctions in the past to raise money for Canuck Place Children’s Hospice. Not only did the events raise money, they were also really fun. To start, I picked a date several months away so I would have time to plan everything. Then, I sent out an email to almost everyone my parents and I know, explaining my initiative and asking for donations of handmade items we could sell at the auction. I also made several items to contribute, such as some cards with my photos on them, a loom-knitted toque, and some jewelry. I was very lucky to have such an artistic and generous circle of friends, because I received over fifty items! The next step was to create auction sheets; these include a photo and description of each item as well as the person who donated it, and space for bidders to fill in their bid amount and contact information. Before the event, I shared this document with everyone we had invited so those who couldn’t attend in person still had a chance to bid. The night before the auction, I closed access to the document; the online bidding was over. Then, I helped prepare our house for the auction by cleaning and setting up the items on tables and mantelpieces—even the piano. My mom and my nana made a variety of treats and snacks for guests to enjoy. Finally, people started arriving. I walked them around the house, showing them the various items, including knitted caps, weavings, paintings, baked goods, books, and even services such as gardening and pet photoshoots.  We also set up a stand of Stone Soup issues by the door so people could see what their money was going towards. Soon, our house began to fill with people chatting and making bids, while my dad played soft music in the background. After an hour and a half, we ended the auction. People gave us the bidding sheets for the items they’d won along with payment and we gave them their item. Overall, we raised $1,748 CAD! That’s a much higher sum than what I was hoping for, so I’m very proud of the result. I also had multiple people tell me what a fun event it was, and how they were excited to learn about Stone Soup and would be introducing it to the young people in their lives. I had a great time hosting the auction, and I would recommend a similar project to anyone who wants to raise money for Stone Soup, or any other cause in your life in a fun way. However, it does take a lot of work—I was very lucky that my parents (especially my mom) helped me a lot with the process. Luckily, there are many other ways to raise money that also require less planning—there’s nothing like a good, old-fashioned lemonade stand! I wish you the best of luck in your future philanthropic endeavors. Donate to Stone Soup today! A note from Emma Wood On behalf of the whole Stone Soup team, thank you, Sage! We are grateful for the work you put into this auction and the money you raised for Stone Soup, but also incredibly proud of you. This is what Stone Soup is about: empowering youth to act now. To all the young people reading this, know that you can do things that matter now. You don’t have to wait until you’re out of college to publish your writing, to write a book, to have an exhibit for your artwork, to raise money for causes you believe in, to start organizations or a literary magazine; you can do that all now. We believe in you, and we are here to support you. On that note, I am really excited to share a project that my colleagues and I have been working on since January. We have been tracking down and interviewing historical contributors to the magazine—contributors who are now grown up. Until a few years ago, submissions were received via snail mail, and no emails were collected. And, for much of Stone Soup’s now-fifty-year history, personal email didn’t even exist! In the intervening years, many of these former contributors have married and changed their names, moved cities or states, and pursued professions outside of the arts. So you can imagine this was quite a challenging project. It is still ongoing. However, we have been able to connect with a number of former contributors, whom I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing about what Stone Soup meant to them and about what they’re up to now. These interviews have confirmed that Stone Soup has truly been succeeding in its mission to instill confidence and authority in young people, and that a Stone Soup publication is something many carry with them throughout their lives—in many cases literally as well as figuratively. I spoke with one former contributor from the 1970s who still had her original issues of Stone Soup!  My colleague Tayleigh is  publishing the interviews on Instagram and Facebook—they are truly inspiring, and I encourage you to check them out, and to follow us on social media so you can continue to see these inspiring interviews as we post them. I encourage you to also be sure to read

Flash Contest #32, June 2021: Write a first person story based on a grandparent’s/older friend’s memory—our winners and their work

Our June Flash Contest was based on Creativity Prompt #156, provided by sagacious ’20—21 Intern Sage Millen, challenging participants to interview a grandparent/older friend about a memorable moment from their childhood and to write that memory as a first person story. This clever prompt afforded those who participated with the opportunity to get closer to the elderly than ever before, allowing them to literally inhabit the perspective of their interviewee. These submissions followed no similar narrative arc, though each and every one did provide a unique window into various cultures of the past. Submissions ranged from tales of a smoking car radiator stuffed with gum to a mishap with homemade firecrackers in Taiwan to a poetic vignette about a car crash, plus much, much more. Thank you to all who submitted this month; it was a pleasure to read your work. In particular, we congratulate our Winners and our Honorable Mentions, whose work you can appreciate below. Winners “4 Blocks” by Katherine Bergsieker, 13, (Denver, CO) “Nature’s Lullaby” by Mariana Del Rio, 12, (Strongsville, OH) “Still Life in Which Everything is on Fire” by Arishka Jha, 12, (Redwood City, CA) “A Love that Lasts a Lifetime” by Pranjoli Sadhukha, 11, (Newark, OH) “Rocket Trouble” by Natalie Yue, 9, (San Carlos, CA) Honorable Mentions “My Friend Tommy” by Tilly Marlow, 12, (Bristol, UK) “The Burning Finger Fix” by Nimay Shah, 11, (Portland, OR) “The Stubborn Fever” by Nitya Shah, 11, (Portland, OR) “Across the Fields” by Ava Shorten, 11, (Mallow, ROI) “The Secret Fruit Patch” by Emily Tang, 12, (Winterville, NC) Katherine Bergsieker, 13, Denver, CO 4 Blocks Katherine Bergsieker, 13 “No, I know, and then he said…” “Oh my goodness, really?” My car is filled with laughter as my friends and I drive home from a baseball game. The sweltering St. Louis heat is unbearable, so we decided to come home early. At sixteen years old, I recently received my driver’s license (!), and though inexperienced, I am perfecting my driving skills in our neon orange station wagon. “Alice, I swear I told him that I wasn’t interested..” And soon we were all cracking up, howling with the laughter that comes with hanging out with your two best friends. Tears slipping out of my eyes, we manage to squeak like mice and then choke, causing us to laugh harder. The only things around me are my friends and the aged leather seats of my car. Suddenly, bang!! The force of something harder than life, harder than death, harder than I could ever possibly imagine, pushes me out of my seat belt. Tumbling to the bottom of my car, I am down by the gas pedal, crumpled like a rag doll. The laughter stops, and for a moment it is so quiet you could hear a fraction of a pin drop. “What was that?” I whisper, and peer up from above the driver’s seat. I’m ready to make accusations—who did this, what happened to my car, what even is this? And then I realize it’s no one’s fault but my own. I step out of my car and see the hood of my beautiful, loaned car smashed against a cherry red convertible. “The… c-c-ar is…” I can’t bring myself to acknowledge the destruction of my annihilated car lying in front of me. “Sarah? Alice? Can you come out of there?” Slowly, each of my friends emerge from the car, gasp, and shudder. Finding her ground quickly, Sarah asks, “Is anything broken?” My eyes scan over the car and over the engine and over a piece of metal jutting out from the side. Wait. What? I kneel down and examine the radiator (my driver’s ed class made me memorize all the parts of a car). It’s full of holes. The force from the car accident caused my radiator to tear. “Radiator’s torn,” is all I have to say for Alice, the world-record holder in gum chewing, to get an idea. She hands us each two packs of gum. “Chew.” She spits hers out and gently places it in a hole in the radiator. “Look… we can have the gum patch the hole.” “Why do we need to patch the hole in the first place?” Sarah asks. “We have no other way of getting home,” I reply, the gravity of the situation dawning on me. Soon after sorting out all of the insurance issues with the convertible driver, we’re all chewing gum and patching the holes… first 5 pieces, then 20, then 50. Little wads of pink gooiness stick to the burning, broken radiator. Once we’re ready to start driving, I hop into the driver’s seat and press the gas pedal. I thought it wouldn’t work. I wasn’t half wrong. I thought we were screwed. I wasn’t half wrong. But I was wrong about thinking that it wouldn’t work. Because it did. In a way. The engine whirls to life and we cautiously begin the wild trek back home. The gum serves as a patch and oh my goodness, it actually works. Until we remember that radiators get hot to the touch as they work. So anything on the radiator at the time would melt. Newton would be proud. Alice is not. We stop and chew more gum. Sarah stays optimistic. I face the trepidation of knowing how my parents will react to our childish idea to patch a radiator with gum. Advance 4 blocks, add more gum. 4 more, more gum. When my house finally comes into sight, I breathe a sigh of relief. “Lily Smith! What a disgrace! What happened to you?” my mom calls from the porch, looking up from her knitting. I exchange knowing glances with Sarah and Alice before hopping out of the car. The radiator, and the gum, and the car accident, and the laughter, and how while it was horrible, it was kind of sort of barely worth it. “Well you know how Alice loves gum, right….” Mariana Del Rio, 12, Strongsville, OH Nature’s Lullaby