Our July Flash Contest was based on Creativity Prompt #160—provided by Jane Levi, Stone Soup Director—which challenged participants to choose one proverb from a list of five ( “A stitch in time saves nine,” “The early bird catches the worm,” “A problem shared is a problem halved,” “A leopard cannot change its spots,” or “Absence makes the heart grow fonder”), and write a story in which the opposite was true. As we have come to expect from our brilliant participants, the individuality, creativity, and outright quality of the work was breathtaking. Stories ranged from humorous to serious to heartbreaking, taking us on journeys to the animal kingdom, the times of Greek myth, a college campus, and much, much more! In fact, the breadth of quality apparent in this month’s submissions was so great that we selected two stories—”The Early Bird May Catch the Worm, but it Is Never Too Late to Get in the Game” by Phoenix Crucillo and “A Vacation, an Idiom, and a Wedding” by Joyce Hong—to be published on the blog at a forthcoming date. As always, thank you to all who submitted, and please submit again next month! In particular, we congratulate our Winners and our Honorable Mentions, whose work you can appreciate below. Winners “Mortal Complex” by Arishka Jha, 12 (Redwood City, CA) “The Early Bird Doesn’t Get the Worm” by Nova Macknik-Conde, 9 (Brooklyn, NY) “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Bitter” by Pranjoli Sadhukha, 11 (Newark, OH) “A Trifle Shared Is… Big Trouble” by Daniel Shorten, 10 (Mallow, ROI) “Weighing Threads” by Eliya Wee, 11 (Menlo Park, CA) Honorable Mentions “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder—or Not!” by Sinan Li, 11 (Allendale, NJ) “All for a Root Beer Latte” by Yutia Li, 12 (Houston, TX) “In Which Later Is Better” by Serena Lin, 10 (Scarsdale, NY) “How the Leopard Changed His Spots (with Apologies to Rudyard Kipling) by Ava Shorten, 11 (Mallow, ROI) “7 Days” by Chloe Yang, 12 (Cranbury, NJ) Chosen for the Stone Soup Blog “The Early Bird May Catch the Worm, but it Is Never Too Late to Get in the Game” by Phoenix Crucillo, 12 (Los Angeles, CA) “A Vacation, an Idiom, and a Wedding” by Joyce Hong, 11 (Oakville, Ontario, CA) Arishka Jha, 12 (Redwood City, CA) Mortal Complex Arishka Jha, 12 The oldest of us left the town, but we liked to pretend that she was exiled. That it was us, the pulsing insides of our city, who drove her away. She arrived a few winters ago when the air was silvery and translucent for weeks and we were ten. That afternoon, we knelt inside our thicket of branches and saw the black tires of her compact car eat at the road in front of us. No one had moved here in years, and we knew no better than to imagine that anyone who did would be deadly. We didn’t know who the visitor was until she held a match to the ivory fences the next night and we watched them metamorphose until the embers flitted through space, moths to a growing flame. She reminded us of a bird from afar, with fragile sand-coloured wrists, eyes that were more raven than brown, and dark hair that pinwheeled down to her fingertips. She wore a long charcoal coat and iridescent shoes that flooded with sunlight. Up close she was less of a hummingbird and more of a buzzard or hawk, a bird of prey. When we asked, she told us that her name was something strange, Blue or Cyan. We thought it wasn’t a real name at first. If she had lied and said that her name was something more like ours, less pure, maybe we would have feared her presence more. “What’s that blue person doing?” the smallest of us said, forehead pressed to the foggy window. It was unnatural. The fences kept us safe, and we knew that they surrounded us like the walls of a greenhouse so that we could grow poisonous and contagious. “Burning it down, what else?” “There’s a reason we have it. It makes no sense.” It made no sense to the rest of us either, so we asked her why. She said our town was too isolated. Being so removed from the outside world had made us feral and invasive and she would save us. And that no, her name was Indigo. Everyone in our neighborhood used to insist that we weren’t old enough to use matches, but we knew that they were scared, scared that these feral children were like lightning: too unpredictable and charged to last long. *** Two years of nuclear skies and twisted secrets had passed by until Indigo left, and by that time, she was an idol to us. She was silver and astral in a dark, short-lived way, and we had thought she saved us until the last moment. The day before she ran away, we convinced her to take us into the forest. It was a gray place, rife with woven roots, overgrown grass patches, and yew pines. She told us that the natural world was beautiful, a blessing, while we hid underneath a tree behind her and fashioned fish scales and hummingbird bones into necklaces. Hours passed like a battle—victory, violence, and defeat compressed into simple blows. We wondered how those lifeless parts could infuse into one and create a body capable of both destruction and construction, futility and power. She left the next morning, and we took enough solace in the fact that we were the only ones who truly knew who she was before they all worshipped her. After all, her leaving made everything less messy. We used to be second in command, then we became first. Even so, we still felt forsaken. Our town’s lifeblood was history and rewriting it was the ultimate coup de grâce, a checkmate of sorts. We took to it with a scalpel instead of a pen, blanketed our town in dusk and shadow, dreaming ourselves
winners
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
Saturday Newsletter: March 15, 2021
“Girl in the Sun” (Canon PowerShot SX600) photographed by Sage Millen, 13, (Vancouver, BC, Canada) and published in the May 2021 Issue of Stone Soup A note from Emma As many of you regular readers may know, in addition to being editor of Stone Soup, I have also been a PhD student in literature. Well, now I can officially say I am a PhD candidate in literature! What is the distinction? For the first few years of my PhD, I had to complete a certain number of courses in the department. Then I had to prepare for my “Qualifying Exam”—for my department, this was a three-hour oral exam based on a portfolio of written materials that totaled nearly 100 pages! Before I passed the exam, I was a PhD student—but now I have passed it, I have “advanced to candidacy”; I am a PhD candidate, and “all” I have left to do is write my dissertation. I thought I would feel happiness and relief once the exam was over. I would no longer have the added stress and work on top of the regular stress and work of my regular life! However, still only a few days out from the exam, I feel deflated, disappointed, empty. This feeling reminds me of the way I feel whenever I finish writing a book manuscript. The whole time I am working on the book, I fantasize about finishing it—of having written the book so no longer have to be writing it. But then once I am finished, I am flooded with a feeling of sadness. What will I do now? What will force me to think deeply and thoroughly through ideas in language? What will I work on? This feeling is the best reminder there is that process is everything. Writing and making art can be difficult, but it is in the process where we find joy and meaning. Writing is about writing, not about having written. As Jorie Graham, a famous contemporary poet (and my former teacher!), once said to me, “Your last piece is never going to write the next one for you.” So, whether you are working on a manuscript to submit to our book contest or an artwork or shorter piece of writing to submit to the magazine or blog, I encourage you to remind yourself, whenever you find yourself wishing you were done already, that actually you will miss the project when you are actually done. Until next week, Congratulations to our most recent Flash Contest Winners! Our May Flash Contest was based on Creativity Prompt #151, provided by the brilliant Molly Torinus, challenging participants to come up with five “terrible” book titles and write a story based on one of them. What followed was an avalanche of submissions boasting the most creative, eye-catching titles many of us had ever seen. Of course, the exemplary work that followed the titles broke the moniker of “terrible,” and provided us with a lifetime supply of imagination, no one story following a similar arc. We found ourselves immersed in dramas set in the far reaches of outer space, character driven vignettes set in a classroom, rich narratives told from the perspective of a dog, and much, much more. A big thank you to all who submitted this month—it was a pleasure to read all of your work. In particular, we congratulate our Winners and Honorable Mentions, listed below. You can read the winning entries for this contest (and previous ones) at the Stone Soup website. Winners “The BWBM Students” by Ritobroto Roy Chowdhury, 10, (Riverside, CA) “T.L.G.E.Y.5.T.” by Darren Fisher, 9, (Portland, OR) “Connecticutians, I Ate the Grape” by Rex Huang, 11, (Lake Oswego, OR) “The Book Without a Name” by Serena Lin, 10, (Scarsdale, NY) “The Pheasant Was Delicious” by Juliet D. Simon, 11, (Santa Monica, CA) Honorable Mentions “Once Upon a Time a Friendship” by Sophia Wong, 9, (Short Hills, NJ) “Chocotalia and Hideous Dragon Monster” by Sophie Liu, 9, (Surrey, BC) “When a Chicken Says ‘SQUAWK!'” by Olivia Luan, 11, (Great Falls, VA) “Cats, Dogs, Dragons, and Other Household Pets” by Atalie Lyda, 12, (Portland, OR) “You Are NOT Reading This Book Cover” by Joycelyn Zhang, 11, (San Diego, CA) Writing Classes and Book Club Are you looking for classes to inspire, improve, and practice your writing with great teachers and a group of like-minded young writers and readers? Join us! We do charge fees for our clubs and workshops, but we try to keep them as low as possible, and we offer discounts to subscribers and scholarships to students who need them. Contact us at education@stonesoup.com with any questions. Writing Workshop: we have two new writing groups for spring/summer, starting April 17, that will meet via Zoom every Saturday except for the last Saturday of the month. Come write with us and share your work with your peers. Find out more and register for a workshop at Eventbrite. To see some of the great work produced by current workshop members, read contributions published at Stonesoup.com, or join us at one of our free public readings! Book Club: a book club for writers that meets via Zoom on the last Saturday of every month, with a new season starting on April 24! Find out more and register for book club at Eventbrite. Check out which books we are reading on our website. Young Author’s Studio Summer Camps: we are offering a wide range of classes through the summer jointly with the Society of Young Inklings. Each camp runs for two hours per day, Monday through Thursday. All details and bookings via Society of Young Inklings. 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 Daniel Zhu published an informative article on the stock market. Read updates on both of the Writing Workshops from Saturday, May 1: Writing Workshop #39: Ghosts (part 1), and How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #3: Lightness. As part of AAPI Heritage month, Young Blogger Tang Li wrote a personal narrative describing her
