Three Writers Nominated for Write Well Award

Three featured writers have been nominated by Shanti Arts for the 2014 Write Well Award, which seeks to recognize excellence in published short fiction in both print and electronic magazines. Winners will be announced in August 2015.

Nominated writers are:

Diana Crane, for "The Visitor," which appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of Still Point Arts Quarterly. 

Diana Crane grew up in Canada, taught sociology in the United States, and has published several books of nonfiction on topics related to fashion, the media, and the arts. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and twice the recipient of a Fulbright award. She now lives in Paris where she writes fiction as well as articles about fashion and the arts. She also co-edits a fashion studies journal.
Crane's website | Amazon page

Frederic Smith, for "The Old Man and the Ballerina," which appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of Stone Voices.

Frederic Smith is a southern Californian who went to Princeton and Cambridge. Twenty years ago he tired of practicing law and turned full-time to writing. He is the author of numerous stories and a novel, See How We Run, which received the lead reviews in the New Statesman and the Irish Times.  

Susan Scott, for "Still Life," which appeared in the Spring 2014 issue of Stone Voices.  Susan Scott collaborates with artists, scholars and activists on a wide range of creative projects and serves as a lead editor with New Quarterly magazine, home to the Wild Writers Festival in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Scott teaches memoir, short fiction, and the well-wrought essay; 2014 workshops include the annual French River Creative Writing Retreat and Stone by Stone: Writing Spiritual Memoir, with Prajna of Amida Mosaic Sangha. A memoir in-progress, Sainted Dirt: Stories from the Fringe, explores the gifts of spiritual displacement. A chapbook, Temple in a Teapot, was launched on the Mormon Women Writers Literary Tour.

Stone Voices Loses Theresa Sweeney

I just received word of the recent passing of Stone Voices columnist Theresa Sweeney. Her mother phoned to tell me that Theresa fell in her home and died from her injuries the next morning. 

Theresa Sweeney
1962 - 2014

A huge shock. A terrible loss. Indeed, the world has lost a voice of wisdom. Theresa's insights into the interconnections between art, nature, and spirit were truly remarkable, and she had a gift for communicating the secrets of these interconnections in a way that was clear and accessible. Her wisdom would sneak up and gently take hold of you while enjoying a story about her grandmother's garden, a trip to Wal-Mart, or paintings of teddy bears. 

Theresa wrote a column for Stone Voices from the very beginning of the publication's history in fall 2011. Her column always offered a powerful message tucked inside a simple, but eloquent, story. Though I never met Theresa in person, I could always feel her radiant personality and vibrant energy when I read her work. So, thinking about her many contributions to our publication over the past few years, I went through her columns and extracted a few paragraphs that I particularly like. Theresa will indeed be missed by the entire Stone Voices community.

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from "Child's Play,"  Summer 2013

It amazes me that in Nature, though every being has a job, no creature appears to work, and yet everything is accomplished. 

from "True Colors," Fall 2013

I remember learning in grade school that when leaves change color they are actually reverting to their original hue. Trees decrease the green chlorophyll in their leaves as they begin to pull energy inward for the coming hibernation of winter. Contrary to what many believe, the vivid shades that hold us spellbound each autumn are really the true colors of leaves. 

The season of fall calls us to reflect upon our own true colors. Like trees, we spend a lot of internal energy creating an artificial chlorophyll-type mask of our own that hides our authentic nature. Many of us grow up feeling insecure in who we are, and in an effort to fit in we sadly stifle our uniqueness. We become attached instead to a false sense of self, dependent upon other people and things to define us. Just as our attention to trees is heightened each autumn when they show us their authenticity, other people's attraction to us is strengthened when we drop our facades and show them who we really are.

Trees have no problem taking self inventory each year and shedding that which no longer serves them. They know that new growth is just around the corner.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving we can be appreciative for the lessons learned and be assured that our letting go will become food for our own greater nourishment.

from "The Art of Patience," Spring 2014

While it may benefit us in certain areas of our lives, I do not believe patience is such a virtue when it comes to creative pursuits. In fact, I think it can actually thwart creativity. Your best art comes through you, not from you. When you start to feel the need to summon patience to pull you through, it's a signal that you are blocking the flow. When your art begins to stress you and you start criticizing it and noticing mistakes and flaws, when you start hating it and wishing it were something other than it is, when you feel the need for patience to persevere, you've hijacked the bus. You've fall our of sync with your muse. 

Art is a voyage of discovery. Leonardo da Vinci advised us: Do not be tethered to your expectations. By wanting something to be good, by desiring a particular result, we jeopardize what wants to have life. Artists must be cautious not to super-glue themselves to their initial vision, but rather to alway live in new beginnings. That way we leave the door open to all potential.

from "The Goldfinch and the Teddy Bear," Winter 2013

Life. Full of meaningless, random coincidences? I think not! There are signposts all along our path. Everything that happens has a purpose; everything that happens helps us in some way. Everything. Pay attention and see what magic unfolds.


Christine Cote
Shanti Arts

The Trouble With Thurber

Shanti Arts recently released Nothing But Trouble by the renowned master of the short story Bob Thurber. My first encounter with Thurber was when he submitted a short essay for Stone Voices titled “The Cheap and Gaudy Heart.” We published the piece in the summer of 2012. 

Oddly, rather mysteriously, some of us are more malleable than others. Implanted with some essential and ancient aptitude that we can take no credit for. I was fortunate, almost clever, not quite bright, but able to adjust. Like Siddhartha, I was able to fast, and think, and wait. I survived by my wits, gritting my teeth, taking my beatings, clutching my belly against hunger, determined to outlast one suffering event after another, constantly observing, studying every sting, every soreness. I learned as I burned. And I grew, and I adjusted (or maladjusted) but I endured.

As I learned more about Thurber from reading about him on Goodreads and various blogs, I was compelled to read his “dysfunctional novel,” Paperboy. It was a good decision on my part. The book grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. I read the book in one day; it’s short, so that’s not saying much, but I simply could not put the book down. When I would look up off the page for a moment, I just stared ahead, feeling numb and shaken, as if I’d been slapped in the face. Dark, gritty, raw, wrenching. I never knew there were people and situations like those I met in Paperboy. But now I know.

Thurber describes himself as an old (not true because he and I were born the same year), self-taught writer who grew up dirt poor in Rhode Island. He worked at writing every day for twenty years before submitting his work for publication. He went on to publish three hundred short fictions and collect more than forty awards and citations, including The Barry Hannah Fiction Prize, the Meridian Editors' Prize, and the Marjory Bartlett Sanger Award.

His stories are rough and tough, sometimes disturbing. Still, they’re hard to put aside. Something about his straightforward, succinct, and, dare I say, sincere writing style keeps you tethered to his work. I think it’s because his writing is true—not in the sense of being autobiographical—but in the sense that they germinate and grow from that place in him that remembers his difficult beginnings. His background is the breeding ground for his stories. So they are true, coming forth from his experiences, his difficulties, and, as he says, his ability to endure.

I’ve thought about this quite a lot—how traumatic and difficult experiences impact and shape our lives and our creative endeavors. Thurber works through his difficult life experiences by writing and churning out stories. Others paint or make photographs or act on stage or write poems. As a photographer, I am often asked for an artist statement, just as I ask for one from the artists whose work I feature on our website or in our publications. For the first several years of my work with photography, I rewrote my statement dozens of times. Then, one day it hit me. For me, it’s quite simple. I make photographs because it makes everything right. It helps me to make sense of the world. I think that’s what art is all about—making sense of what is happening to us and around us and in us. When an artist does this successfully, the work is true, not in the sense of being autobiographical, but in the sense of touching upon Truth, with a capital T.  

Thurber, with a capital T, is a successful writer. His work uncovers some difficult parts of humanity, but, in his own wonderful way, his work makes sense of the world. Maybe it’s because buried deep within his dark and difficult tales, there is hope. And hope is what makes everything right.

Nothing But Trouble

Stories by Bob Thurber
Images by Vincent Louis Carrella 

$22.95  |  ISBN: 978-0-9885897-6-6 

available at www.shantiarts.com, 
most online booksellers, 
and many fine bookstores

Christine Cote
May 4, 2014

A Beautiful Surprise

Robert D. Richardson, author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, said of Thoreau: "He always insisted that his whole life was one of extraordinary luck, and he could have said, as Picasso did of a similar life, 'I do not seek, I find.'"

I do not seek, I find. For a long time, I had these words scrawled on a piece of paper that was pinned to the bulletin board above my desk. The greatest things in my life haven't been things I looked for, they were things I stumbled upon. What I provided was the willingness to see them and draw them into my life. It would have been so easy to pass them by, but my passion for discovery and my drive to not be limited by what is possible led me to places and opportunities that have shaped and defined me. Some times I feel as if I move along on a kind of moving walkway, never knowing what lies ahead, always being surprised, and, like Thoreau, feeling that every moment is one of extraordinary luck. 

In the current issue of Stone Voices (Spring 2014), columnist Vincent Louis Carrella writes about the beautiful surprise. "I'm not looking for anything in particular, only the fascinating discovery I've come to call the beautiful surprise." With camera and notebook, Carrella takes off on vision quests, walking through nature, listening, watching, waiting, discovering. His camera bears witness to his discoveries; it documents the gifts that present themselves. Carrella knows too that his life is one of extraordinary luck, for he sees himself as a " . . . child watching God's magic show, an endless array of jaw-dropping tricks."

Choose not to seek. Choose to find . . . a beautiful surprise.

Read Carrella's entire column here.

Christine Cote, Publisher and Editor

Shanti Arts Publishing

Patience, Why?

Over the years I've made a number of quilts. I learned about quilts when I lived in Indiana, and I quickly discovered that the whole process was more enjoyable and relaxing when done without a sewing machine. So I starting making quilts by sewing all the pieces together with nothing but a needle, thread, and a thimble, and then I stitched the pieced top to the batting and the back—again entirely by hand. Obviously, it took a long time to complete a bed-size quilt, but, for whatever reason, getting it done quickly wasn't the point. For me, I loved the process. 

One day someone was looking at my work and said, "I would never have the patience to do something like this." The comment confused me; it didn't make sense. I never thought that I needed patience to make these pieces entirely by hand. And now, thanks to Theresa Sweeney, columnist for Stone Voices, I understand why the comment didn't make sense to me. 

In the spring 2014 issue of Stone Voices, Sweeney begins her column, "The Art of Patience," like this:

As an artist I work in all media, but drawing with pen and ink has always been my first love. When people look at my intricate and detailed images, they often say, "Wow, I would never have the patience to do something like that!" I tell them that it really has nothing to do with patience. Patience is what you need when you're standing in line at the register and the salesclerk calls for a price check for the woman in front of you . . . . Times like those are when you need to willfully summon restraint to cope with the gap between what is happening and what you wish were happening. 

So I understand now why the comment about patience didn't make sense to me; patience is not what's needed when making art. In fact, Sweeney says that if you need patience when engaged in an artistic endeavor, walk away. It's quite possible that you are tethered to your expectations, fixated on the outcome. 

Art is a voyage of discovery. Leonardo da Vinci advised us: Do not be tethered to your expectations. By wanting a certain outcome we jeopardize what wants to have life. We endanger the passion and joy and flow of the process—and that is art.