Newberg Graphic Online

Aspiring author published in youth periodical

Literary arts — Veritas student Josepha Natzke’s work appears in latest issue of Stone Soup

• By: Amanda Newman  
• Published: 2/2/2010 1:53:34 PM
• Last Updated: 2/9/2010 10:57:50 AM

Photo By: Gary AllenA published author —
Josepha Natzke’s short story “King of the Forest” appears in the January/February issue of Stone Soup, a literary magazine for youths.

   A young Newberg author is well on her way to literary fame — she was published last month in Stone Soup, a periodical magazine written and illustrated by children from throughout the world.
   Josepha Natzke, 13, wrote “King of the Forest,” a short story about a mountain lion attacking a buck, disrupting the quiet of the forest. The piece appears on page 42 of the January/February issue of Stone Soup.
   Natzke, a Veritas Academy eighth-grade student, heard about Stone Soup through a friend who had recently been published in the periodical.
   “I decided that I’d send in a story,” the young writer said. “I’ve been writing longer stories ... but I just decided that writing a short story would be a good experience.”
   She took a descriptive essay she’d written in school and turned it into a short story, “setting up something that would probably happen in wildlife, without making things up too much.”
   “The forest was still,” the story begins. “The birds had ceased their songs, the squirrels their chattering. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath as the woods prepared for the night.”
   Natzke submitted the piece to Stone Soup last summer; a couple months later, she heard it had been accepted for publication.
   “I’m really happy,” she said. This is the first time she’s been published, but “I want to do it more, with different magazines ... everyone in my class was really proud of me.”
   Stone Soup, founded in 1973, is published by the Children’s Art Foundation out of Santa Cruz, Calif. It has a circulation of 15,000 and is published six times a year, with each issue containing 10 to 15 written pieces accompanied by illustrations. For more information, visit www.stonesoup.com.

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