Community Bonanza

Welcome to the Stone Soup Digest! This is where I share what I'm up to and some of my favorite things from around the internet. Subscribe to Stone Soup to get this in your inbox every week.

For the past few years, I’ve done a year-end Community Awards Eligibility Roundup. This is for folks to share what work they’ve done in 2025 that might be eligible for awards in 2026. Folks have seemed to find it helpful, both for awards voting and for just finding new things to read! So I’m doing it again this year. Click here to fill in a very brief google form with your eligible work, so I can share it with folks.

Oakland Gleaners

Remember when I lived in Southern California and did a lot of work with Food Forward, an organization that distributes fresh produce to those who need it? Well, now I’m back in the Bay Area, and I’m about to go all-in on the Oakland Gleaners! The Gleaners harvest and distribute food from people’s domestic fruit trees. Fresh produce is so important to the health and well-being of human creatures, and this work is a vitally important part of community resource management. Check out the Gleaners and throw them some support if you can!

Coyote Year-End Subscription Drive

Coyote is a worker-owned media collective, similar to my beloved Defector, based right here in the Bay Area where I live. This year, I started planning a Stone Soup series for 2026, based on survival skills for the world we live in—only to go online a day later and discover that Coyote’s already doing it about a thousand times better than I ever could. I’m already learning a TON from their First Aid Kit series and I know it’s just going to keep getting better. Coyote is running a year-end subscription drive right now, and it’s well worth your support! I guarantee you’ll get your money’s worth and then some.

Authors Against Book Bans Merch

AABB finally has MERCH! It’s cute as hell, and every purchase goes to support the fight against book banning. An AABB shirt, hoodie, or hat is the perfect gift for your loved ones this holiday season—especially since you’ll be able to tell them their gift made a difference.

Currently Reading (and LOVING): Foundling Fathers by Meg Ellison

The trouble starts when a curious young man finds a smartphone in his privy. The problem is, it’s supposed to be the year 1750.

The Antediluvian Society―a shadowy cabal of right-wing billionaires―is fed up with a country they cannot fully control or understand. So they have done what any reasonable American patriots would do: Clone the Founding Fathers and raise them in secrecy. The plan, unbeknownst to the boys, is for them to restore America to its "original glory."

Ben takes his technological discovery to his brothers, Thomas, John, and George. The boys have been raised on an isolated island plantation by Mary Libertas, a firm but kind woman, and Jeff Hancock, their de facto father. But the idyllic life is far too dull for young men. The boys have been chafing at the restrictions upon them (especially Tom, who has impregnated yet another of the servants). Hancock is complaining to the Society that it's well past the time to tell the boys where they come from and what they must do.

Unfortunately for their keepers, the young men now have a phone...and many other notions.

Barnes & Noble | Bad River Website | Find an Indie Bookstore

Featured New Release: Audrey Lane Stirs the Pot by Alexis Hall

Audrey Lane is perfectly fine. Really. So what if she left her high-powered job as a Very Important Journalist―and her even higher-powered long-term girlfriend―to live a quiet life as a reporter for the second-biggest newspaper in Shropshire? And so what if she keeps hearing that same higher-powered long-term now-ex-girlfriend in her head night and day, constantly judging just how small Audrey's allowed her life to become?

She's fine. She's happy. She's perfectly within her groove. Do not-in-their-groove people get weekday drunk and impulsively apply for the UK's most beloved baking show?

All right, so maybe she's not completely fine, but being on Bake Expectations is opening her world again in ways she never anticipated. First through fellow contestant Doris, whose personal story of queer love during WW2 captures Audrey's heart, imagination and journalistic interest like nothing has in ages. Then through Jennifer Hallet, the most foul-tempered (and fouler-mouthed) producer, woman, and menace Audrey has ever met. Jennifer should be off-limits, but her fire lights something unexpected inside of Audrey, making her want to burn back a million times brighter. A million times hotter. A million times more herself than she's been in a long, long time.

Barnes & Noble | Bad River Website | Local Library | Find an Indie Bookstore

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In the meantime, remember: Do what you can. Care for yourself and the people around you. Believe that the world can be better than it is now. Never give up.

-gailey