Squills 2/2/25

Welcome to Squills, the official news bulletin of the Young Writers Society! Thanks for stopping by for this first edition of Squills for 2025!

What will you find here? Tons of interesting news about YWS, including but not limited to: articles about writing, art, and the world of humanities; interviews with YWS members; shameless plugs; link round-ups; and opinionated columns. And where will all of this come from? Take a look at our fantastic creative staff!

Today we even welcome a reader-submitted article by Guest Squills Writer @LadyMysterio! If you'd like to join our Squills Staff or have an article you'd like to be considered as a Guest Writer, please message one of our fine editors! And if you have feedback on this edition of Squills we'd love to hear your thoughts over at the Squills Fan Club .

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Editorial Team
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Liminality
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1. THREE REVIEWER SHOUT-OUTS
2. READ AND MEET | KIERA CASS
3. POETRY WINDOWS: “SPEAKING TREE” BY JOY HARJO
4. LADY’S ART: MAKING OF ‘A DESOLATE SOLDIER’[
5. CLUB FEATURE: POEM A WEEK
6. SHAMELESS PLUGS
7. SUBSCRIBERS

THREE REVIEWER SHOUT-OUTSwritten by Liminality< PM: >

Hello hello! Reviewing is a big part of what makes our community work. I thought I’d make note of a couple of reviewers whose reviews caught my eye as I was browsing the Literary Center this month.

Of course, there are many more awesome reviewers that I haven’t had the chance to mention in this article. The focus of this article isn’t to report the leaderboards, since the leaderboards are already there! These are just my personal shoutouts for people I’ve seen writing helpful reviews.

@NovemberCrow is always super encouraging in a review! I love the specificity of their feedback and how they talk about their reactions and impressions of characters in a story. For instance, I love their comments on the distinct character voices in this review as well as on the new character that was introduced in that story.

@candyhearts is especially great at interpreting poetry in a review. They give detailed descriptions of their thought process when reading. They have a good sense of all the elements that need to be balanced in a poem, including flow, connecting imagery and motifs, and the portrayal of different figures within the poem’s narrative. I also like how they describe the effects of specific phrases and images within the poem, like their comment on the “cold, wet rag” in this review.

@Poor Imp has great insights on how stories and poems work on a big picture level. I was really impressed by this review of theirs. Here they identify the voice of a character in the dialogue, showing how that can be used to convey the character’s personality in of itself!

READ AND MEET | KIERA CASS

written by NadyaStatham< PM: >

Kiera Cass likes making her readers cry in her free time, I quote her







If you love princesses, princes, glittery gowns, forbidden romances and simply, love stories then you have to read books by Kiera Cass!


Writing Style
I love Kiera Cass’s writing style, because she writes in the 1st person POV and it allows you as a reader to experience what the character is feeling, seeing and thinking. Cass does this in a very unique way and I love the fact that from all of the books I’ve read of her, that every one of the POV’s are different.

She has a very graceful way of “talking” writing. It feels so royal. I think that writing the thoughts of the characters is her strong point, personally I find that a very challenging thing to do - to write what my characters are thinking.

About Books
If you are someone who loves lighthearted romance stories then Kiera Cass’s books are definitely something for you. Kiera Cass writes lots of YA fiction novels, mainly romance ones.

The rating of her books varies between 12+ to 16+; however this is not because of explicit content, more because of violence and the themes of the books such as revenge, loss, power, longing.

The Selection Series - 5 Novels & 4 Novellas
This is a popular series of Cass. If you’re a fan of Cinderella, then the Selection series is definitely something for you.

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The selection - Thirty-five girls are given the chance of a lifetime, to compete for the heart of Prince Maxon. But there’s a twist - for America Singer, being Selected is a nightmare. It means turning her back on her secret love with Aspen, who is a caste below her. Wait until she meets Prince Maxon and rethinks all her choices.

Stand-alone Novels: The Siren & A Thousand Heartbeats
If you’re a fan of The Little Mermaid, then don’t miss out on The Siren.

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Kahlen is a Siren, bound to serve the Ocean by luring humans to watery graves with her voice. Akinli is human—a kind, handsome boy who's everything Kahlen ever dreamed of. Falling in love puts them both in danger... but Kahlen can't bear to stay away. Will she risk everything to follow her heart?

Are you a fan of forbidden romance? Then read A Thousand Heartbeats !

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Princess Annika has lived a life of comfort—but no amount of luxuries can change the fact that her life isn’t her own to control. Lennox has devoted his life to the Dahrainian army, hoping to one day help them reclaim the throne that was stolen from them. They can’t possibly be together—but the irresistible thrum of a thousand heartbeats won’t let them stay apart.

The Betrothed Series: The Betrothed & The Betrayel

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This is the story of Hollis Brite, once a lady in love with a King, but now a widow. Becoming queen was a wish, but not one she realised would take so much, when she meets a commoner she starts to question it all.

I Read, Rate & Review
I Read 6 Stories, I’ll Rate & Review 3 of them.

The Betrothed - 3.5 Stars
This is the first novel to the duology; here you meet Lady Hollis Brite for the first time and see how she falls in love with a king (and out of love with him). The setting and beginning of the novel as well as the cover drew me in, but in the end I was a little disappointed though. Still it’s an amazing read.

The Queen - 4.5 Stars
This novella is just so cute. In this story you see how the parents of Maxon, King Clarkson and Queen Amberly met. It’s definitely my favourite one of them all. Clarkson was definitely my favourite here, but when I read the prince I was seriously overthinking it.

The Prince - 4 Stars
This one is a novella from Maxon’s POV, on how he met America Singer for the first time. Not my favourite, but definitely a nice one to add to the list.

Writing Advice I Got;
I think reading her books has definitely taught me to look at the “world” in my characters' own POV more often.

The End - Greetings,
I hope you enjoyed reading this article, if you do decide to read one of Kiera Cass’s books feel free to stop by my wall and leave me a post! It can be anything from who your favourite character was to which story you absolutely adored - Nadya



Sources:

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Banner & Collage made with Canva
Pictures from Kiera Cass - Books

POETRY WINDOWS: “SPEAKING TREE” BY JOY HARJOwritten by Liminality< PM: >

Hi there Squills readers! In this edition of Poetry Windows, we’re reading ‘Speaking Tree’ by Joy Harjo. I’ve decided to restructure my article-writing a bit to follow the flow of the poem and to focus on the role of the poet’s choices in constructing the poem. First, read the poem here.

1. Being among trees is a “beautiful dream”

The poem begins with a quote, which seems to portray being among trees as something desirable, as the speaker uses the word “beautiful” to describe a dream about dancing with a tree. A ‘dream’ could be something to aspire to, but also perhaps something beyond one’s grasp, outside of concrete reality.

Indeed, the first stanza of the poem introduces a haunting image, with the phrase “on this earth” locating it in the ‘real world’. Harjo chooses to portray traumatic events indirectly, by focusing us on the “shy wind threading leaves after a massacre” and the “smell of coffee and no one there”. The insertion of leaves and the poem’s subject, trees, here to me almost seems to suggest the trees bore witness to the massacre. I feel like the indirect portrayal emphasises the feeling of loss, grief and sadness whereas a direct portrayal of a massacre - actually showing it - in this context could have channeled more anger or horror.

The next stanza suggests poetry has something to do with interpreting trees as sentient beings, which “some humans” cannot do. Harjo uses ‘not understanding poetry’ as her expression to suggest that those humans are wrong. I think this reflects a worldview within the poem that poetry is a valid way of knowing. Those humans seem to be portrayed as being deficient, as the rest of the poem takes as presupposition that trees are sentient and have wishes and wants.

I noticed the phrase “broken and bereft” in the third stanza. The repetition of “broken” from the first stanza seems to call back to the idea of trees bearing witness to the massacre and potentially being bereaved from it as well. There is a parallelism in the stanza, where the pattern “when they are [passive verb phrase]” is repeated twice. This also emphasises the phrase “broken and bereft”, which I think contributes to the sense of grief in this part of the poem. If there had been no repetition, I believe it would seem as though this stanza is moving on to a new idea, or a new kind of sadness instead.

2. Trees cannot walk but they need good soil

In the following stanza, the speaker switches to using the first-person pronoun “I”. This seems to foreground the speaker for the first time in the poem, highlighting their personal feelings. I would imagine the poem would read differently if the speaker continued talking just about the trees in the third person, for example:

Now a tree longs to be planted in a moist, dark earth
Between sunrise and sunset —

It cannot walk through all realms —
It carries a yearning it cannot bear alone in the dark —

I think you could still read that the speaker identifies with the tree, but you’d lose the double layeredness of her identifying with the tree yet not quite being a tree.

What do I mean by that? The choice to say she is “longing to be a tree” seems to emphasise the sense that there is something missing that the speaker longs for, as even for a tree there still seems to be an inadequacy, and she doesn’t even seem to see herself as being a full tree. Whereas if Harjo had instead compared the speaker to a tree more directly, the links between this and the following stanza would be more explicit - but also less ambivalent and interesting, I would think.

Maybe also the use of “I” and “trees” implies there are others who share the speaker’s feelings - maybe they could be trees, maybe other non-human life or maybe human life being compared to trees. She herself is picked out as one of the “trees”, such that the poem highlights both her feelings as a person and also a more collectively shared feeling.

A question for me here is: is being a tree still portrayed as a good thing? Is the woman a tree or is she worse off than the tree, who is also not doing great? The woman is “longing to be a tree”, which calls back to the “beautiful dream” in the quote, but being ‘planted’ like a tree, she “cannot walk all realms” and “cannot bear (her yearning) alone”. Here she seems to compare herself negatively to trees. Maybe because trees are interconnected and need good soil to grow, they “cannot walk all realms”.

3. Heartache, or the dream of trees is to walk

The speaker seems to have a tremendous, even unspeakable amount of heartache, which is conveyed through the image of a tree being stuck next to a doorway and not being able to access water or nourishment or good soil.

The tree being in “the place next to the doorway” could be a way to visualise that the tree is not currently in good soil. It’s not close enough to the water, instead being planted next to something artificial. Additionally, being “next to the doorway” could suggest not being welcomed in the home or building.

And so “The deepest-rooted dream of a tree is to walk”. That’s ironic, because for a tree to walk, the roots would have to be pulled out at least a little bit, which to me seems to emphasise the tragedy of the whole situation. The hedging and mitigating language in “Even just a little ways” also contrasts with the superlative “deepest-rooted” - it’s as though the trees have been set up not to get what they want.

Here is what those lines look like without these elements:

The dream of a tree is to walk
From the place next to the doorway —
To the edge of the river of life, and drink —

When written without those words, it seems to me like a lot of the yearning and longing is taken out of the poem.

This yearning and longing seems to be heightened in the ending lines, which are full of words that suggest something imaginary, something perhaps again, out of reach: “Imagine”, “would”, “to drink deep what is undrinkable”, and these are framed as words of the trees themselves. I think this zooms out the perspective of the poem away from the speaker’s individual feelings again, but in a different way than the first few stanzas, because now we seem to be hearing directly from the trees. It’s a very poignant note to leave us with - the impossibility of trying to “drink” something “undrinkable”, despite a great yearning for it.

Questions

How do you think the poem changes if the speaker never uses “I”? What if they use “you” instead? What about a third-person pronoun?
I noticed, but didn’t discuss, the role of daytime/nighttime in this poem. In the fourth stanza, it is specified that the tree is in moist earth “Between sunrise and sunset” and this is echoed in the third-to-last stanza with “long after the sun has gone down”. What do you think of that?
Are there other ways you might interpret this poem?

Write to us by PM-ing SquillsBot, or by PM-ing me, Liminality, and with your permission we will share your responses on Squills for fellow poetry-explorers.

Keep reading!

LADY’S ART: MAKING OF ‘A DESOLATE SOLDIER’written by LadyMysterio< PM: >

I like to jokingly call myself YWS resident art teacher, although I'm not sure if that's really true. Either way, you've probably heard me talk about or seen my art around here! Given that I've recently made the switch from digital art back to traditional art (special shoutout to my drawing tablet for deciding to not work) I figured it may be fun to share my new art process. Granted I'm still figuring stuff out, but I'm letting myself have fun and play around with mediums to see what works and what I enjoy. That’s the main point. Art is to be enjoyed, by both the creator and viewer. It doesn't matter if it's objectively good or not. It's there to simply exist.

Now! Onto the process of one of my latest creations, a stained glass style illustration of Devlin, one of the main characters from @/Messenger’s novel Fury in the Wind, formerly known as Williwaw, which I've been greatly enjoying beta reading.

My first and foremost step is generally to do a few thumbnails. Thumbnails are, literally, thumbnail-size concepts of what a drawing could be. However, I had a striking idea in my head of what I wanted this piece to look like, so I skipped that step.

After thumbnails I do up a rough sketch to feel out the layout, proportions, and just to see how things fill out the page in general. It usually looks pretty wacky! But that's part of the fun. My favorite pencils to sketch with are Prismacolor erasable pencils, if you know me, you know I LOVE color, so it's just so much more fun! However I do still love me a good graphite sketch.

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Now that I've gotten something on the paper, I work on defining the lines, fixing proportions, and clearing away any unneeded lines, so I have a clearer picture. This is where I really focus on getting things "right" and sometimes it can be the longest part of the process, because I often step away and do other things (like make bread!) so I can come back with fresh eyes!

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One of the newer things I've been experimenting with is, rather than painting directly on the sketch and paper I've been working on, I transfer it to a fresh piece of watercolor paper. This is a common practice among artists who use canvas or other specialty papers, as it protects the paper that the finished illustration would appear on. Erasing and heavy sketching damages paper, which can in turn affect how certain pigments and paints apply. I'm not very happy with the transfer method I've been using, but it’s the only one available to me currently. This method entails turning the sketch paper over and covering the back in a layer of graphite. Then, turning the sketch over again, you put it over top of the fresh paper and secure it so it doesn't budge. Then you trace over the sketch lines with either a pen, or in my case, a mechanical pencil. Once that has been completed you can lift the sketch, and Ta Da! The lines you traced will have transferred to the fresh paper underneath.

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My reasoning for disliking this method in particular is that I find I can lose the clarity and flow of the sketch, sometimes making painting harder. I have come up with a new idea, which I will be trying soon. Either way, now we can move on to the fun part! Painting!

For this particular painting I used my watercolors. I love layering my paints, however with watercolor it can be hard to, as they tend to reactivate sometimes or the paper can't handle as many layers and I start to get water stains on my paintings. So for this one I did about 20 layers. Bear in mind they were very thin washes of color.

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Now that I've got my base colors in place, I can move in with my Prismacolor pencils and define more of the lines and refresh color where I couldn't with my paints. I like working with pencil on top because it provides vivid, controlled color.

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Finally! I have a finished illustration, at least in one of my newer styles of painting. I'll be popping this nice scan of it into my portfolio on my website. I don't often paint men, so I'm quite happy with how Devlin turned out. If you've been beta reading the story, you may have an idea of what this scene is about! If not... I guess you better go do that.

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I do hope you enjoyed reading this, and a special thank you to the Squills team for featuring this! I would love to do a few more here and there. Maybe make that "resident art teacher" title more legitimate. I do implore you dear reader to go and create your own art now!

CLUB FEATURE: POEM A WEEK

written by alliyah < PM: >

A section of the site that sometimes is a little less in the lime-light is the Club Section of YWS. Today I'm going to take a closer look at one of the site's active clubs and share how you can get involved with it too!

The Poem A Week Club was started in 2018 by Brigadier with a site challenge or encouragement - try to write one poem every week of the year. Currently I have the privilege of running PAW and have a goal of getting at least one poetry prompt into the club each week of the year. Poets can then choose to either use the prompt or choose their own inspiration, and then can log their poem in the club.

The Poem A Week Club works as a sort of drafting scrapbook for me - I throw in poems that aren't quite done, but I still want to share, poems that are spur of the moment inspirations from other threads that I don't want to lose, and poems that I want to keep thinking on but am maybe not ready to post through the Publishing Center yet. It's a great place for casual comments, and because I've been at this since 2019, it's a great place just look back and reflect. I also really enjoy having a space for low stress commenting on other poems outside of the lit center - it's very informal!

The other benefit of the club is ... FREE Poetry Prompts! Currently I supply most of the poetry prompts, but @milkweed, @Quillfeather, and @EllieMae plan to help supply some of the poetry prompts going forward and you're always welcome to post great prompts or quotes on the club wall too!

Admittedly many years there are plenteous prompts in January, and they sort of fizzle out in May, until I remember the club again and start posting prompts. But the club is very chill and I would love to see more YWSers participate in it!

Members participating in Poem a Week so far in 2025 have been myself, @Hannah, @LuminescentAnt, @Eulogy, and @spottedpebble - and I'd love to read your poetry too!

SHAMELESS PLUGS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

We love to run articles and questions, but we also love to advertise for you. Let people know about your new blog, a poem or story you’re looking for reviews on, or a forum thread you’d like more traffic on through Squills’ Shameless Plugs. PM @SquillsBot with the exact formatting of your advertisement, contained in the following code.

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CHECK OUT EDITION #9 & #10 of COOP ZINE





COOP's latest editions have been published this Winter! Have you had a chance to read them? This Poetry and Art zine is all about chickens and is a creation of @alliyah and @Rook your fellow YWS-ers - featuring poetry, flash fiction, and art from international contributors. You are invited to read, share, and download or even submit your own work over at coopzine.com. Be sure to read the full submission guidelines for all relevant information.

That wraps up this month's Shameless Plugs! Be sure to send us yours!

SUBSCRIBERS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

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