After months of reading, writing and waiting, CSUB senior and English major Caity Stone is finally getting her essay published. Writing about James Baldwin’s famous short story, “Sonny’s Blues,” the essay will be published online by “The Explicator” on Nov. 21 and in print on Dec. 10.
For Stone, the greatest difficulties she faced were her perfectionism and waiting for a response.
“Initially, my own perfectionism was what made finishing it hard,” Stone said. “When I first composed it, I slaved a week over my paper, rewriting and revising it every day until I felt that it was good enough.  “Sonny’s Blues” is a story about art and suffering, and I truly felt that the process I went through while writing this paper reflected that theme.”
“I also had to wait a long while for progress of any kind.  Originally I submitted my paper in October of last year.  It wasn’t until this July that I learned it had been accepted, so that many months went by in which I didn’t hear anything.”
Dr. Solomon Iyasere, a professor of English at CSUB — and the teacher under whose instruction Stone first formed her idea — is impressed by the quality of Stone’s writing. To him, the objective process of publishing a work — of having anonymous readers unknown to the author — and having the work accepted is indicative of Stone’s quality.
“You are sending your publication to people who don’t know you,” Iyasere said. “They have never met you, and all they know is what you published.”
A media contact from “The Explicator” did not respond to The Runner’s request for comment.
“There is no bias, actually. In a sense, you are sending it as other people are sending their works in. The work must have some quality before they selected it, or else they would not. So this is a great accomplishment.”
Iyasere also mentioned that Stone is his third student to have their work published. The first, Sol Neely, an associate professor of English at the University of Alaska Southeast, has published three books on different topics. A Google search on the second student yielded no results.
Titled “Lost and Found:  The Fall of Grace in Sonny’s Blues,” Stone’s essay examines the significance of Grace, the daughter of the narrator in the short story.
In addition to this essay, Stone is also publishing an essay on “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” a 14th century poem in the literary journal, “Calliope.” No specific publication date was given.
Stone is also working on three other works. One is a fantasy short story, and the other two are fantasy and science fiction novels.