2026 | Young Artists | Volume Three
WINTER
2026 | Volume Three
Young Writers Feature
Where the Wild Things Are
Audra Elm
ignorance is bliss
Naomi Karina | Poetry
“today, i try to mold the earth to my hands, to make it / soft and easy. the grass pokes my feet and the bees bite / my legs, still alive under the buzz of cicadas.”
Read at 8:15am
Pia Oronce
Sharing Tamales
Aurelia O’Brien | Fiction
“She smiles at me, and all of the crooked teeth I inherited from her show, and I almost wish that I could like those boys just to make her happy.
Girl’s Best Friend
Pia Oronce
Climate Change
Hunter Fulp | Poetry
“And the straight path, hot as a firecracker, / Only shows one molted solution.”
Eulogy to the Trust of the World After We Are Gone
Cesar Ramirez-Pulido
Eulogy to the Trust of the
World After We Are Gone
Ainsley Payne | Poetry
“she will breathe / a sigh of relief and cover the child she loved despite / our ruin”
Butterfly Kisses
Pia Oronce
Through the River
Lila Hayes | Fiction
“That was how it felt that day, anyways, like we were the only people on the river, like it was ours in a way that nobody else could understand.”
Frozen Food
Charlotte Whitley
left to bears
Ophelia Baker | Poetry
“woolen / socks, drawer / left open / so you can come and / go whenever you want.”
Axis Mundi
Josie Meloeny
I Envy You, Marsh
Sophia Mandrier | Poetry
“So it comes in floods? / that feeling, unwavering.”
Counting Sheep
Audra Elm
Friend of the Tide
Chloe Johnson | Fiction
“Carolina Marsh is the graveyard of the Atlantic.”
Suck It Up
Charlotte Whitley
Lemon Tree
Ophelia Baker | Poetry
“Next year maybe / there will be a whole tree between my ribs.”
Faded Memories
Issue cover by Pia Oronce
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“Faded Memories is similar in idea to my other piece Read at 8:15am. I got inspired by old memories I’ve had with friends, but I wanted to focus on the feeling of that memory, not necessarily the person. To me, we recognize the person in the memory as who they were in that moment. If I were to think of them now, I wouldn’t know who they are— only the idea of them I made in my head. This piece reflects how I think about identity and change. I am aware that people evolve, and sometimes what we miss is not the person themselves but the version of them we once knew. Through this work, I explore how memory shapes perception and how I tend to hold onto emotions even as circumstances shift.”
Pia Oronce is a senior visual arts student at Charleston County School Of The Arts. She has won multiple awards in Scholastic Art and Writing, Coastal Carolina Fair, and South Carolina Junior Federal Duck stamp. For AP Drawing in her junior year she explored the different themes of platonic love and received a 5 on her AP Drawing Portfolio. Her current theme for her senior thesis revolves around grief and how it can be a healing and self-love experience.