A Letter From the Editors
Jessie Leitzel | Young Writers Issue | Winter 2025
Now that February has come to pass, the senior creative writers at the Charleston School of the Arts are about ten pages away from finishing their first books. I want to say that when I was in their shoes I was on track in this way, but I know that’s not true; I remember spending my February and what should have been spring break cranking out final page counts, reworking poems and essays until the orange light passing through the magnolias outside told me a new day had come. The world around us was quietly reeling into spring, and our small cohort—myself, Gideon, Linda, Merrik, and eight miraculous others—were knee-deep in the most rewarding and exhausting undertaking of our lives.
At our small arts high school, the end goal is to spend senior year publishing a book. The entire program leads up to it, seven years spent finding our voices so that one day we can hold our work bound together in our hands, a testament to all we have become. I’m beyond grateful for it now—for one, it gave me Gideon, Linda and Merrik, three of the greatest and most unearned gifts of my life—but it’s a hell of a thing to be going through when you’re in it. It’s senior year, which means AP courses, college applications, and nostalgia that hits like a loose tramcar. It’s an unforgiving time to be writing a book. Because of that, the process was nothing like we thought it would be. Half the pieces I wrote never saw the light of day. Half the ideas I poured myself into ended up being written so badly that I was tempted at times to trash entire notebooks. I know now that that’s simply how it needed to go, that that’s simply part of what writing is, but in the moment it was devastating.
But writing is not a disheartening thing. It is hopeful. It is sweet. The lesson I learned from The Small Hours wasn’t in the work that got published, but rather in the pieces I concealed. That’s the reason why the editors of this magazine chose to make “Unfinished,” the feature published within this issue—we wanted to tell everyone who would be doing the same that yes, you will have to choose to forget some of your work. You will have to revise your poems down to the bones, to cut away and rework until the pages seem to bleed. Nothing turned out to be what we thought it would be. But look at the grace that gave us.
Now, the Class of 2025 is going through the same realizations. This issue of Trace Fossils Review features work from a grand few of that cohort; read “Water Fed” by Zoe Jones or Ruby Varallo’s “The Train” and you’ll understand the power of the collections yet to come. What’s even more special is that the other pieces this winter are also from students of the SOA creative writing department, some at the tail end of their junior year and others as young as eleven. This is writing that reaches to the far shores of Cádiz and the homeland memories of Fripp Island, SC. This is work that uses itself to find itself, that begs us as readers to reminisce while pointing up and forward. This is work nuanced in its technique, refreshing in its imagination, and astounding in what it accomplishes. This issue is one that sings.
It is a gift as an editor to publish resonant work; it is an even greater gift when that work comes from the youngest of us. To the current senior class at the Charleston School of the Arts, and to all the kids who will complete in their own way the same senior thesis I did: the writing, art, and testimonies published in this issue—they are songs. They are our masthead’s reminder to you that your art is an electrically alive one. It is my greatest privilege to champion your work in this world. We need it.
A Letter From the Editors
Jessie Leitzel Young Writers Issue | Winter 2025
Now that February has come to pass, the senior creative writers at the Charleston School of the Arts are about ten pages away from finishing their first books. I want to say that when I was in their shoes I was on track in this way, but I know that’s not true; I remember spending my February and what should have been spring break cranking out final page counts, reworking poems and essays until the orange light passing through the magnolias outside told me a new day had come. The world around us was quietly reeling into spring, and our small cohort—myself, Gideon, Linda, Merrik, and eight miraculous others—were knee-deep in the most rewarding and exhausting undertaking of our lives.
At our small arts high school, the end goal is to spend senior year publishing a book. The entire program leads up to it, seven years spent finding our voices so that one day we can hold our work bound together in our hands, a testament to all we have become. I’m beyond grateful for it now—for one, it gave me Gideon, Linda and Merrik, three of the greatest and most unearned gifts of my life—but it’s a hell of a thing to be going through when you’re in it. It’s senior year, which means AP courses, college applications, and nostalgia that hits like a loose tramcar. It’s an unforgiving time to be writing a book. Because of that, the process was nothing like we thought it would be. Half the pieces I wrote never saw the light of day. Half the ideas I poured myself into ended up being written so badly that I was tempted at times to trash entire notebooks. I know now that that’s simply how it needed to go, that that’s simply part of what writing is, but in the moment it was devastating.
But writing is not a disheartening thing. It is hopeful. It is sweet. The lesson I learned from The Small Hours wasn’t in the work that got published, but rather in the pieces I concealed. That’s the reason why the editors of this magazine chose to make “Unfinished,” the feature published within this issue—we wanted to assure everyone doing the same that yes, you will have to choose to forget some of your work. You will have to revise your poems down to the bones, to cut away and rework until the pages seem to bleed. Nothing turned out to be what we thought it would be. But look at the grace that gave us.
Now, the Class of 2025 is going through the same realizations. This issue of Trace Fossils Review features work from a grand few of that cohort; read “Water Fed” by Zoe Jones or Ruby Varallo’s “The Train” and you’ll understand the power of the collections yet to come. What’s even more special is that the other pieces this winter are also from students of the SOA creative writing department, some at the tail end of their junior year and others as young as eleven. This is writing that reaches to the far shores of Cádiz and the homeland memories of Fripp Island, SC. This is work that uses itself to find itself, that begs us as readers to reminisce while pointing up and forward. This is work nuanced in its technique, refreshing in its imagination, and astounding in what it accomplishes. This issue is one that sings.
It is a gift as an editor to publish resonant work; it is an even greater gift when that work comes from the youngest of us. To the current senior class at the Charleston School of the Arts, and to all the kids who will complete in their own way the same senior thesis I did: the writing, art, and testimonies published in this issue—they are songs. They are our masthead’s reminder to you that your art is an electrically alive one. It is my greatest privilege to champion your work in this world. We need it.