Tellus Zine has been featured in Cincinnati Magazine’s August Issue!
In an article called “The World of Literary Journals is Vast,” Tellus board members spoke of their experience with running the zine behind the scenes and what is has contributed to their creative journeys.
Keep scrolling to read what the magazine wrote about Tellus, and click here to read the full article featuring Tellus in the August 2023 Issue of the Cincinnati Magazine!
Excerpt from Cincinnati Magazine August 2023 Issue:
On a high school level, there’s Tellus Zine, which is run out of Kennedy Heights Arts Center’s Teen Artists for Change program. The publication is managed by an all-teen editorial board of students from across Greater Cincinnati.
Director of Education Sarah Rodriguez leads me to the arts center’s basement, where editors are working on a large-scale painting of a tree for the zine’s launch party, which would be held at the end of April. The door is open to let breeze slip in as students lean over the work. The program meets throughout the year and connects board members to working professionals.
“I’m having a unique experience you wouldn’t be able to get without having been on this board,” says Desi Distal, 16. “It’s a really great reference point if you want to be an artist or an editor of anything. And it really can hone in on some skills that you wouldn’t think you would have to.”
The inaugural issue of Tellus launched in 2019, and the new issue, its fourth, carries the theme “Taking Root.” As students wrapped up this year’s issue, Rodriguez says Tellus is now in a place where it can creatively push beyond what it’s done in the past because the students have laid a strong foundation.
“They know so much, and they look at the world in a very different way,” she says. “I’m not a teenager, obviously, but they give me a different perspective. The world sometimes can be a very difficult place to live in, but they’re able to talk about those hard things and understand it better through art.”
