Touchstone Magazine

Andrew Bales

Andrew Bales continues to live in Wichita, Kansas. This is both natural and confounding. He is currently working toward an M.F.A. in fiction at Wichita State University. He is a fledgling pool shark, coffee enthusiast, and editor of Fractions Journal, an arts and literature publication.

Monique Belitz

Monique Belitz is originally from the Netherlands. She grew up in Germany where she received her B.A. in art education from the Ludwig-Maximilians University in 1981. She moved with her family first to Maryland and later to Oregon. For twenty-five years, she was active as a painter and printmaker, showing her work both in the Northwest and in Germany. She also taught for many years at the Maude Kerns Art Center, and she was an adjunct instructor at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon, from 2002 to 2007. In the summer of 2007, she decided to move to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to pursue a M.F.A. She graduated with distinction in the fall of 2010. Her thesis show consisted of the surround installation “Thought Lines,” a 90-footlong landscape collage on paper. It functions as a palimpsest with traces of migration and different levels of cultural sediment. She is now continuing her studies towards a M.A. in art history, with emphasis in Native American Art History.

The various landscapes she lived in, each with its distinct light, left lasting impressions: the northern light of Utrecht in Holland as experienced while living on a house boat, the small-scale parcels of fields and woods draped over low hills in Bavaria, the crystalline light of rare fall days in Maryland and the solitary peaks of Oregon, now, the open and wide spaces of New Mexico, dotted with shrubs and traces of ancient history.

Carrie Cook

Carrie Cook, 35, is a senior in English (creative writing) and fashion design. Her cinquain entitled “Weekend” was previously published on on wetpaint's twitlit site. She is originally from California and spent four years in the Army before coming to K-State to finish her degree.  She currently lives in Herington, Kansas, with her husband and two dogs.

Paula Glover Ebert

Paula Glover Ebert is a graduate student in English. A non-traditional student, she returned to school after 30 years as a working journalist in various weekly and small daily publications, and spent eight years in the Catholic press.

Heather Etelamaki

Heather Etelamaki is a senior and a double major in English in creative writing and art in drawing at Kansas State University. She finds that just one cup of Earl Grey can conquer any bad day. Her work has also appeared in the 2010 edition of touchstone.

Matt Felzke

Matt Felzke is a second year M.A. student in Truman State University's English graduate program.  As a blogger, he has written for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and wants to continue telling the stories of people whose voices aren't always understood.

D. Gilson

D. Gilson is an M.F.A. candidate in poetry and creative nonfiction at Chatham University. An Ozark Mountain native, his work explores issues of otherness and queer identity in such a place; it has appeared in Moon City Review, Plain Spoke, Elder Mountain, and The Los Angeles Review.

Emily Glass

Emily Glass grew up in Vermont and spent a significant amount of time exploring the woods and observing the beasts of her front yard, which some urbanites would call a farm. She considered them family pets.  She received a B.F.A. at The State University of New York in painting and plans to complete an M.F.A. in painting at Kansas State University by May 2011.  She engages in the play of drawing with charcoal and oil paint, and enjoys questioning and bending literal depiction in order to investigate the space around her. This is her second publication in touchstone.

Chris Graber

Chris Graber is a ceramic artist born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. He has a B.F.A. from Seton Hill University and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. at Kansas State University. Graber’s artwork is based on ethical human interaction and stresses the importance of a stable upbringing for children. His work is on display at Meadowlark Hills, and he is a member of the Kansas Artist Craftsman Association, President of the Kansas State University Potter’s Guild, and Vice-President of the Graduate Students of the Visual Arts at Kansas State University. His work has appeared in publications such as Ceramics Monthly, The Salina Journal, and The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Cody Hadrick

Cody L. Hadrick is a resident of Niles, Michigan and graduated of Niles High School. She is currently a Kansas State college sophomore majoring in pre-veterinary medicine through the Department of Agriculture. She is a member of the K-State Equestrian Team.

Dan Hornsby

Dan Hornsby was born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada, before his family moved to Indiana when he was ten. Nowadays, Dan plays in the local band, The Low End, and works in the English Language Program for K-State. His previous works have been published by Leaning House Press. He is a junior in creative writing.

Joseph Henry Kester

Joseph Kester currently attends Kansas State University and is a junior majoring in secondary education. This is his first published work.

Aaron Logan

Aaron Logan is a fine arts major with a concentration in painting. This is his junior year, and he hopes to work as a freelance illustrator someday. He currently works as an illustrator and comic artist for the Kansas State Collegian.

Ellen Ludwig

Ellen Ludwig is a sophomore in art education at Kansas State University. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She started doing photography two years ago and knew it was something she was good at. She always knew she wanted to do something with art but never was good at drawing or painting. When she was younger, her father taught her how to use his Pentax film camera and gave it to her to start out her photography. Now she is in love with film photography after taking two photo classes in her hometown because of her photography teacher Janice Nesser-Chu, who pushed her to do more than she ever thought she could. Photography is one thing that gets her lost in her own world, and in the end she can make beautiful art. “Pink Rose” was taken in the beautiful Missouri Botanical Gardens with a Canon XS Rebel and was previously shown in Kemper Gallery at K-State for the University Life Cafe Art Exhibit.

Joshua Mans

Joshua Mans is a senior in secondary education with a content focus in English at Kansas State University. This is his first published work.  

Kaylea Pallister

Kaylea Pallister is from Hays, Kansas, and is a senior studying literature in Kansas State's English program.

Christy Pottroff

Christy Pottroff is a second year graduate student in cultural studies and women's studies. This is her first published work.

Zachary Michael Powell

Zachary Michael Powell is a first year English graduate student. Originally from Bonner Springs, Kansas, he went to KU and received his degree in education. He worked at Shawnee Mission North as a high school teacher of freshman and sophomores for three years. He enjoys the arts.

John Quinn

John Quinn graduated from Kansas State in 2010, majoring in English.  His writing has previously appeared in touchstone, much in the same way that dandelions recurrently appear on the lawn, or globules of saliva on the exposed tongue of a dental patient.  Otherwise, he is uncirculated.

Tiffany Roney

Tiffany Roney is a senior in journalism and public relations, with a minor in creative writing. Besides writing, she enjoys taking photos, baking cheesecakes (just because!), and pursuing God. She has had more than 150 news and feature articles published in the Kansas State Collegian and The Wichita Eagle, but "Red Dye #2" is her first published fiction work.

Emily Schomaker

Emily M. Schomaker is a native of Humboldt, Kansas, and a 2007 graduate of Humboldt High School. Emily graduated from Allen County Community College in May 2008. She is currently a senior at Kansas State University. Emily will receive a B.S. in secondary education and a minor in English with an emphasis in literature.  

Luke Severson

Luke Severson is from Decorah, Iowa. He has a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Northern Iowa.

He is a graduate student/teaching assistant at Kansas State University working towards an M.F.A. in studio art with a sculpture concentration. He has had work previously published in the January 2011 edition of Ceramics Monthly. He works with ceramics and metals.

Elisabeth Short

Elisabeth Short is a junior at Kansas State University majoring in English – creative writing with a minor in German. She is a 2010 graduate of Pratt Community College.  Her work has been published in her high school newspaper, The Mirror. She won several awards for her short stories, poetry, and editorial writing throughout her high school career.

Jacob Smith

Jacob C. Smith graduated from Kansas State University in 2008 with a B.S. in criminology.  He is currently completing undergraduate coursework as a senior in the English Department’s creative writing program as a means to someday continue his writing education at the next level.

Andrew West

Andrew West is currently a doctoral candidate in the English Department at the University of Kansas at work on his dissertation on the intersection of Cognitive Linguistics and Ron Silliman's "new sentence."  His previous publications consist primarily of scholarly work, most recently articles on Henry Adams's Education in the South Central Review (2008) and on Herman Melville’s Battle Pieces in Forum for Modern Language Studies (2010).

Nicolas White

Nicholas White is a freshman at Kansas State University in animal science and industry, in the pre-veterinary option. This is his first official publication, though he has shared other poems through writing.com under the username it92. He writes during his free time, between classes. He gets ideas for his poems by reading large numbers of books, taking hikes, and spending time in nature. His writing style varies between several types of poetry, such as Shakespearian sonnets and simple rhymes. He would like to thank touchstone for publishing his poem and hopes to share more of his poetry with the world in the future.

Lorena Williams

Lorena Williams is a 2011 M.F.A. nonfiction candidate at Chatham University.  She received her B.A. from Oregon State University in 2005.  Originally from eastern Oregon, she’s a desert rat at heart, but is happy to go where her writing takes her.  Currently, she's hunkered down with her two cats in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Lorena was recently selected to present at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs 2011 Conference Pedagogy Forum in Washington, D.C.