Troy High School has not had a Literary Magazine for a long time, and after 10 years the magazine has come back. It’s now known as The Mosaic.
The magazine’s goal is to be a perfect space for artists who would like to share their art.From visuals, like drawings and paintings, to literature like poems and short stories, the magazine combines all of these pieces in a surprising gallery to show the big reveal at the end of the year.
Joseph Verhelle, current adviser of The Mosaic and English teacher at Troy High School, confessed that the club re-started because as he exclaimed, “I know there are a lot of students that would like to publish their creative pieces. So having a publication for artists to show their work it’s really important. That’s why we decided to get a staff and start with that again.” Verhelle started the magazine at the end of 2023-2024 school year and it became a new official club this year. As the advisor, Verhelle has jobs like setting the year schedule and framework for the magazine, but mostly is supporting the student staff along this year-long journey. “I really like to give the students the lead with as much as possible of that process and I just try to guide them correctly,” he explained.
Among the staff, senior Joshua Galang is one of the creative directors in the magazine. When asked about his position, he guided us through it, “I am in charge of the design and creation of the magazine itself, the layout of the drawings and the poems and just compiling it so that it looks great and shows off all the talent and hard work of Troy High Students.” Galang believes that besides joining the magazine, there weren’t other opportunities for artists to get together and express themselves with their art. Which senior Edward Angers, an editor for The Mosaic, agreed. “I think that LitMag gives a great opportunity to highlight some of the people who are kind of the same mind as me, who want to write creatively, express themselves, less so than always doing something that’s like, very concrete in terms of achievement.” Following this he added that for him this magazine was “kind of an outlet for the whole student body. That’s the idea.” Both members of the magazine showed emotion and excitement to see the final product.
Now going back 10 years ago, the Troy School District decided to have limited clubs, so the magazine came to an end because of financial complications. Laura Liamini, ex-adviser for The Mosaic and current English teacher at Troy High School, affirmed this, “they weren’t paying sponsors anymore. The club kind of stopped from there.” As an adviser, Liamini’s biggest challenge in the magazine was the money. “Students always wanted a full color magazine and it was really expensive, so we would do a whole lot of work to try to collect donations, and when it became clear that we would probably be in better shape financially speaking, if we were publishing online students were disappointed.”
When asked to give advice to the current Mosaic, Liamini answered saying, “Just think creatively about how to get participation in the magazine, then also to solicit funds for the magazine, with the ambition, the goals that you have just keep trying to push past any obstacles.”
After all the pieces are put together, at the end of the year Troy High School will see the final product of art. The final Mosaic.
