Ithaca College
New Voices Literary Festival
Spring 2020
Official Dates to Be Announced
The 2018 Student Guides
Each author at the festival is placed with two Ithaca College Student Guides. These guides get the opportunity to converse with their author, help their author navigate campus and the various festival events, and introduce their author at their readings. Below are the Guides for the 2018 Festival!
Kate Sustick
Kate Sustick is a sophomore Integrated Marketing Communications major with minors in English and Audio Production. Her interests include reading, songwriting, and drinking copious amounts of coffee. This is her first year as a student guide, and she could not be more excited to participate in the festival!
Casey Quinn
Casey Quinn is a junior English major with minors in Music and Education Studies. In addition to reading books, she particularly loves to sing, play the piano, and eat delicious breakfast sandwiches. She is so excited to be a part of the festival this year!
Jordan Gallant
Jordan Gallant is a sophomore Writing and Documentary Studies double major, with a strong interest in storytelling from Killingworth, Connecticut. She enjoys writing poetry and personal essays, and can’t wait to be a part of the Festival for a second time!
Margaret McKinnis
Margaret McKinnis is a sophomore Writing major and English minor. While she has an appreciation for all genres, she enjoys writing creative nonfiction most. Other loves include homey bookstores, handwritten cards, and any variation of coffee.
Maya Greenberg
Maya Greenberg is a sophomore English major with a Spanish and Linguistics double minor. She hails from Brooklyn, New York and misses everything but the subway, and considers herself a budding ballroom dancer. This is her first year participating in the New Voices Festival.
Mireya Chiriboga
Mireya Chiriboga is a senior English and Writing double major. She is from the Bronx, NY. When not exploring NYC, she is enjoying some poetry and sipping tea. This is her second time being a New Voices guide, and she is excited to be a part of this year's festival!
Allison Reynolds
Allison Reynolds is a freshman English and writing double major from the lovely state of New Hampshire. Alli loves writing poetry, eating and cooking Italian food, and wandering the streets of Boston. She is wicked excited to be a student guide this year!
Lola Oretade
Lola Oretade is a junior English Major and Psychology minor from Connecticut. She has interests in anime, classic literature, memes, mental health advocacy, and anything having to do with black power. She is very excited to be participating in the New Voices Festival this year.
Maddie Stengel
Back for her fourth and final year with the festival, Maddie Stengel is a senior pursuing a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Acting with a minor in Deaf Studies. Post-graduation, this native Texan will be moving to Chicago to pursue an interpreter's license for American Sign Language, as well as a myriad of other interests. Beyond the classroom, you're most likely to find Maddie running up and down the hill with her special-needs pup, Bunny.
Jackson Short
Jackson Short is a Freshman English and Writing double major, vegetarian, ex swimmer, and aspiring amateur tea farmer who hails from Georgia. He also wants a tattoo of the MLA 8th edition citation (with hanging ident) of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (the Garnett translation).
Rachel Balzano
Rachel is a senior English major and writing minor and is thrilled to spend another year as guide in the New Voices Festival. You can still find her with a book in her purse "just in case", crying over videos of Kristen Bell, and writing her thesis about F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.
Abi Lightner
Abi Lightner is a freshman writing major with a creative writing concentration, from Parkton, Maryland. She has been a passionate reader and writer of fiction and fantasy for many years. She has a knack for art and listens to music every second she can, mainly heavy metal. She is extremely excited to be a part of this festival and meet professional authors.
Micah Greenleaf
Micah Greenleaf is a senior playwright/lyricist from South-Eastern Connecticut in the Theatre Studies Major. He has studied at Ithaca College’s New York and London centers, as well as the National Theatre Institute at The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. He will be working this summer as a Producing Intern at the Goodspeed Opera House and has plans to move from there to Philadelphia as he continues to develop full-length plays and musicals.
Alena Chekanov
Alena Chekanov is a senior writing major and English minor pursuing a career in book publishing. She serves as Co-Editor in Chief for States of Mind Magazine, where she has the privilege of reading written work produced by members of the local community. She likes to split her time between finding new music, writing poetry, talking about Star Wars, and pretending to know more than she does about wine. This is her first year with the New Voices Festival.
