Georgia Riordan, class of 2021, exemplifies the connection between Ithaca College classrooms and international publication opportunities. Throughout her time as a Writing major at IC, she served as the senior poetry editor for Stillwater Literary Magazine, and worked as both a peer tutor in the Writing Center and a teaching apprentice.
Between graduating from Ithaca College and beginning graduate school at Rosemont College, Riordan took a year off. In that time, they worked with postpartum mothers – a career that seemed to be vastly different from their previous experiences. “I learned a lot about motherhood, newborns, and support systems while actively providing daily assistance to struggling moms. It gave me a perspective on parenting that I hadn't seen before and I really appreciated being able to help little ones learn and grow in the earliest stages of life,” Riordan says.
In August 2022, Riordan began her MFA program at Rosemont and became the Poetry Editor for their international magazine Rathalla Review in September 2022. She began submitting her own work to publications after a brief hiatus, and has since been published multiple times. Her published pieces can be found at her website: www.georgiariordan.com .
“Save all your professors’ notes,” Riordan asserts. Their latest piece entitled "Interstate 80" came to be in Professor Jack Wang's Fiction II class. The horror story is told through a second person point of view and was inspired by Riordan’s desire to avoid generic tropes. Including queer characters was incredibly important to them, as they had become so used to seeing the overused stereotypes surrounding queerness in literature. In Professor Wang’s class, students discussed the differences between genre fiction and literary fiction, and Riordan knew they wanted to create something novel using literary elements. “Interstate 80” is forthcoming in 2024.
Riordan continues to utilize skills she honed during her time at Ithaca College: “At IC, I learned how to shape my craft in a way that not only allows me to find intention in creation but also find joy in it. At Rosemont, I'm doing much of the same, although I find myself constantly exploring new methods of craft and in turn, picking up where I left off in my undergraduate studies.”