ITHACA, NY—Writers at the beginning stages of their burgeoning careers will share their fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays and screenwriting during the New Voices Literary Festival, taking place April 20–22. A collaborative effort of several departments at Ithaca College along with the larger local literary community, the festival is free and open to the public.
With four panel discussions, three readings, two original musical performances and one staged reading of a play, this year’s festival has just about something for everyone. The seven featured writers this year are:
- Ladan Osman, whose chapbook “Ordinary Heaven” appears in “Seven New Generation African Poets” and whose full-length poetry collection “The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony” won the Sillerman First Book Prize.
- Austin Bunn, a writer, screenwriter and assistant professor of performing and media arts at Cornell University who co-wrote the script for “Kill Your Darlings,” winner of the International Days Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
- South African writer SJ Naudé, awarded the 2014 Jan Rabie & Marjorie Wallace Writing Scholarship and winner of the University of Johannesburg Prize and a South African Literary Award for his debut collection of stories, “The Alphabet of Birds.”
- Aisha Sabatini Sloan, a Pushcart Prize nominee whose essay “A Clear Presence” was included in Autostraddle’s #Black Lives Matter Longform Reading List and who has had her essays named notable for the Best American Non-Required Reading and Best American Essays anthologies of 2011.
- Kristen-Paige Madonia, author of the forthcoming “Invisible Fault Lines” and “Fingerprints of You,” both published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, whose short stories have appeared in a variety of literary magazines.
- Playwright Anna Ziegler, whose “Photograph 51” ran on London’s West End starring Nicole Kidman, and whose works include “Boy,” “The Last Match” and “Another Way Home,” winner of the 2012 Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award.
- Novelist Angelina Mirabella, who attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference as a Tennessee Williams Scholar and whose debut work, “The Sweetheart,” was called by the New York Times an “impressive coming-of-age novel.”
2016 New Voices Literary Festival Schedule
Wednesday, April 20
5:30 p.m., Buffalo Street Books, 215 N. Cayuga Street
“The Short Short,” with this year’s authors reading short excerpts of their work at Ithaca’s community-owned, independent bookstore.
Thursday, April 21
11 a.m.–noon, Handwerker Gallery, Gannett Center
“The Politics of Place,” a panel discussion with Ladan Osman, SJ Naudé and Angelina Mirabella.
2–3 p.m., Handwerker Gallery, Gannett Center
“My First Time,” a panel discussion with Kristen-Paige Madonia, Austin Bunn, Aisha Sabatini Sloan and Ladan Osman.
4–5 p.m., Hockett Family Recital Hall Green Room, Whalen Center
Performances of original musical compositions based on the poems of Ladan Osman by Jason Eldridge and Ian Wiese.
5 p.m., Handwerker Gallery, Gannett Center
Readings by Ladan Osman, Kristen-Paige Madonia and Austin Bunn.
Friday, April 22
11 a.m.–noon, Handwerker Gallery, Gannett Center
“Forms of Fiction,” a panel discussion with Aisha Sabatini Sloan, Austin Bunn, Kristen-Paige Madonia and Anna Ziegler.
2–3 p.m., Handwerker Gallery, Gannett Center
“After Sex,” a panel discussion with Anna Ziegler, SJ Naudé and Angelina Mirabella.
4:30 p.m., Handwerker Gallery, Gannett Center
Readings by SJ Naudé, Angelina Mirabella and Aisha Sabatini Sloan.
6 p.m., Clark Theatre, Dillingham Center
Staged reading of Anna Ziegler’s “The Last Match,” directed by Claire Gleitman with the On the Verge performers.
The festival is sponsored by the Ithaca College Departments of Writing and English, with support from the Roy H. Park School of Communications, School of Humanities and Sciences and Department of Theatre Arts.
For more information, visit www.ithacanewvoicesfestival.com.