What are we?
Dear Reader,
This website is the beginning of something. What that something is I’m not sure but we will see what it becomes. My goal is to create an online magazine based on Culture, Politics and Sports; three broad subjects that are most interesting to me and those in which I have the most knowledge. This seems like a good place to start.
I want The Volterra to provide young writers a medium through which they can hone their writing skills and develop their voice. This is to be done in an environment that encourages discussion and open-mindedness and values free-thinking and the voicing of one’s opinion, whether it be popular or not.
Admittedly, the immediate benefactor of this will be myself as I will be the first to post my pieces and will provide the majority of content for the foreseeable future, but I hope that changes quickly. Publishing one’s writing comes with an inherent egotism that assumes other people want to read what one has to say. I am guilty of this, but in that guilt I find the responsibility to inform and entertain with my writing, I hope this website does both. It is with those same goals, to inform and entertain, that I invite you to submit your works on Culture, Politics, and Sports, and to join in building The Volterra into something worth reading.
All the best,
Rowan Kane
Who are we?
Rowan Kane, Founding Editor
Originally from Guilford, Connecticut, Rowan attended Fairfield Prep before studying International Relations at the University of St. Andrews on the east coast of Scotland. His dissertation, completed in the fall of 2011, was entitled An Independent Somaliland: A De Facto and Viable Democracy in the Horn of Africa and argued for the international recognition of Somaliland. While at St. Andrews, Rowan was a four-year starter on the Men’s Basketball team and was vice-captain and captain during his third and fourth years respectively. During that final year, he was selected to the Scottish Universities All-Star team. After graduating, Rowan moved to the Netherlands where he completed a Masters degree, also in International Relations, at Leiden University. The MA course included his thesis entitled War Makes the State: What the nature of civil wars teaches us about failed states.
Rowan has held a number of jobs and positions including Deckhand and Mate onboard a traditionally rigged schooner, bouncer, and Congressional Intern. Most recently, he was a campaign manager for local Democratic candidates in Southbury, Connecticut, where he currently resides. Rowan founded The Volterra as The Connecticut Review in the fall of 2013 as an outlet for himself and other young writers to practice their craft and build their experience. If you are interested in writing for The Volterra, or becoming more involved, he can be reached at rowan@thevolterra.com.
Alyssa Lindley Kilzer, Culture Editor
Alyssa Kilzer is from Belmont, Massachusetts and attended Buckingham Browne and Nichols for high school. She recently graduated from the University of St Andrews in Scotland with a BA in Art History and a Master’s of Literature in Creative Writing. She has worked at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the New Museum in New York, and also for BOMB magazine, an art and literature quarterly based in Brooklyn.
Alyssa lives in Midland, TX, writing short stories, memoir and/or life-writing. In 2013 one of Alyssa’s blog posts was re-published on Fox News Online, Salon.com and the Daily Beast. She was also short-listed for New Writing in Mslexia Magazine for short memoir. As an undergrad she won the Dan Hemingway Short Story Prize, and wrote for student publications. Her master’s thesis, a collection of short stories inspired by her father’s youth, is currently being published chapter-by-chapter in a special section of The Volterra. In November 2014 she is being published by Fiction Attic Press in an anthology of short memoir pieces. She is open to many types of submissions for the culture section, so get creative and email work to alyssalindley@gmail.com.
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