Student Bios

Nick graduated from Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, GA, where he played baseball and majored in English. He studied Russian Literature and Contemporary Fiction, but the curriculum was expansive and holistic, not suggesting a genuine ‘focus.’ After college he took up remote work, teaching English to South Koreans with an internet phone and used the opportunity to backpack through Asia, South America and Europe. At Villanova he will be a Graduate Assistant in the Center for Access Success and Achievement (CASA), but will spend most of his work-hours in the Academy at Palumbo, a public high school in South Philly. He is interested in the way the Contemporary American Novel might be read as an Identity Plot, and the ways that structure might differ or imitate previous conceptions of the novel, such as The Marriage Plot. He enjoys reading Marilynne Robinson’s non-fiction essays and watching Iranian Cinema, as well as, listening to the Mountain Goats and exploring Philly’s DIY music-scene

Christian Leithart was born in Alabaster, Alabama, and was raised in the northern part of Idaho (wheat not potatoes), so not only does he know how to drive in the snow, he understands that if you go to a real BBQ expecting a hamburger, you're crazy. He graduated from New Saint Andrews College in 2012, where he received a BA in Liberal Arts, which included studying everything from logic trees to Latin swear words. As a junior, he began directing student theater productions and organized an improv group, though organized may be too strong a word. He also earned an MA in Theology from New Saint Andrews in 2014, for which he wrote a critical thesis on time in the work of TS Eliot and a creative thesis (a novella called "The Bright City").   Christian has worked as a waiter, a surveyor, a copywriter, a cleaner of carpets, and a video producer, and once even got paid to play a video game. His greatest claim to fame is that M. Night Shyamalan once told him he had ruined every