Ironically enough, I was never the kid who loved reading growing up. Everyone around me was flying through Hunger Games and Harry Potter , parting their hair into a side braid and pretending to cast spells, while I was just trying to read enough to meet my accelerated reading goal. I always thought reading was boring, like it was a necessary part of learning, not something I could actually find fun, let alone fulfilling. That changed during my senior year of high school and

Ella Ryann Cottrell on Becoming Her Most Honest Self On a crowded week night in Athens, long after most students have closed their laptops and called it quits, Ella Ryann Cottrell is just getting started. The lights in the bar are low, the soundcheck hums in the background, and there’s that familiar hush she always feels right before she steps up to the mic, a kind of stillness she describes as “a quietness in my mind.” It’s funny, she’ll tell you, because stage fright was ne