Voice is co-constructed, a result of the "text-mediated interaction between the writer and the reader." The present study, using the context of U.S. college writing, explores the complicated process by which an L2 novice writer--one who has a growing awareness of, yet peripheral access to, discourse practices--constructs a voice. Through interviews and a close analysis of a text, a comparison is made between the voice the L2 writer wished to project in an assigned paper and the voice constructed by two readers in the course of their anonymous readings of the paper. The significant gap between the L2 writer's aims and the readers' responses suggests that a writer's view of her voice stems from the ways in which she conceptualizes discourse conventions, in association with her particular linguistic, social, and cultural background. The pedagogical implications of the L2 writer's process of negotiating identity, and her struggles to learn discourse expectations, are discussed.