Writing Together: Building Social Writing Opportunities for Graduate Students(Practice, Pedagogy, and Programming for Graduate Communication)

In recent years, graduate writing programs have increasingly paid attention to the benefits of writing initiatives that harness the power of peer presence, interaction, and collectivity. These social-by-design writing initiatives—which could be boot camps, writing groups, write-alongs, retreats, peer review sessions, or show-up-and-write gatherings—rely on two central contentions: that graduate writers need support with the practical challenges of writing productivity and that writing alongside others can be a transformative experience for graduate writers. Social writing opportunities offer uniquely dynamic environments in which graduate students can develop their writing processes. Writing Together gathers accounts from graduate writing professionals about how social writing programs are imagined and delivered. It surveys the motivations, rationales, evaluation strategies, and structures that underpin these initiatives in order to create a practical resource for writing professionals who wish to establish or refine their own offerings. Rather than presenting “how to” approaches, the book presents “how we” accounts that enable readers to learn from the creative practices and experiences of others. By capturing a range of experiences, institutional models, and forms of social writing support, Writing Together explains the thinking behind social writing initiatives and the processes through which those initiatives have been assessed. It demonstrates that social writing practices are not just a means to an end, but an end in themselves—that writing together is a great way to write and a promising basis for graduate writing pedagogy and professional development.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents Introduction Rachael Cayley, Fiona Coll, and Daniel Aureliano Newman 1. A Way to Writer Wellbeing: Dissertation Writing Groups at UNC Charlotte Lisa Russell-Pinson 2. Ritual and Play in the University of Minnesota’s Dissertation Writing Retreat Katie Levin 3. Research Writing across the Career Span: write. early. often. better. together. Kristina Quynn 4. The Writing Centre as Socially Oriented Dissertation Hub Keith O’Regan 5. A Writing-Focused Community for Multilingual Graduate Students Kristina Aikens 6. When Writing Together Is Better: Designing for Community, Accountability, and Wellbeing Donetta Hines, Yvonne Hung, and Mariève Isabel 7. Re-envisioning “Space” to Write Together: An Ethics of Care Approach to Designing “Show Up and Write” Spaces Ileana Diaz, Elise Vist, and Nadine Fladd 8. Social Writing in the Dissertation Success Support Program Linda Macrì 9. The Physical, the Cognitive, the Social: Defining and Redefining Success in a Social Writing Program for Dissertators Vicki R. Kennell 10. Building Community Through Discipline-Based Writing Groups Jacob Herrmann and Kyung-Hee Bae 11. Writing Fridays: Connecting Doctoral Students across Continents Emi Iwaizumi, Michaela Nuesser, and Jieun Kim 12. Leveraging Social Media for Student-Centric Academic Writing Cafés in Public Spaces Catherine E. Déri 13. Supporting Graduate Writers through a Community of Practice: Surprise Lessons from a Writing Across the Curriculum Program W. Brock MacDonald and Andrea Williams 14. It Is So Good to Hear You Say That: Graduate Writing Groups as a Moment of Connection Shelley Hawthorne Smith Outro Rachael Cayley, Fiona Coll, and Daniel Aureliano Newman Contributor Biographies References

About the Author :
Rachael Cayley is Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Graduate Centre for Academic Communication and Director of the Centre for Graduate Professional Development in the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto. Fiona Coll is Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Institute for Transdisciplinary Engineering Education & Practice in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and in the Graduate Centre for Academic Communication in the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto. Daniel Aureliano Newman is Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Department of English at the University of Toronto, where he is also Director of Graduate Writing Support in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

Review :
“This collection will reinvigorate universities’ approach to providing support for graduate students with models that could be implemented in many different contexts around the world. This book demonstrates the huge diversity in what is possible when it comes to providing writing groups for graduate students and will be very inspiring for others looking for ways to provide effective support for doctoral writers.” “Writing is a social activity, though at times one would never know it from how we teach graduate level writing. This collection challenges graduate communication providers, graduate advisors, and others to rethink practice and foreground writing as a social act, and empowers our graduate students to create the social spaces that help them flourish.”