Suggests that there is a real chance right now for letting the possibilities of creative nonfiction infuse, improve, and invigorate the teaching of composition. Concludes that when allowed to explore literary nonfiction, writing students will develop a substantial set of strengths from which to undertake other disciplinary writing challenges as they explore past and present with an eye to the future.

This chair’s address to the 52nd Annual Convention of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, March 2001, draws on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins to explore and celebrate a life in composition. Acknowledging institutional fatigue, I outline possibilities for individual renewal, particularly through the process of mentoring new members. Ending with a convention poem, I invite readers to compose their own.

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The theory and criticism of genres of writing was once a stable, staid area of English studies, based largely on a fixed taxonomy of formalism. But with the rise of different postmodern theories, work in sociolinguistics, and the influence of contemporary research, these notions are now under dispute. This book takes a broad look at the concepts and applications of presenting several theoretical, critical and pedagogical perspectives. This collection includes many essays that concern and/or take into account student writing, including essays exploring links between process pedagogy and genre, and between social-epistemic pedagogy and genre. Other essays explore the acquisition of genre familiarity; still others, the several possible social functions of genre. By design, these pieces often echo one another, or argue dialectically, in effect collaborating to pursue arguments and lines of inquiry about textual forms and functions.

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I often hear assertions, says Wendy Bishop, writing classes have no content, especially when compared to literature classes or other classes in other disciplines where famous texts by famous authors are commonly under discussion. In this unique compilation of essays, Bishop brings together the voices of teachers and students to affirm that the content of writing classrooms is the work that these individuals do together. It is this focus on reading and writing about writing that has made Subject Is Writing such a popular text. Like earlier editions, the third edition serves as both a classroom reader and a rhetoric for first-year college writing. End-of-chapter questions invite students to respond to the essayists with essays of their own. Turning to the appendix of Hint Sheets, teachers and students will find a selection of handouts filled with practical advice that will help them navigate through the daily life of their classrooms. The third edition has been enhanced with three new essays by teachers and the work of four new student authors. They discuss choosing topics, developing voice in writing, and understanding classroom writing assignments; they offer insights into drafting practices and encourage readers to investigate their writing lives in similar ways. The essays in Subject Is Writing are not esoteric, academic treatises, but relevant and earnest communications that speak to all writers as peers, colleagues, and interested adult makers of meaning.

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Talk is central to what we do as writers and as humans. It is the collaborative activity that underlies most, if not all, individual acts of composing. Because of this, the work tutors do every day-talking about writing with writers-is valuable in uncountable ways. Writers compose through inner speech while walking, by speaking aloud at the word processor, when discussing a work-in-progress and drinking coffee with friends, or as they share ideas during conferences in writing centers and classrooms. But this talk is often suppressed, forgotten, or left out of the dominant story of learning. I plan to offer a

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Any writing center coordinator soon finds that a good portion of her job involves efforts to build, maintain, and increase the number of writers using the center's services. Nevertheless, articles on writing centers rarely focus on promoting services and referral issues. Jim Bell's analysis of The Writing Lab Newsletter for a four year period, for instance, shows a dominant interest in tutoring methods (65 articles) with far fewer articles concerned with administrative issues (37 articles), and only 1 1 of those 37 articles focus on promoting the lab (2-3). To find a sound discussion of this issue, I turned to a 1984 survey by Gary Olson, which illustrates just how important an instructor's referral can be in developing a student's attitude toward writing center visits. Olson reminds us that the instructor who threatens students with a referral can devastate a writer who already has a poor self-image ["Johnny, if you don't show some improvement, I'm just going to have to send you to the writing center" ( Further, such demeaning oral referrals in front of a classroom of reluctant students enforces the myth that ". . . the writing center is merely for remediation" (Olson 160). Additionally, in his article "Collaborative Learning in Context: The Problem with Peer Tutoring," Harvey Kail explains why normally well intentioned colleagues might work against their own best classroom interests. Kail reminds us that writing centers threaten the traditional roles of English department members since, through their discussions with students, tutors and coordinators gain clear insights into the workings of an instructor's classroom. Instructors who are threatened by such a possibility may be those who believe the center should perform by what Kail calls the

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