Writing Together : Building Social Writing Opportunities for Graduate Students

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.

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.