CounterStories from the Writing Center gathers emerging scholars of colour and their white accomplices to challenge some of the most cherished lore about the work of writing centres. Writing within an intersectional feminist frame, this volume’s contributors name and critique the dominant role that white, straight, cis-gendered women have played in writing centre administration as well as in the field of writing centre studies. This work will shake the field’s core assumptions about itself.

Practicing what Derrick Bell has termed “creative truth telling,” these writers are not concerned with individual white women in writing centres but with the social, political, and cultural capital that is the historical birthright of white, straight, cis-gendered women, particularly in writing centre studies. The essays collected in this volume test, defy, and overflow the bounds of traditional academic discourse in the service of powerful testimony, witness, and counterstory.

CounterStories from the Writing Center is a must-read for writing centre directors, scholars, and tutors who are committed to antiracist pedagogy and offers a robust intersectional analysis to those who seek to understand the relationship between the work of writing centres and the problem of racism. Accessible and usable for both graduate and undergraduate students of writing centre theory and practice, this work troubles the field’s commonplaces and offers a rich envisioning of what writing centres materially committed to inclusion and equity might be and do.

Contributors: Dianna Baldwin, Nicole Caswell, Mitzi Ceballos, Romeo Garcia, Neisha-Anne Green, Doug Kern, T. Haltiwanger Morrison, Bernice Olivas, Moira Ozias, Trixie Smith, Willow Trevino

Frankie Condon's profile page

Wonderful Faison's profile page

Wonderful Faison is chair of the English Department and assistant professor of English at Langston University. Her works include Black Bodies, Black Language: Exploring the Use of Black Language in the Writing Center, Race, Retention, Language, and Literacy: The Hidden Curriculum of the Writing Center, and other individual and coauthored publications.

Frankie Condon is associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. Her books include I Hope I Join the Band; Performing Anti-Racist Pedagogy in Rhetoric, Writing, and Communication, coedited with Vershawn Ashanti Young; and The Everyday Writing Center, coauthored with Michele Eodice, Elizabeth Boquet, Anne Ellen Geller, and Margaret Carroll. She is the recipient of the Federation of Students Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award (Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance) and the Outstanding Performance Award (for excellence in teaching and scholarship) from the University of Waterloo.

“The editors provide valuable perspectives that can contribute and complement other robust conversations surrounding antiracist work being done in writing center scholarship. The voices in this volume speak loudly and boldly of their rich and diverse lived experiences.”
—Richard Sévère, Valparaiso University

“The messages in this book will be important for all writing program administrators and teachers who want to continue to work toward antiracist aims. It will also be an important addition to graduate courses on writing center theory and practice.”
—Bethany Davila, University of New Mexico

"[CounterStories] compels us to ask better questions about emotions, their functionality, and their impact on writing."
—College English