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Join Michelle LaFrance and Jessica McCaughey for their new course: Writing for Change: Stories, Letters, and One-Pagers for the Hopeful!

This workshop will focus on writing as a “world-building” tool for social change, hope, and community-building. Facilitators will discuss the rhetorical strategies for writing persuasively and strategically in “public” forms such as letters, OpEds, one pagers/brochures, and journalistic stories that seek to make a persuasive case for change.

Participants will produce, share, and revise drafts in the genre of their choice, and leave with a working draft that they can continue to revise. The workshop will end with a discussion of writing for self care, resilience, creative play, and community.

Please bring your first draft (or no draft!), a journal/notebook/pen or lap top, and your most creative self. See you there!

About Michelle: Michelle LaFrance (Ph.D., University of Washington, 2009) is a feminist critical ethnographer, who teaches courses on community writing, feminist methodologies, writing studies, and critical pedagogy. Michelle has published on institutional ethnography, the materialities of academic labor, e-portfolios, e-research, and writing center pedagogy. Her current work has her participating in urban communities, studying discourses of volunteerism and belonging, and treating the evolution of research practice and sensibilities in Writing Studies.

In 2021, Dr. LaFrance was awarded the College Composition and Communication Research Impact award for her book, Institutional Ethnography: A Theory of Practice for Writing Studies Researchers (USUP 2019). This book was also awarded “Honorable Mention” in the 2021 Best Book category from the International Writing Across the Curriculum Association.

About Jessica: Jessica McCaughey, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the University Writing Program at George Washington University, where she teaches academic and professional writing. In this role, Jessica has developed a growing Workplace Writing Program to help organizations improve the quality of their employees’ writing. She has created and facilitated writing workshops for teams at a variety of organizations, including Amnesty International, DC United, the US Department of Labor, the FDA, the Democracy Fund, and the American Legion, among many others.

Her research focuses primarily on the transfer of writing skills from the academic to the professional realm. Jessica co-founded and co-directs the Archive of Workplace Writing Experiences. Her creative writing has appeared in publications like The Best American Travel Writing, The Fourth Genre, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and the Fine Arts, and The Rumpus, among many others, and she is a Pushcart Prize nominee. In her previous life, Jessica worked as a copywriter, editor, and communications manager.

As this class is in-person, we require all attendees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. 

A minimum of 4 students is required for the class to occur. Students will be notified if the minimum is not met. Please note that registration ends at 10 am the morning of the class.

If you need assistance registering, please check out these step-by-step instructions, video tutorial or call (202) 549-4172 for assistance.