Category: Call for Proposals – CWCA

CFP | 2025 CWCA/ACCR conference

~ CWCA/ACCR

Precarity, Pluckiness, and “Please Help!”: Negotiating Uncertainty in Writing Centre Work

CWCA/ACCR 2025 Virtual Conference
June 16-18, 2025

Access a PDF version of this Call for Proposals

Please submit your proposals via this FORM.

Use this guide to help with you proposals: Writing a conference proposal: A step-by-step guide

Deadline: All submissions must be received by February 14, 2025.

“The CWCA/ACCR community is rich with experience, diverse perspectives, and, perhaps, pluckiness, but it is worth acknowledging that it is threatened by the very precarity experienced by its individual members.” ~ Dr. Stevie Bell

“All progress is precarious.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Canadian Writing Centres Association / association canadienne des centres de rédaction welcomes proposals for our 2025 conference related to any aspect of writing centre study and practice, with particular interest in proposals that explore the multifaceted nature of precarity and agency in writing centres.

During last year’s conference, the panel on “Precarious Presence and Fruitful Futures in Writing Studies” opened a discussion on the ways writing centre professionals experience precarity in our work. The discussion also included themes of how we might advocate for ourselves on an individual, institutional, and national level.  Since this conversation, many experiences of precarity in our CWCA/ACCR community have escalated in unsettling ways. Some of us may be feeling resourceful and plucky. Others may be feeling decidedly not.  Writing centres, situated at the intersections and margins of institutional structures, have long had to negotiate the tension between precarity, agency, and burnout.

Questions and considerations for this year’s conference include the following: In what ways are writing centres experiencing progress that is precarious, and, in what ways does writing centre precarity challenge or inhibit progress? In the face of precarity, how do writing centre professionals secure progress for our writing centres? In the face of precarity, how do writing centre professionals guard against burnout?  In what ways are precarity and agency invisible or unacknowledged in writing centre work? How have writing centres historically navigated precarious times?   How might we incorporate healthy boundaries into our common writing centre life to avoid burnout? How do we exercise agency in the face of uncertainty?

Other possible connections to the theme include but are not limited to:

  • Employment instability among writing centre staff and tutors
  • The impact of precarious conditions on teaching and writing practices
  • Financial and resource constraints
  • The impact of precarious conditions on equity-deserving writers and professional staff
  • The forms of precariousness that new technologies may create/reinforce and the types of resourcefulness that new technologies may afford
  • Navigating institutional changes and policy shifts
  • Strategies for fostering resourcefulness and agency
  • Strategies for avoiding and/or healing from burnout

We welcome proposals that address these and other related topics through diverse perspectives and methodologies. Submissions may include, but are not limited to:

  • Research Panel Presentations: Report on a study—quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, action research, reflective—or an evidence-based pedagogical practice. Presentations will be grouped into panels of two or three presenters. Presenters are also welcome to propose their own panel of grouped presentations.
  • Roundtable Discussions: Roundtable sessions are ideal for works-in-progress, pedagogical innovations, or taking up an issue of current debate in our field. Roundtable facilitators lead a 30-minute discussion that encourages active participation and contribution from attendees. Proposals should indicate the topic of your discussion, why it would be of interest to writing centre colleagues, and how you plan to engage and facilitate an active and dynamic discussion. *Please note: to ensure anonymity for precarious writing centre workers, certain roundtable sessions covering sensitive topics and discussion will not be recorded.
  • Interactive Workshops: Workshops are an opportunity to model an innovative practice, strategy or innovation for your colleagues through collaborative hands-on activities. Proposals should clearly describe the practice you intend to feature, the overall structure of the session and how you will actively engage the audience.
  • Writing Centre Research and Pedagogy Blog Post: This format offers the opportunity to showcase writing centre practices and research. Have an exciting new program you are proud of? Clever new handouts or resources? A virtual poster detailing a research project? A video walkthrough of your centre? Proposals should clearly describe what you intend to publish on the CWCA/ACCR Blog and the virtual materials you will include (poster, audio, and/or video). *Please note: to protect precarious writing centre workers, blog posts covering sensitive topics can be published anonymously.

Submission Guidelines:

  • Abstract: Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words outlining your proposed presentation.
  • Format: Indicate the preferred format of your presentation (e.g., paper, workshop, panel).
  • Deadline: All submissions must be received by February 14, 2025.
  • Notification: Authors will be notified of acceptance early April, 2025.

Submission Process:

Please submit your proposals via this FORM. For any inquiries, contact chtaylor@wlu.ca.

We look forward to your proposals.

Writing Mercies,

Christin Wright-Taylor, M.F.A., Ph.D.
Vice President, Canadian Writing Centres Association / association canadienne des centres de rédaction

Manager, Writing Services
Wilfrid Laurier University

Already Whole: rethinking your so-called ‘parts’ (announcement and repost)

~ CWCA/ACCR

Vol. 6 No. 3 (Fall 2024)

CWCR/RCCR is pleased to announce the publication of Clare Goulet’s volume of poetry, Graphis scripa / writing lichen (available from Gaspereau Press, 2024).

Clare Goulet is writing centre coordinator and adjunct professor in the Department of English at Mount St. Vincent University, teaching editing, composition, and intro creative writing

Below is a post Clare wrote for CWCR/RCCR in 2023. This melodic and inspiring piece–part poem, part lichen biography, part autobiography–is worth reading and rereading. So, on this occasion, here it is again.

Congratulations to Clare.

– Editor, CWCR/RCCR

Vol. 5, No. 6 (Fall 2023)

Clare Goulet has published creative nonfiction, poetry, and reviews as well as essays on metaphor and polyphony. Adjunct prof and writing centre coordinator at Mount St. Vincent University, she co-edited with Mark Dickinson Lyric Ecology on the work of Jan Zwicky. Her book, Graphis scripta: writing lichen, will be published by Gaspereau Press in spring 2024.

1.
1975. Late summer in the woods behind the backyard, lost, first freedom, almost five, lying across a warm rough slab of granite, heat soaking into my belly where the cotton t-shirt has pushed up, scratched by brown prickly things—rock tripe, though I didn’t know the name, genus Umbilicaria—the world something sensuous, even reading which came too early, my head already filled with poems. The sun is hot. I mumble made-up lines, sleepy, peeling brittle bits to see the thick white cord connecting each to its substrate, holding rock, lichen, child in place. It will be forty years before these come together and I feel this whole again. Continue reading “Already Whole: rethinking your so-called ‘parts’ (announcement and repost)” →

Already Whole: rethinking your so-called ‘parts’

~ CWCA/ACCR

Vol. 5, No. 6 (Fall 2023)

Clare Goulet has published creative nonfiction, poetry, and reviews as well as essays on metaphor and polyphony. Adjunct prof and writing centre coordinator at Mount St. Vincent University, she co-edited with Mark Dickinson Lyric Ecology on the work of Jan Zwicky. Her book, Graphis scripta: writing lichen, will be published by Gaspereau Press in spring 2024.

1.
1975. Late summer in the woods behind the backyard, lost, first freedom, almost five, lying across a warm rough slab of granite, heat soaking into my belly where the cotton t-shirt has pushed up, scratched by brown prickly things—rock tripe, though I didn’t know the name, genus Umbilicaria—the world something sensuous, even reading which came too early, my head already filled with poems. The sun is hot. I mumble made-up lines, sleepy, peeling brittle bits to see the thick white cord connecting each to its substrate, holding rock, lichen, child in place. It will be forty years before these come together and I feel this whole again. Continue reading “Already Whole: rethinking your so-called ‘parts’” →

Announcement || CWCA/ACCR 2021 Conference CfP – Transformative Inclusivity: Social Justice and Writing Centres

~ Canadian Writing Centres Association

8th CWCA/ACCR Conference

CWCA 2020 logo

Transformative Inclusivity:
Social Justice and Writing Centres

May 17 – 21, 2021

Virtual Conference

“[A] culture of access is a culture of participation and redesign”
–Elizabeth Brewer, Cynthia L. Selfe, and M. Remi Yergeau

Conference Context

For our 2021 conference, the Canadian Writing Centres Association / association canadienne des centres de rédaction welcomes proposals on any writing centre-related subject, but particularly proposals that consider and/or critique frameworks of inclusion, access, and accessibility. These themes may be related to anti-racist work and Indigenization at writing centres, to our recent experiences arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to writing and writing centre theory, pedagogy, praxis, programming, administration, research, physical and online environments, advocacy, or activism.

Writing centres have committed to making their spaces and services accessible, inclusive, and democratic, not least to students and tutors from marginalized backgrounds (Geller et al., 2007; Greenfield & Rowan, 2011; Hitt, 2012; Lang, 2017; Martini & Webster, 2017). Even as COVID-19 has inflected, sharpened, and foregrounded systemic inequities, the Black Lives Matter movement, Indigenous movements for social justice such as 1492 Land Back Lane and Idle No More, and the Disability Rights Movement have called upon us, with greater urgency than ever before, to expand the definition and the scope of access, and revitalize writing centres as social justice projects. Continue reading “Announcement || CWCA/ACCR 2021 Conference CfP – Transformative Inclusivity: Social Justice and Writing Centres” →