International-ish Writing Centers Association

Vol. 6, No. 1 Fall 2024

Brian Hotson, CWCR/RCCR Editor
Stevie Bell, CWCR/RCCR Associate Editor

Note: This post does not reflect the position of the CWCA/ACCR.


Last week, the IWCA announced their 2024 grants and awards winners. Once again—and year over year—the International Writing Centers Association awards go to those in the Global North, specifically Americans, save two: the non-US awardees are Editors, Karin Wetschanow, Erika Unterpertinger, Eva Kuntschner, Birgit Huemer, of the collection, Neue Perspektiven auf Schreibberatung, awarded Outstanding Book; and Gillian Saunders, University of Victoria, awarded a Dissertation Grant. Of all the IWCA Outstanding Book award winners since 1999, with the exception of this year, all awards have gone to American authors, written in American English, and published in the US (Heinemann/Boynton-Cook is a US subsidiary of Heinemann UK). Of those listed as recipients of the Dissertation Grant, this is only the second year that the grant has gone to a non-US graduate student. Only once has the grant gone to a graduate student from the Global South.

There are many examples of non-US writing centre practitioners and scholars deserving recognition. The new Centro de Escritura y Argumentación, part of the Red Mexicana de Centros de Escritura, continues the building of the writing centre community in Mexico. Examples of publications include the edited collection, Centros y Programas de Escritura en América Latina: Opciones Teóricas y Pedagógicas para la Enseñanza de la Escritura Disciplinar (2023), edited by Estela Inés Moyano and Margarita Vidal Liza;  Reimagining Writing Centres Practices: A South African Perspective (2023), edited by Avasha Rambiritch and Laura Drennan; Multilingual Contributions to Writing Research: Toward an Equal Academic Exchange (2023), edited by Natalia Ávila Reyes; Negotiating the Intersections of Writing and Writing Instruction (2023), edited by Magnus Gustafsson and Andreas Eriksson; and Inclusive Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning Practices in Higher Education in India (2024), edited by Kanika Singh of Ashoka University’s Centre for Writing and Communication. Recognizing work published or to be published is laudatory and important. Taking a global approach to this task should be the work of an international organization. Continue reading “International-ish Writing Centers Association”

Writing centre industrial complex

Vol. 5, No. 9 (Summer 2024)

Brian Hotson, Editor, CWCR/RCCR


Neo-colonialism, and the US leadership of it, do not evoke the same sense of horror as the old colonialism and the oppressor nations of Europe used to evoke in the general imagination and in political practice. In some quarters the USA is not even seen as an imperialist power.

— Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom

This May, the French government sent a force of 3,000 police and military personnel to New Caledonia (Lukiv, 2024), an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean and a territory of France, to put down a protest by the Indigenous Kanak people. Their protests are for voting to be representative of the people of their islands; France recently changed the rules of who can vote, allowing “more recent arrivals to vote in provincial elections” (Macron heading to New Caledonia…, 2024, May 21). In a Guardian article, a member of the Indigenous Kanak people of the island chain, said, “I don’t know why our fate is being discussed by people who don’t even live here.” The official language of the islands is French, even though the peoples of New Caledonia speak “28 indigenous languages” (Bissoonauth & Parish, 2017, p. 39), and New Caledonia 17,000 kilometres from France. Continue reading “Writing centre industrial complex”