Background: Situated in urban Philadelphia, Autores Fuertes was part of a network of nonprofit community writing centers that provided a free afterschool writing academy for children ages 7 to 17. With a full-time lead educator and assistant educator, alongside several volunteer community educators, this center promoted itself as a…

Adopting a "multiculturalism-from-below" approach and the perspective of public pedagogy, this study presents findings from a community-based research project that looked into a group of immigrant women writers' perceptions and experiences of everyday multiculturalism in the setting of a community writing workshop in Metro Vancouver, BC.…

This qualitative study documents urban youth participation in a community-based out-of-school youth writing program that cultivated participants' dialogues, identities, and writings. The study documents participants' perspectives as contributors and beneficiaries of a neighborhood revitalization effort. Analysis of excerpts from breakout sessions,…

As the program director of a community writing center that serves children and youth ages 5-18, Rachel Loeper sees it all, from 15-year-old spoken word poets to six-year-olds whose first "books" are strung together with yarn. In all of her roles--administrator, teacher, volunteer trainer--she values engaging the most reluctant of young…

This article presents the experience and emotional responses of the two authors and the content of the Writing Workshop Manual that they created for the Caretta Community Center in McDowell County, West Virginia. Their technique shows not only the contrast of their private and public personas but also some of the outsider/insider dialogue that…

Addresses three questions: (1) what individual paths lead selected nonmainstream writers from the "Tenderloin" inner-city area of San Francisco to their craft; (2) how the contexts and relationships with the community support the growth of written expression; and (3) how this support affects individual and community growth. (MG)

This book contains an introduction and 11 essays describing reading and writing projects in which adult literacy learners enrolled in the following types of programs participated: adult literacy and/or language classes, refugee groups, oral history and reminiscence projects, and community publishing and writing workshops. The following essays are…