Speaking of Writing: A Brief Rhetoric - With MLA 2021 Update - Paperback

by Allegra Goodman (Author), Michael Prince (Author), Emmeline Pidgen (Illustrator)

Back Jacket

Co-authored by a novelist and a scholar, Speaking of Writing follows four college students from diverse backgrounds as they face the challenges of reading, writing, and critical thinking in first-year composition classes and across the disciplines. Each chapter engages students in relatable, often humorous scenarios that focus on key challenges.

Through its story-based approach, this brief rhetoric enacts process-based pedagogy, showing student writers grappling with fundamental questions: How can I apply my own strategies for success to new assignments? How can I maintain my own voice when asked to compose in an academic style? What do college professors mean by a thesis? Why is my argument weak, and how can I make it stronger? The book vividly dramatizes a draft-and-revision process that includes instructor feedback, peer review, and careful research.

Author Biography

Allegra Goodman's novels include Sam, Kaaterskill Falls, The Family Markowitz, Intuition, The Cookbook Collector, and The Chalk Artist. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Best American Short Stories. She has taught first-year composition at Stanford and creative writing at Boston University and Harvard. Michael Prince is the founding director of the Arts and Sciences Writing Program at Boston University, where he is Professor of English, specializing in Writing Studies and early modern literature and philosophy. His publications include The Shortest Way with Defoe Robinson Crusoe, Deism, and the Novel (2020), which received the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize from the University of Virginia Press. Emmeline Pidgen is an illustrator, creating books, comics, and commercial illustration in northwest England. She has worked with a wide range of clients internationally and was named "UK Freelancer of the Year" in 2016.