As a neurodivergent graduate consultant at the Writers Workshop, my practice entails extending access and flexibility as well as practicing creativity to tutor writers with different access needs and bodyminds, Margaret Price’s term on the interconnectedness of the body and mind. During my sessions, I ask writers what they would like to accomplish and what their needs are to make the sessions accessible and useful for them. My strategies entail reading their writing out loud, color-coding or bolding texts, typing notes while they verbally voice their thoughts, moving slowly and pausing to explain my suggestions and to hear their intentions, to name just a few. Writing studies and disability studies scholars, such as Noah Bukowski and Mel Y. Chen, write about the benefits of slowing down, connected to Alison Kafer’s crip time, when it comes to consultations and writing processes because listening to our bodyminds welcomes time for reflection and writing.
Inside the Writers Workshop’s room at the Main Library, the space encapsulates a feeling of community for writers to feel comfortable and supported to express their ideas and work on their writing. Adorning the walls are visual art pieces from previous students, a large whiteboard, photos of the consultants along with their bios, a clock, and a screen. Snake and cacti plants sit on the windowsill, and sunlight and moonlight pour in through the large windows. The room has desktop computers, rolling chairs, three round tables, and two rectangular tables that can be adjusted accordingly to height for writers who are wheelchair users or for those who would like more space for their work. Additionally, the organizer and bookshelf hold handouts, pens, scratch paper, books, and other supplies. With these supplies, the Writers Workshop encourages multimodality: for consultants to tutor by leaving feedback on the computer or handwritten notes and for writers to express their thoughts either digitally or on pieces of paper.
Along with the physical space, the Writers Workshop also thinks about access in the digital spaces of the website, the appointments, and presentations. The website has accessible navigations, and the online appointment form provides the option for writers to share what they need for the session and disclose their disability if they choose. Through our multiple appointment modalities and online presentations, writers can pick their preferred form to receive writing assistance.
The consultants read research and have access to articles by scholars like Allison Harper Hitt and Julie Neff as well as the “Dis/Ability in the Writing Center” special issue on tutoring students with disabilities. The articles discuss directed tutoring approaches, but also, as Kerri Rinaldi writes, “to apply the same non-hierarchal, collaborative, student-centered approach” for all writers.
The Writers Workshop’s ethos consists of ensuring all writers in UIUC’s community receive writing assistance to continue their scholarly and personal writing endeavors. Disabled writer-activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes, “when you work to make spaces accessible, and then more accessible, know that you can come from a deep, profound place of love.”
By Hannah Charity, English PhD candidate, Asian American Studies minor
Works Cited
Bukowski, Noah and Brenda Jo Brueggemann. “Writing Center Research and Disability Theory.” Theories and Methods of Writing Center Studies, edited by Jo Mackiewicz and Rebecca Babcock, Routledge, 2019, pp. 68-78.
Chen, Mel Y. “Chronic Illness, Slowness, and the Time of Writing.” Crip Authorship: Disability as Method, edited by Mara Mills and Rebecca Sanchez, New York University Press, 2023, pp. 33-37.
Hitt, Allison Harper. “Resisting Diagnosis and Creating Avenues for Agency in the Writing Center.” Rhetorics of Overcoming: Rewriting Narratives of Disability and Accessibility in Writing Studies. National Council of Teachers of English, 2021, pp. 63-81.
Kafer, Alison. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana University Press, 2013.
Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018.
Spitzer-Hanks, Thomas and James Garner, editors. Dis/Ability in the Writing Center, vol. 13, no. 1, Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 2015.