I am excited to introduce Sarah Gettel, a good friend and accountability partner who’s been working behind the scenes with Heart-Head-Hands: Everyday Living for Justice. Sarah and I met in 2019, soon after I’d left my faculty career, through mutual contacts engaged in racial justice organizing in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We deepened our relationship in the early days of the pandemic, forming an accountability pod and meeting regularly with Rasha Diab ... Read more ...
Racial Justice
These posts address racial justice, whiteness, white supremacy, and intersectional (in)equities. Posts ask: How can we act on a commitment to racial justice? And on related commitments to social, gender, economic, environmental, and other forms of justice?
Befriending Fear and Cultivating Courage
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Maya Angelou's often-circulated quote about courage being the most important virtue: "Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency." This quote's been coming to mind (again and again) as I find myself experiencing fear or saying "so much is scary." And so much is! There's so much injustice. What and who we care about are being attacked, fired, dismantled, criminalized, disappeared, hidden, abducted, ... Read more ...
New Article: “Because We’re Going to Mess Up”: Practices for Accountability—Not a Piecemeal Approach
With gratitude, I write to share a new article: “‘Because We’re Going to Mess Up’: Practices for Accountability—Not a Piecemeal Approach” co-authored with good friend and frequent co-author Rasha Diab and published in College Composition & Communication (CCC). This piece has been a long time coming. We started drafting in 2019; first submitted in 2020; and have been revising, reshaping, and attempting to bring it to life these past 5+ years. The article arises, as ... Read more ...
Love in Action: Sharing Protests and Prayers for These Times
This Valentine’s Day, let’s come together and share some of the protests and prayers we are writing for these times. We’re in times when what we love—people, the earth, and justice itself—are attacked with great force. The first weeks of the new administration have brought intense cruelty and terrorizing assertions of dominance. We respond in many ways, including with efforts to block harm, to build liberatory futures, and to be present with and for each ... Read more ...
Mentoring Writers Well? 3 Assumptions about Mentoring Writing
What is involved in mentoring writers well? How can mentors support writers and writers’ various projects and aspirations? What are starting points for learning to mentor writing? So many of us (especially in higher education, literacy education, community education, and adjacent fields) are involved in mentoring and coaching writers. But, typically, we don’t have much training when it comes to mentoring. And much less for mentoring writing! Back in February, I ... Read more ...
How Mentors Can Support Writers and Counter Epistemic Injustice
You’re invited to an interactive workshop I’ll be facilitating on Monday, February 12th at 12:00-1:30pm ET titled “How Mentors Can Support Writers and Counter Epistemic Injustice.” The workshop is free and open to the public. This workshop is sponsored by the Ball State University Graduate School and the Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and is part of the Building Mentoring Capacities Workshop Series. Thanks especially to Dr. Robin Phelps-Ward, Associate ... Read more ...
Honoring Struggles and Showing Up Imperfectly for Palestinian Liberation
To show up in this piece, which I’ve been trying to get out for weeks, I’ve realized that the only way to do so is to bring my full messy self. I don’t want to polish writing when that’s not true to the process or the way forward. As writers, we often have lots of discarded text and false starts. And we often spend hours weaving threads together into a cohesive whole. I really appreciate this work, and it gives me joy to do the weaving. Stitch by stitch, I understand ... Read more ...
Highlighting a New Publication: Chapter and Supplementary Material in Best of Journals in Rhetoric and Composition 2021
I am writing to share a new publication: a chapter in Best of Journals in Rhetoric and Composition 2021, edited by Kristi Girdharry, Charles Lesh, Jessica Pauszek, David Blakesley, and Steve Parks and published with Parlor Press (2023). This chapter includes both a reprint of my previous article “Rhetorical and Pedagogical Interventions for Countering Microaggressions” co-authored with Rasha Diab and with contributions by Cedric Burrows and Thomas Ferrel. It also ... Read more ...
Q&A with Candace Epps-Robertson: On Seasons of Life, Writing, and Career
This interview introduces Candace Epps-Robertson, Ph.D., a collaborator with Heart-Head-Hands, facilitator of writing groups, and co-creator of the new offering, “Pathways Through Burnout: A Cohort Experience.” Candace is a writer, researcher, and educator with deep commitments to justice and more than twenty years of experience in literacy education. She is also Associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she ... Read more ...
Intervening into Burnout, Building a Sense of What’s Possible
A new article, “Intervening into Burnout,” appears in Inside Higher Ed today. In this follow-up piece to “Honoring Ourselves and Each Other Through Burnout,” I offer examples of creative interventions into burnout. These examples are gifted to me through coaching, so I write with deep gratitude for people who are trying different ways of being, doing, feeling, thinking, relating and imagining in higher education. Here’s an excerpt: “Burnout is also never ... Read more ...
