Event: “Why We (Still) Write”: SGSLR November conversation

What do we write when we can write what we want?

Please join us for “Why We (Still) Write: Negotiating the Transition to Self-Sponsored Composing in Late Career and Retirement,” the second in our 2024-25 series of conversations focusing on navigating personal and career transitions in digital environments, leading up to the panel at the 2025 CCCC in Baltimore in April sponsored by the Standing Group for Senior, Late Career, and Retired Scholars in Rhetoric and Writing Studies (SGSLR).

This zoom-based conversation on November 18, 2024 at 12:15-1:45 Eastern time will feature the following retired rhetoric and writing studies colleagues who are at various stages of their retirement from full-time academic work.

Louise Wetherbee Phelps

Elizabeth Flynn

Lynn Bloom

Doug Hesse

Thomas Newkirk

Nancy Sommers

We’ve invited these featured participants to share their writing stories and lead us in reflecting on some of these questions:

• What kinds of writing do retired RWS scholars do when they no longer have to write under pressure, or to be accorded job status? What motivates writing after retirement?
• What different genres are people writing in–blogs, journals, poetry, children’s books, fiction, letters, letters to the editor?
• Are there risks involved in expanding our writing into different genres?
• Who are we writing with–colleagues, students, neighbors, children, grandchildren? How do we develop new writing communities?
• What (and who) helps us to make the transition to these new kinds of writing?
• What new insights have we learned–or relearned–about writing from our engagement with these new kinds of writing?
• How have digital environments aided and/or hindered a transition to new ways of writing?

Our zoom-based conversation will include opportunities for attendees to participate. Sign-up using the link below to receive reminders and zoom log-in information! We plan to record the conversation.

Sign-up to Participate

Shirley Rose

for the Standing Group for Senior, Late-Career, and Retired Scholars in Rhetoric and Writing Studies

Shirley Rose

Emeritus Professor of English

Department of English

Arizona State University

PO Box 871401

Tempe AZ 85287-1401

Shirley.Rose