The Northeast Writing Centers Association 2027 Conference
Creative Writing Center Communities: Affirming Joy, Play, and Connections
April 3 – 4, 2027
Tufts University, Medford MA
Proposals Due: December 6, 2026
NEWCA Website for more information
Call for Proposals
Writing centers have long been stewards of community within the larger institution. Foundational texts in Writing Center literature, such as The Everyday Writing Center and Noise from the Writing Center , have offered the writing center community as a human-centered, joyful space focused on mutual learning and support. Recently, however, writing centers have been beset with a series of hardships that have eroded our communities and threatened the pleasure we take in our work. The global COVD-19 pandemic severed many connections in ways we have not yet been able to repair and disrupted education in ways we’re still struggling to understand. Generative AI has radically altered the landscape of education and resulted in a reduction in writing center usage, whether because students are using it in place of tutoring or because faculty, newly distrustful of what students produce, assign less writing. Drops in student populations, institutional revenue, and governmental resources have led to writing centers facing funding cuts, staff reductions, and consolidation into other resources. Our field has been further destabilized by the sudden dissolution of CCCCs which, along with a bleak political climate, high-profile layoffs, and daily pressures, has led to many of us feeling more isolated and less supported than ever.
These challenges create a dichotomy within Writing Centers: as resources grow lean and environments change, sharing knowledge, experience, resources, and support with others is increasingly necessary as well as taxing. To combat this juxtaposition, NEWCA’s 2027 conference centers community as a necessity: to support each other, our work, and our centers. We invite participants to reconnect with our regional community within a restorative environment and revive our interest in modes of operation that extend beyond survival. We posit that community is required to combat fatigue, burnout, and isolation by providing mutual support, learning opportunities, and joy in times of stress. While community supports us with commiseration and crowd-sourcing solutions, let’s remember the role of playfulness and creativity in our community-building and in our writing center work. Play is a crucial component of exploration in both tutoring and in writing, and provides a valuable framework for growth and development. Play builds resilience and social-educational connections, and offers ways to consider how the writing center exists in a counter-hegemonic space in the university. Within a culture where efficiency, speed, and assessment dominate, how might we revitalize or recreate environments that encourage exploration, slowness, reflection, creativity, and experimentation?
For our 2027 Conference, NEWCA is seeking proposals that explore new (and old) ways to shoulder our collective, collaborative, workloads, while affirming the role of joy and play in our work. In the spirit of communal creativity, we are especially interested in proposals that employ narrative and storytelling in how ideas and research is shared, that invite audiences to engage in active learning, idea-generation, and productive dialogue. We welcome proposals from all members of our writing center community: new and established scholars, undergraduate and graduate tutors, professional tutors, faculty, staff, writing center administrators, and anyone else who identifies with writing center work. We hope your proposals will be more communal than individual, more possibility than problem-solving, and more sandbox than socratic.
Some questions you might consider when developing a session might include (but are not limited to):
- What is community within our writing center(s)? How do we define it? What makes it creative?
- What does it mean for our writing center to be welcoming, inclusive? How do we make sure these concepts feel meaningful and authentic?
- How can we bring joy, play, and creativity back into writing itself, an activity that has been reduced in recent years to a product-focused task, or even outsourced?
- How can we re-humanize writing? Engage writing as a restorative practice? Heal our relationships with writing?
- How might we experiment to push back against formulas and (false) promises of efficiency?
- What role does human connection play in tutoring and in writing? How do these connections form, and how do they enhance learning?
- What creative or playful ways might we approach our foundational work in the Writing Center–recruiting tutors, training tutors, funding our centers?
- What kinds of creative collaborations have been fruitful, especially in unexpected areas? How does your community extend beyond the Writing Center?
Session Types:
- Workshop (75min): Interactive sessions that teach and engage participants through discussion, collaborative work, group activities, and/or other methods of involvement.
- Roundtable Discussion (75min): Collaborative sessions featuring introductory framing by the leaders on a specific theme or question, followed by a facilitated discussion among attendees.
- Activity (30min – 75min): In the spirit of joy and play, we are inviting submissions to lead participants through writing and writing center related activities. We seek creative submissions for 30, 45, or 75 minute activities that provide fellow attendees an opportunity to learn and explore creatively. Please explain the activity and your plans to lead it in your proposal. If the activity takes less than 75 minutes, it will be paired with a presentation or another activity.
- Special Interest Group (75min): SIGs are informal conversations with colleagues and peers with a specific agenda, goal, or issue in mind. We encourage SIG proposals to include a brief description and overview of how participants will be involved, and what desired outcomes of the SIG will be.
- Community Builder (30min): Similar to Special Interest Groups, Community Builders intended to create time and space for attendees to connect with the regional community. Community Builders are informal conversations with peers who have shared identities, interests, and experiences to you and can be used to facilitate a focused discussion, a specific activity, or something else that would be useful for your group.. Examples of communities are: Maine Peer Tutors, First-time Conference Attendees, Community College Writing Centers, etc. We hope that this session type provides attendees with a chance to connect with their communities, slow down, and appreciate time together.
- Presentation (15min): Brief sessions to explain or introduce research, concepts, or topics of interest. Individuals will be formed into a panel of 3 to 4 presentations.
Accepted presenters will be notified by January 24, 2027. You are welcome to submit a proposal and attend NEWCA 2027 if you are not currently a NEWCA member or employed within our region. Preference for travel funding will be given to members of the region. For more information: newcaconference with any questions.
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Kristina Aikens, PhD
Senior Associate Director, Writing Support
StAAR Center