Melissa StPierre (Dept. of English) presented at the 2025 Conference on Community Writing. Representing RCU, her work focused on the rhetoric of space, presenting an analysis of early childhood education classroom settings.

More on the Conference for Community Writing

In October 2025, the Coalition for Community Writing (CCW), Wayne State University, and Michigan State University called together organizers and activists, writers, artists, journalists, digital storytellers, teachers, students, scholars, community residents, and more, who theorize, enact, and write the stories of community change. We convened in Detroit Michigan, USA, to design justice across space, place, and time. We will use the framework of designing justice as a foundation for community writing, reflecting, connecting, and organizing together toward more just and joyful communities and institutions.

CCW focuses on community writing as a framework to explore how change happens. In the work of social change, community writing is necessary, contemplative, therapeutic, coalition-building, and action-based. People coordinate strategies, design courses and curricula, preserve stories of the past, make public art, contest local histories, compose grant proposals, write policy, perform community theater, and much, much more.