English Composition Researchers Quoted on this Website

Carol Avery

Carol Avery is a past president of the National Council of Teachers of English and is widely respected for her expertise in language arts teaching and for her advocacy of teachers and children. She is the author of ...And With a Light Touch, a book on teaching language arts, which is lauded by classroom teachers and educators for its insightfulness and relevance to classroom practice. She has facilitated hundreds of workshops and presentations for teachers throughout the United States and Canada, as well as several abroad. She has special expertise in children's literature and, in her capacity as a reviewer, recommends the best new books to teachers attending her workshops. Carol has worked as a consultant for schools nationally and internationally, demonstrating reading and writing lessons in K-12 classrooms and sharing stories of her classroom experiences in both suburban and urban schools. She has taught at the elementary, secondary and college levels and also served as a school librarian. She holds a bachelor's degree in library science and masters degrees in elementary education and writing. 

Peter Elbow

Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Author of Writing Without Teachers, Embracing Contraries, and Writing with Power.

Toby Fulwiler

Professor, Department of English, The University of Vermont

The Journal Book for Teachers in Professional and Technical Programs. Co-editor Susan
    Gardner, Boynton/Cook, 1999

When Writing Teachers Teach Literature: Bringing Writing to Reading.  Co-editor
     Art Young.  Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 1995.

Programs that Work:  Models and Methods for Writing Across the Curriculum. 
    Co-editor Art Young. Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 1990.

The Journal Book.  Editor, Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 1987.

Teaching with Writing.  Boynton/Cook, 1987.

Writing Across the Disciplines:  Research into Practice. Co-editor Art Young, 
     Boynton/Cook, 1986.

Language Connections: Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum.  Co-editor Art
    Young, NCTE, 1982.  

Donald Graves

Donald Graves: 1995 NCTE Outstanding Educator in the English Language Arts Before Don was celebrated for his landmark work, Writing: Teachers and Children at Work (1983), and before he worked as a professor and member of the writing community at the University of New Hampshire, he spent many years working as an educator and seeker of truth and justice.

Donald M. Murray

Donald M. Murray, Professor Emeritus of English, is a teacher, novelist, columnist, composition scholar, and newspaper writing coach. He has served as English Department Chairperson and Director of the Freshmen English Program at the University of New Hampshire.

Murray inaugurated a journalism program, designed advanced composition courses, and assisted in establishing a graduate program in Composition Studies at the University of New Hampshire. He twice won awards for his teaching and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of New Hampshire in 1990 and Fitchburg State College in 1992. His papers have been collected by The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida.

As a journalist, Murray won a number of awards including the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in The Boston Herald in 1954. He was an editor of Time before free-lancing as a magazine writer in New York City for seven years. He has served as writing coach for The Boston Globe, The Providence Journal, and other newspapers. His weekly column includes Over Sixty for The Boston Globe. In 1991, Boston magazine and, in 1996, Improper Bostonians magazine selected him best columnist in Boston.

Murray has published two novels, and his poems have appeared in many journals, including Poetry. Some of his books on the craft of writing and teaching writing include A Writer Teaches Writing, Learning by Teaching, Writing for Your Readers, Read to Write, Expecting the Unexpected and The Craft of Revision.

Anne Lamott

Author of Bird by Bird-Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

Tom Romano

Associate professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Author of Clearing the Way: Working with Teenage Writers (Heinemann, 1987) and Writing with Passion: Life Stories, Multiple Genres (Heinemann, 1995). Romano’s insightful articles appear in Voices from the Middle and English Journal.

Louise Rosenblatt

Louise Rosenblatt first advanced the Reader-Response Theory in 1938. Currently, this theory remains a dominant teaching approach with Rosenblatt’s influence readily apparent in contemporary research. English professors today can work the magic of the literary experience through the use of the Reader-Response Theory in the teaching of literature.