Writing Now

Writing Now helps students connect the visually rich texts they read every day with strategies for college writing. Focusing on six real-world genres — memoirs, profiles, reports, position papers, evaluations, and proposals — students learn to read words, images, and design with a critical eye, decoding the writer’s choices about audience and purpose. To highlight the visual elements, many of the 39 contemporary readings are laid out as they originally appeared when published. Within the writing guide for each genre-based assignment, friendly advice in an innovative visual format gives students practical strategies for tackling each task in the writing process. Extensive guidance on research and design, along with coverage of portfolios, oral presentations, and other writing situations make this the one textbook students need, when they need more than words. Introducing Author Talk: Watch our video interview with Lee Odell.

LEE ODELL is professor of composition in the Department of Language, Literature, and Communication at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In addition to teaching rhetoric and writing, writing for classroom and career, research in composition, and related courses, he has also directed the department's off-campus M.S. program in Technical Communication and a summer workshop, the Technical Writers' Institute. He is editor, with Charles Cooper, of Evaluating Writing, and with D. Goswami, of Writing in Non-Academic Settings. The author of over 50 published articles and book chapters, Odell has served as a consultant to numerous colleges, universities, and other organizations over the past thirty years. In 1986, he was the chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and in 1980 he received the NCTE's Braddock award for the article "Teachers of Composition and Needed Research in Discourse Theory."

SUSAN KATZ is associate professor of English at North Carolina State University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in composition, technical writing, and the rhetoric of science and technology. She is also coordinator for the undergraduate internship program for English majors. Katz spent twelve years in television and advertising before turning to the study of writing in public and private organizations. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication and Rhetoric at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1996. Katz is the author of The Dynamics of Writing Review: Opportunities for Growth and Change in the Workplace, a chapter of which was reprinted in the anthology Professional Writing and Rhetoric: Readings from the Field. Katz is the recipient of the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools Achievement Award for New Scholars in the Humanities and the Arts (2003) and several other awards.