College Writing Program
Each year, the Department of Literature and the College Writing Program select a book that we call our “community text” for students arriving in August. This text sets in motion a shared experience of intellectual inquiry, prompting conversations that resonate in classes long after the August colloquium. College Writing students continue to focus on the Writer as Witness text throughout fall semester, considering ways that the writing and study they do here at AU will connect to issues outside the university. This year’s choice: Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway. We will bring Mr. Urrea, award-winning author, poet and essayist, to campus this August for the eleventh annual Writer as Witness Colloquium on Friday, August 22. He will address the American University community and meet with students and faculty to discuss the book, an account of twenty-six men who attempted to cross the Mexican border into Arizona. In addition to discussing the content of the book, Mr. Urrea will talk about his process, anticipating the themes of College Writing classes by demonstrating that writing sharpens thinking about issues both inside and beyond the classroom.
2008 Writer as Witness Announcement (pdf)
2007: The Ponds of Kalambayi, by Mike Tidwell
2006: Love in the Driest Season, by Neely Tucker
2005: Fragments of Grace, by Pamela Constable
2004: Newjack, by Ted Conover
2003: First They Killed My Father, by Loung Ung
2002: Savage Inequalities, by Jonathan Kozol
2001: Bad Land, by Jonathan Raban
2000: Almost a Woman, by Esmeralda Santiago
1999: My Own Country, by Abraham Verghese
1998: There Are No Children Here, by Alex Kotlowitz
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