It’s Crowded in Here: “Present Others” in Advanced Graduate Writers’ Sessions

As writing center scholars focus more attention on graduate writers, we suggest being attentive to who we call “present others,” individuals who arc not physically present in writing center sessions but arc part of writers’ feedback networks, such as advisors, committee members , and colleagues. We assert that present others arc key to gaining a more nuanccd understandingof graduate writers’ experiences in the writing center because they shape writers’ socialriation into the academy and complicate the centrality of oneto-one work in writing center scholarship and practice. Using interviews and session recordings with two advanced graduate writers , we illuminate how present others influenced these writers’ sessions, their feedback networks, and their long-term writing center use. In doing so, our study widens the scope beyond the writer and the consultant , providing another avenue to work with the text and the emotions and relationships that surround graduate students’ writing processes and disciplinary identities. Finally, we provide strategics for tutor training and encourage writing centers to explore how to more holistically meet the complex needs of graduate writers.University Writing Cente