Distinguished Professor Emeritus Charles Bazerman has published How I Became the Kind of Writer I Became: An Experiment in Autoethnography (WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado 2023). Bazerman considers how, like all writers, he has been shaped in distinctive and unique ways by his literate experiences. Dr. Bazerman notes, “We need many such stories from many kinds of writers reflecting on what opportunities, needs, experiences, and resources came their way and how they iteratively solved the problem of what to write and how to write it, as they saw it.”

How I Became the Kind of Writer I Became is the first book in the Lifespan Writing Research book series. Bazerman’s work serves as both a model for reflective inquiry and a call for additional work in this area. The Lifespan Writing Research series publishes single- and multi-author empirical and theoretical approaches to studying writing through the lifespan that inform and/or challenge established lifespan writing frameworks. The series encourages a wide range of theoretical, methodological, and philosophical perspectives, and particularly inter- and multi-disciplinary perspectives. It also supports cohesive and integrated edited collections that explore particular issues in lifespan writing research from a range of perspectives, as well as those that recount, explore, or critique the recent and emerging history of lifespan writing research. The series is edited by Gevirtz School alumnus Ryan J. Dippre (Education, Ph.D.,’15), Associate Professor of English and the Director of College Composition at the University of Maine, and Talinn Phillips, Associate Professor of English at Ohio University.

The WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado are collaborating so that these books will be widely available through free digital distribution and low-cost print editions. The publishers and the series editors are committed to the principle that knowledge should freely circulate and have embraced the use of technology to support open access to scholarly work.

Charles Bazerman is Emeritus Professor of Education at the Gevirtz School, where he served as Chair of the Department of Education for six years. He is the author of numerous research articles and books on the social role of writing, academic genres, and textual analysis, as well as textbooks on the teaching of writing.

Charles Bazerman and cover of “How I Became the Kind of Writer I Became: An Experiment in Autoethnography”