“This is the book that the field—and I—have been waiting for! Flipping the ELA curriculum on its head, Donovan and Sanders begin with writing, place students at the center of our work, and focus on teaching and learning rather than evaluation and ranking. May every middle and high school teacher find their way to this book.”
—Tanya Baker, executive director, National Writing Project

“This book recognizes the social and emotional needs of today’s youth, most of whom yearn to be more connected and explore life’s enduring questions in their reading and writing. Donovan and Sanders build on decades of shared experience to offer ELA teachers an impassioned rationale for a more relational, responsive, and humanizing workshop approach. With detailed descriptions of lesson ideas, they craft moves to explore and mentor texts to read across seven workshops—from poetry to speculative fiction to literary criticism and more. Writer to Writer demonstrates clear, compelling ways for us to build rapport with our students and to help them find meaning by expanding their own literate lives.”
—Troy Hicks, interim associate dean of the College of Education and Human Services, and director of the Chippewa River Writing Project, Central Michigan University

“Writer to Writer is a generous offering of organized, thoughtful, and humanizing pedagogies for teaching writers. Donovan and Sanders provide so many effective resources (the Mirror-Point-Wonder protocol for student-to-student conferences; author care statements to prepare readers for difficult topics; defined boundaries for a unit on speculative fiction, to name just three) that this book will become dog-eared in no time. The authors make a persuasive case for centering writers not texts or products. They recognize the challenge of preparing so many new teachers in our schools and offer realistic guidelines for working with a standardized curriculum to center students and their writing processes. Every teacher will grow a deeper understanding of both teaching and writing by reading this book—finding more joy in both. I certainly did.”
—Penny Kittle, author of Write Beside Them and coauthor of 180 Days

“It is so refreshing to read about instruction that focuses on what matters most to fostering the immense joy and fullest capacities of readers and writers, to learn about specific teaching moves and instructional focus that promotes what is most transferable and generative because it can be practiced and further developed any time that one reads or composes throughout a lifetime of literacy.”
—Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, distinguished professor of literacy education, director of the Boise State Writing Project, Boise State University

“In their book, Writer to Writer, the authors offer quite literally everything you need to run a year-long relevant, research-based, authentic, powerful, and productive writing curriculum. They have, somehow, synthesized and distilled the very best of our collective knowledge around impactful, engaging writing practices and deliver it in a practical yet profound sequence of work you can jump into today. Follow their lead—they know the way.”
—Kate Roberts and Maggie Beattie Roberts, literacy consultants, authors, guest teacher

With Writer to Writer, our goal is to nurture your students’ unique voices to shine. We provide humanizing, relational scaffolds for educators, specializing in a fully lived curriculum for the secondary ELA classroom. Whether you are looking for transformative poetry workshops, journey narratives, or speculative futures, we have the practical tools to support your instructional moves. 

We believe that the students are the curriculum. Here, we offer a comprehensive digital toolkit, including adaptable tables and charts, thinking-partner mentorship, and instructional video tutorials. 

Here is an overview of the architectural elements that recur across workshops and contexts:

➤ Writer’s notebooks as living curriculum

➤ Mini-genre studies and mentor text inquiry

➤ Flash drafting and low-stakes production

➤ Craft, grammar, and revision in service of meaning

➤ Peer sharing routines

➤ Artist’s statements and ethical self-assessment 

➤ Humanizing grading practice