Co-Authoring Across Communities

This article explores a developing writing partnership between Lauren, a white, mid-career, academic literacy researcher; and Gwen, an African American, older adult, community member and activist, who transitioned from being a research participant to co-author. Together, Lauren and Gwen trace the evolution of our writing relationship and the meaning of collaboration across disparate communities. Our collaboration has become a topic of study for us. We are writing together and defining what that process means as we do it. In looking back and describing our current writing practices, we demonstrate the ongoing nature of our longitudinal writing research and the real human relationship that deepens through the process. Our goal is to look at how a research relationship can transform through co-authorship and the possibilities that transformation can suggest for writing researchers. We share our process to illustrate our experience and encourage other community writing partnerships. We extend the notion of writing research and the possibilities it can offer for redefining a traditional research process to one that is co-interpretive and co-creative. In this way, we can think about literacy more broadly and better understand what we truly mean when we talk about community writing partnerships.