letters to authors

This chapter introduces a writing practice in which students are invited to write letters addressed to the authors of assigned texts. Over the years, these letters have materialized in various formats—written during class (both online and in-person), or asynchronously as a reflective task completed in students’ own time. The aim is to cultivate a different kind of relationship to text, knowledge, and one’s own sense of agency. By staging an encounter with the ‘author’—whether through the prospect of actual interaction or the imagined presence of their voice on the page—the practice subverts the passivity often associated with academic reading, and refocuses attention on the lived, moment-to-moment experience of making sense.