Hospitality and Authoring, a sequel to the Haswells’ 2010 volume Authoring, attempts to open the path for hospitality practice in the classroom, making a strong argument for educational use and offering an initial map of the territory for teachers and authors.

Hospitality is a social and ethical relationship not only between host and guest but also between writer and reader or teacher and student. Hospitality initiates, maintains, and completes acts of authoring. This extended essay explores the ways that a true hospitable classroom community can be transformed through assigned reading, one-on-one conferencing, interpretation, syllabus, reading journals, topic choice, literacy narrative, writing centers, program administration, teacher training, and many other passing habitations.

Hospitality and Authoring strives to offer a few possibilities of change to help make college an institution where singular students and singular teachers create a room to learn with room to learn.

Richard Haswell retired as Haas Professor of English at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi in 2005 and previously spent twenty-nine years at Washington State University, where he directed the composition program and the cross-campus writing-assessment program. He has authored and coedited six other books. Janis Haswell is professor emerita of English at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. She is the author and coauthor of five books and more than thirty articles in literature and composition.