The College Writer: A Guide to Thinking, Writing, and Researching, MLA Update

Combining streamlined, nuts-and-bolts writing instruction with outstanding accessibility and visual appeal, The College Writer breaks new ground in brief rhetorics. The authors have made both content and presentation optimally exciting and useful for the student. This book targets the needs of less-prepared students, with four-color line drawings, color-coded headings, easy-to-grasp graphic organizers, and other guiding design elements on nearly every two-page spread.

• The College Writer opens each chapter with concise writing instruction followed by engaging examples and writing assignments. Diagrams, charts, and graphic organizers efficiently demonstrate ideas and principles, reducing the number of pages of text pages required for explanation.
• Step-indexing and color-coding allow students to thumb directly into the topic they're looking for. Checklists and summary boxes make it easy to refer back to material covered earlier.
• A CD-ROM provides the entire text in searchable format. It takes students through one student writer's experience in writing a research paper and engages them with instructional video and audio clips, animated graphic organizers, and appealing interactive exercises.

Randall VanderMey is a professor in the department of English at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. He also has taught composition, literature, and technical writing at Iowa State University, Dordt College, and the University of Iowa. Dr. VanderMey earned his M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. He is a contributing editor and creative consultant for Write Source. Dr. VanderMey has received numerous fellowships, grants, and awards for his teaching and poetry. He has published two books of poems, GROWING SOUL: A SONG CYCLE, GOD TALK and CHARM SCHOOL: FIVE WOMEN OF THE ODYSSEY as well as a commissioned biography, MERIZON: THE GREAT JOURNEY.

Dr. John Van Rys has taught composition, business writing, creative writing, and literature to college students for more than 30 years. He began his teaching career at Dordt University in Sioux Center, Iowa, before moving to Redeemer University in Hamilton, Ontario, in 2005. He earned his M.A. and B.A. from the University of Western Ontario and his Ph.D. from Dalhousie University. Today, Dr. Van Rys pursues scholarly work in Canadian literature, while also writing fiction and poetry. For more than 20 years, he has worked on writing-across-the-curriculum theory and practice, on connections between workplace and academic writing. He has also pursued strategies for strengthening varied literacies in students, from reading and research to visual literacy. Dr. Van Rys has applied his expertise, co-authoring various writing handbooks for students, from middle school to college. He has also co-authored an award-winning business-writing handbook for workplace professionals, WRITE FOR BUSINESS, with UpWrite Press.

Dave Kemper has been a contributing partner with Write Source since 1986. He has co-authored FUSION 1, FUSION 2, WRITE 1 SENTENCES TO PARAGRAPHS, WRITE 2 PARAGRAPHS TO ESSAYS, and the complete line of Write Source handbooks and writing texts. In addition to his editorial work, Kemper has presented at national writing conventions and conducted writing workshops across the country. Prior to his work with Write Source, Kemper taught literature and writing for 11 years.

Patrick Sebranek (M.A. University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse) taught English, speech, and multimedia classes for 16 years at Union Grove High School in Wisconsin. During that time, he served as the English department chair and worked on several district-wide projects, including a writing-across-the-curriculum program and a K-12 writing sequence. He has studied the works of James Moffett, Ken Macrorie, Linda Reif, Nancie Atwell, and many other contemporary educators dealing with writing and learning. Mr. Sebranek is an author and editorial director for the Write Source Educational Publishing House and works closely with teachers and educators on all new and revised handbooks and sourcebooks.

Dr. Verne Meyer is an educator and businessperson. For nine years, he taught English in high schools in Michigan and Wisconsin. In addition, for fifteen years, he taught dramatic literature, theater history, and composition at Dordt University in Iowa. In 1977, partnering with Mr. Sebranek, Dr. Meyer co-founded Write Source Educational Publishing House, now a subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Supplemental. Dr. Meyer earned his B.A. from Calvin College, his M.A. from Marquette University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. In addition to this text, he has co-authored a number of texts for college students, including THE COLLEGE WRITER'S HANDBOOK, COMP, THE BUSINESS WRITER, and WRITE FOR WORK. To meet the needs of students in grades 8 through 12, he has co-authored WRITERS INC, SCHOOL TO WORK, WRITE FOR COLLEGE, and a number of Write Source textbooks. Dr. Meyer's publications for businesspeople include WRITE FOR BUSINESS and EFFECTIVE EMAIL MADE EZ. Dr. Meyer is currently a contributing editor for Write Source and UpWrite Press. He is also a featured speaker in the School Improvement Network's instructional videos, Writing Across the Curriculum.