NWP Radio sits down with Katie Wood Ray and Stella Villalba to discuss the new edition of Wondrous Words, Katie's landmark 1999 book on responsive writing instruction. Twenty-five years later, the authors explore how teaching has changed—and why their message about writer agency, teacher decision-making, and the joy of teaching is more urgent than ever. In an era of mandated curricula and scripted lessons, they argue for a pedagogy of listening and kidwatching that treats students as writers making real choices, not just students completing assignments.

Hena Khan has been publishing books for children, including many that center Pakistani American and Muslim characters, for over two decades. She writes award-winning books in a multitude of formats, including picture books, middle-grade fiction, pick-your-path adventures, and graphic novels. Her stories are often centered around her culture, community, friendship, and family, and draw from her own experiences. Hena’s bestselling novels include Amina’s Voice and More to the Story. She is also the author of the Zayd Saleem Chasing the Dream, Zara’s Rules, and Super You! series. Hena’s acclaimed picture books include Golden Domes and Silver Lanterns, Under My Hijab, and It’s Ramadan, Curious George. Her most recent books include Bhangra Boogie and Dark Nights and Light Hearts. She holds an MA in International Affairs from The George Washington University.

Rhiannon Berry Adsit runs, bikes, swims, and writes whenever and where she can, gets unreasonably excited about beautiful trees, and has yet to meet a dog she didn't love. Born and raised in North Syracuse, Rhiannon graduated from LeMoyne College ('08) prior to earning her masters for Secondary English Education at Syracuse University. She taught at Liverpool High School for many years before moving to Lake Placid, where she currently teaches English and Creative Writing. She is the editor of LOCALadk Magazine and is often exploring the mountains with her husband Eric.

Tony Weaver, Jr. is a storyteller who creates diverse worlds where every reader can find their place. His debut graphic novel, Weirdo, sold out of its first printing in seven weeks of publication, received multiple starred reviews, and was named one of the best books of 2024 by School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, People Magazine, The New York Public Library, and the Children’s Book Review. He was the first comic writer ever selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30, selected as a Flying Start by Publishers Weekly, and has attracted coverage from ABC, NBC, and The Huffington Post. Tony’s writing prowess has not only garnered him institutional accolades, but has built him a loyal following of over 1 million followers across TikTok and Instagram.Tony is currently focusing on promoting his Nerds For Literacy initiative and as well as his award-winning graphic novel memoir, Weirdo,

Valeriana Boadu is an educator, author, and storyteller. She was born on the Caribbean Island of St. Lucia to a family of ten children. She has been in education for over twenty-five years, teaching Geography, Language Arts, and Multilingual Learners. She is a television presenter and a published author. Her very first novel was a romance novel, which placed her in the top ten for romance writing and earned her a nomination by Foreword Reviews for excellence in writing. Since then, Val has published 11 more books—multicultural short stories and Language Arts textbooks to support writing in elementary and secondary schools.

Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, business, the arts, and other subjects. He writes the BRANDED column for Fast Company and has contributed to The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, NewYorker.Com, Design Observer, The Organist, and many others. He is the author of The Art of Noticing (Knopf), and writes its spinoff newsletter of the same name. Walker is on the faculty of the Products of Design MFA program at the School of Visual Arts; he lives in New Orleans.

Kevin Hodgson teaches sixth grade in Southampton, Massachusetts, and is a teacher-consultant with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project.

James Fester has worked for more than two decades as a classroom teacher, instructional coach, technology director, and curriculum specialist. His writing spans many different areas and includes Edutopia, ISTE, and National Geographic. His most recently published book titled The National Park Classroom which focuses on how classroom teachers can benefit from the educational resources and experts connected to our national parks.

Maggie Delgado-Chernick is an English teacher at Twinsburg High School in Twinsburg, Ohio. She has enjoyed working with members of NWP-KSU at Kent State University and rangers at Cuyahoga Valley National Park on Write Out programming since 2019. Write Out's focus on place-based learning inspired Maggie to pursue additional research on student-led community-oriented projects and service learning. This research and the collaboration with Write Out colleagues led Maggie to create a course titled Writing for Civic Engagement at Twinsburg High School that focuses on getting students and their writing out of the classroom. In addition to other professional collaborations and cohorts, she contributed a chapter titled "Stories of Our Community: Podcasting for Place-Based Inquiry" for the 2024 text Place-Based Writing in Action: Opportunities for Authentic Writing in the World Beyond the Classroom, edited by Rob Montgomery and Amanda Montgomery.

About Write Out

Write Out is a free two-week celebration in October where we step outside the doors of our classrooms, homes, and workplaces to write and create. Learn more at writeout.nwp.org.

About The Write Time

The Write Time is a special series of NWP Radio, a podcast of the National Writing Project (NWP), where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. You can view the archive at https://teach.nwp.org/series/the-write-time/

Derrick Barnes is a National Book Award Finalist for his graphic novel Victory. Stand!-Raising My Fist For Justice, which also won the YALSA Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction Award, and a Coretta Scott King Award Author Honor. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed, multi-award-winning picture book Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut which received a Newbery Honor, a Coretta Scott King Author Honor, the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award, and the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers. He is a native of Kansas City, MO, but currently lives in Charlotte, NC with his enchanting wife, Dr. Tinka Barnes, and their four sons, the Mighty Barnes Brothers.

Dr. Chandra Maxwell is a Lead English Language Arts teacher at David Wooster Middle School in Stratford, CT. She became interested in English Literature as a student at Central Magnet High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Through her English teacher, Mrs. Cynthia Fernandes, she learned about the power of intentional writing as found in the works of Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry. As a result, Dr. Maxwell has done extensive research on equitable reading intervention programs for middle school students so that all students can be exposed to intentional reading and writing practices.

NWP Radio visits with Jessica Rubin, author of "Embracing gentle resistance to the slow violence of traditional English curriculum." The article explains how a secondary English teacher, Kristen, maintained a commitment to nonviolence in her teaching through "gentle resistance" to the subtle violences embedded in her school's curriculum and practices. By making purposeful, small-scale changes over time—such as omitting certain texts, reordering content, and elevating student voices—Kristen was able to push back against the slow violence of traditional English instruction without risking her job or professional relationships.

Cosmic Writers provides accessible creative writing education while having fun and building friendships. Cosmic Writers partners with the Philadelphia Writing Project on its Friday Night Writes while also providing regional and online professional support. Listen in to learn more about Cosmic Writers’ commitment and approach to creative writing and why it is so important from a Cosmic Writer herself!

Catherine Con Morse’s debut novel, The Notes, is a 2025 Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Honorable Mention for Young Adult Fiction, a 2026 Panda Book Award nominee, and was shortlisted for the CRAFT First Chapters contest. Her newest book is The Summer I Remembered Everything (April 2025). A Kundiman fellow, Catherine received her MFA from Boston University, where she taught undergraduate creative writing for several years. Her work appears in Joyland, Letters, HOOT, Bostonia, and elsewhere, and has been a finalist for the Beacon Street Prize and the Baltimore Review fiction prize. While writing The Notes, she was one of the inaugural Writers in Residence at Porter Square Books, where she enjoyed writing in the back office and eating croissants with her cafe discount. 

In high school, Catherine attended the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, a public arts boarding school, where she was as intrigued with her teacher as Claire is with Dr. Li. Catherine continues to play and teach piano today. Most recently, she taught English at Choate Rosemary Hall, and lives in the Connecticut River Valley with her husband and daughter.

Katherine Shizuko Suyeyasu brings 25 years of experience teaching in Oakland, Berkeley, Union City, and the Philadelphia area at the upper-elementary, middle, and graduate school levels. The majority of her teaching career allowed her to work with and learn from multilingual middle schoolers in the Humanities classroom. She is currently a co-director of the Bay Area Writing Project.

Cameron Roberson, who writes under the pen name Rob Cameron, is a teacher, linguist, and writer. Rob is also lead organizer for the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers and founder of Constellations Mentorship for the Octavia Project. He has poetry, stories, and essays in StarLine*, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Foreign Policy Magazine, Tor.com, New Modality, Solarpunk Magazine, Apex, Clockwork Phoenix Five, Lightspeed, and others. Daydreamer, his debut middle grade novel, is a finalist for the Andre Norton, the Nebula award for middle grade and YA.

Max Limric is a pre-service teacher in elementary education entering a co-teaching year at Greens Farms Academy in Westport, Connecticut. He became interested in the power of children and young-adult texts while taking classes at Fairfield University, and further learned the power of literature when attending and presenting at the annual conference of the National Council of English. He grew up with speculative stories, being brought into the worlds of Harry Potter and The NeverEnding Story, and looks forward to unlocking their potential in his future classroom.

About The Write Time

The Write Time is a special series of NWP Radio, a podcast of the National Writing Project (NWP), where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. View the archive...

Ellen Oh is an award-winning author and editor of middle grade and young adult books such as The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee, YOU ARE HERE, Haru Zombie Dog Hero, Finding Junie Kim, The Dragon Egg Princess, The Spirit Hunters series (Books 1, 2, and 3), and the Prophecy trilogy (Prophecy, Warrior; and King). She is also the editor of WNDB's middle grade anthology Flying Lessons and Other Stories, and the YA anthology A Thousand Beginnings and Endings. Ellen is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books (WNDB), a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing diversity in children's literature. Originally from New York City, Ellen now lives in Rockville, Maryland, with her husband, three children, two dogs, and has yet to satisfy her quest for a decent bagel.

Melissa Thom, MA, (she/her) is a teacher librarian at Bristow Middle School in West Hartford, CT. She has been an educator for 22 years and is the immediate past President of the Connecticut Association of School Librarians (CASL). She was a 2019 AASL Social Media Superstar Reader Leader finalist and a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2022. In her free time, she sews #LiteracyInspiredCrafts for her Joyful Making Etsy Shop.