Continuing the Conversation: From Conference Presentation to Publication

Abstract

Because we recognize that many students in graduate and undergraduate courses focused on writing center theory and practice are offered advice and encouragement on how to repurpose class assignments into conference presentations or to represent the results of research conducted during writing center sessions into posters but are likely to find few articles that “offer practical wisdom on how to achieve this essential goal” (Murphy 5), we offer our narratives in an attempt to fill that void. Our narratives describe two common approaches to moving research from a conference presentation to a published article: Alexis began with a brief conference paper, whereas Lindsay had an article in progress prior to presenting her argument and analysis at a conference. By offering readers a glimpse into our motivations for presenting conference papers and sharing how we went about revising our arguments after the conferences, we hope to provide insight into processes for transitioning a conference presentation into a published article and to offer strategies about how to extend scholarly conversations that begin at a conference into scholarly publications in academic journals.