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This project has been part of our lives for a long time. It began in 2011 when all the editors were working at the Michigan State University (MSU) Writing Center, Trixie Smith as the director and the rest of us as graduate students. Every day we found ourselves grappling with issues and ideas connected to graduate writers through our work at the writing center: working one-to-one with graduate writers, facilitating graduate writing groups, and offering workshops for graduate students, such as our Navigating the Ph.D. workshop series. The work was also personally relevant to most of us since we were graduate students at the time, frequently finding ourselves experiencing imposter syndrome and letting our identities as graduate students consume our lives. Little did we-excepting Trixie, perhaps-know then that our interest in graduate writing would intensify when we became junior faculty and found that we still faced many of the same writing-related concerns that we did as graduate students.Our motivations for developing this edited collection on graduate writing across the disciplines began when we turned from interacting with graduate writers to researching graduate writers and graduate writing. When the Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures department at MSU began an initiative to create research clusters that bring faculty, staff, and students together to engage in conducting academic research and developing publications, we decided that a research cluster focusing on graduate writing would be ideal. We participated in this Graduate Writing Research Cluster for the two years that we were all still at MSU and continued to collaborate when we began moving into faculty positions outside of MSU. Our collaboration culminated in a special issue of Across the Disciplines and this edited collection. What

Brooks-Gillies 'I was told not to go to the Writing Center, that the Writing Center wasn't for me'.These words came from an undergraduate student on the first day of class in my writing center education course, required for students interested in becoming writing consultants i at the center I direct. His words took me by surprise. The studenta Black ii man who was a returning student, raised in Ghana, and a long-time US resident -continued, 'One of my Africana Studies professors said, "The Writing Center isn't for you", to my class'. He indicated that it was understood that the University Writing Center (UWC) saw language difference as a deficit, not an asset. The perception he shared indicated that the UWC was not designed to support Black students or international students, that the UWC did not support language rights. He was taking the class because he wanted to change the Center; he said, 'It's better to change something from the inside'.The event I've recounted happened in autumn 2015 during my first semester as the director of the UWC. I was in my first month and trying hard to listen to my staff and observe my surroundings. I had just moved across the country with my husband and 2-month-old son; I was navigating change in every part of my life. As a White, non-disabled, monolingual,

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