RUTHE THOMPSON is a professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University.

RISE B. AXELROD is director of English composition and McSweeney Professor of Rhetoric and Teaching Excellence at the University of California, Riverside. She has previously been professor of English at California State University, San Bernardino, director of the College Expository Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and assistant director of the Third College Composition Program at the University of California, San Bernardino.

CHARLES R. COOPER is an emeritus professor in the department of literature at the University of California, San Diego, where he served as coordinator of the Third College Composition Program, Dimensions of Culture Program, and Campus Writing Programs. He has also been co-director of the San Diego Writing Project, one of the National Writing Project Centers. He is coeditor, with Lee Odell, of Evaluating Writing and Research on Composing: Points of Departure , and coauthor, with Susan Peck MacDonald, of Writing the World (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000).

Together, Axelrod and Cooper have coauthored The St. Martin's Guide to Writing and, with Allison Warriner, Reading Critically, Writing Well.