Lisa Wright and co-editors Natasha Tinsley, Anna Sicari, and Hillary Coenen’s Peitho Cluster Conversation, Addressing The Barriers Between Us and that Future: (Feminist) Activist Coalition Building in Writing Studies is live! The conversation brings together experienced activists and social justice workers who show up to do antiracist and social justice work in our writing and academic spaces: our writing centers, programs, and classrooms through a feminist space: Peitho. The collection shares lived experiences of writing practitioners to provide grounded examples of the tensions and obstacles they have experienced and/or the subversive tactics they have implemented in their writing spaces since states like Oklahoma, Texas, and Florida (and the list of states is currently growing) have passed laws banning critical race theory, and scholarship and discussion on gender and identity in higher education. We hope this conversation will serve as a resource, a connective tissue of some sort, for how we build and maintain authentic coalitions within/and outside academia, in all writing spaces.

Audre Lorde reminds us that the feminist activist movement will be successful when, “We are anchored in our own place and time, looking out and beyond to the future we are creating, and we are part of communities that interact. While we fortify ourselves with visions of the future, we must arm ourselves with accurate perceptions of the barriers between us and that future” (57). Therefore, this Cluster Conversation with Peitho aims to benefit a broad range of practitioners and instructors in writing studies, but particularly those at the margins, as well as community and social justice activists.