Rachel Ignotofsky is a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator, based in Santa Barbara. She grew up in New Jersey on a healthy diet of cartoons and pudding and graduated from Tyler School of Art in 2011. Her work is inspired by history and science. She believes that illustration is a powerful tool that can make learning exciting. She has a passion for taking dense information and making it fun and accessible. Rachel hopes to use her work to spread her message about scientific literacy and feminism.
Bryan Ripley Crandall has an interesting story with technology, as he remembers vividly the envy he felt when his best friend, Peter Boy, got the first home computer of the neighborhood and, later, when his college classmates came to campus with clunky, but helpful, keyboard machines. He taught for over a decade in Louisville, Kentucky, and became part of the 21st cohort of the Louisville Writing Project. It was then he began thinking about the ways technology was shifting his own classroom instruction. In fact, he was first published in Teaching the New Writing: Technology, Change, and Assessment in the 21st Century Classroom, edited by Anne Herington, Kevin Hodgson, and Charles Moran. Ah, but he confesses that he knew little about the history of the computer until reading Rachel Ignatofsky’s book.
The urge to write can be a mysterious calling. There are so many different ways to understand not only the why of writing, but what one gets out of it. As part of the ongoing celebration of the National Day on Writing every October 20, the National Writing Project has collected the thoughts of NWP Writers Council members from all walks of life—scientists, reporters, poets, teachers—to discover why they write.