Nancy Sommers

Nancy Sommers studies the writing development of college students. As principal investigator of the Harvard Study of Undergraduate Writing, she tracked the college writing experiences of 400 students from the Harvard Class of 2001 to understand the complex role writing plays in undergraduate education.

For 20 years, Sommers led Harvard's Expository Writing Program, as the Sosland Chair in Expository Writing and as a senior lecturer. In addition to directing Harvard's college writing program, she established and directed the Harvard Writing Project, a cross-disciplinary writing program, and conducted a series of studies, sponsored by two Harvard presidents, to research Harvard's culture of undergraduate writing. Sommers is an internationally recognized leader in the field of writing studies and a prize-winning writer. Her articles "Revision Strategies of Student and Experienced Writers," "Responding to Student Writing," and "Between the Drafts" are three of the most widely read and anthologized articles in the field. Her films "Shaped by Writing", "Across the Drafts," and "Beyond the Red Ink" have received international recognition for their celebration of student writers. Sommers is a blogger for Huffington Post, and the author of four college writing handbooks, A Writer's Reference, Rules for Writers, A Pocket Style Manual, and The Bedford Handbook.