Sweetland Center for Writing's Writer to Writer series lets you hear directly from University of Michigan professors about their challenges, processes, and expectations as writers and also as readers of student writing. Each semester, Writer to Writer pairs one esteemed University professor with a Sweetland faculty member for a conversation about writing.

This month Writer to Writer welcomes Phil Deloria. Philip J. Deloria is the Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan, where he has appointments in the Departments of History and American Culture and the Programs in Environment and Native American Studies. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1994, and came to Michigan in 2001, following six years at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Professor Deloria’s research focuses on the social, cultural and political histories of the relations between American Indians and the United States. His prizewinning 1998 book Playing Indian, traced “Indian play” from the Boston Tea Party to the New Age movement, while his 2004 book Indians in Unexpected Places, examined the ideologies surrounding Indian people in the early twentieth century and the ways Native Americans challenged them through sports, travel, automobility, and film and musical performance. He is in the process of completing American Studies: A User's Guide, which surveys methods of interpretation and writing, and Toward an American Indian Abstract, an extended piece of art criticism.

Writer to Writer takes place at the Literati bookstore and are broadcast live on WCBN radio. These conversations offer students a rare glimpse into the writing that professors do outside the classroom. You can hear instructors from various disciplines describe how they handle the same challenges student writers face, from finding a thesis to managing deadlines. Professors will also discuss what they want from student writers in their courses, and will take questions put forth by students and by other members of the University community. If there's anything you've ever wanted to ask a professor about writing, Writer to Writer gives you the chance.