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This bestseller is a collection of fun exercises and inspiring ideas to encourage even the most reluctant writer to put words on paper. Adult basic education and ESL educators will appreciate this user-friendly manual that provides detailed steps for each writing activity, samples of student writing, and ways to adapt the activity for students at different literacy levels. After reading this delightful handbook, you will walk into the classroom with the confidence to try out the ideas in Writing Out Loud.

This manual is a must-have for your resource collection. The opening chapters discuss the importance of and strategies for creating a safe environment so that reluctant writers feel ready to overcome their fears and take a risk. The remaining chapters contain dozens of writing exercises and ideas collected from adult literacy educators. The final chapter stresses the importance of celebrating students' writing through publishing and public readings.

In his introduction to the book, bestselling author Loren D. Estleman says "It's hard work being Deborah Morgan." A multiple award-winning author in both the mystery and western arenas, Morgan has collected here in JUNCTION a selection of stories guaranteed to show you why. Join her at the crossroad and choose which of her versatile characters you’ll visit first, from FBI agent turned antiques picker Jeff Talbot (from the bestselling Antique Lovers Mysteries) to Detroit’s hard-boiled P.I. Mary Shelley and to the motley and indomitable cast found in her tales of the old—and changing—west. Entries in this collection include two never-before-published stories: fittingly, one is western, the other is mystery. “Tinsel Town” offers a glimpse of the Hollywood frontier, courtesy of Tully and Wall—two bona fide cowboys looking to lasso an easier life. “Campaign for a Corpse” plops Jeff Talbot into the middle of a glamper (glamorous camper) event at a campground where someone’s been murdered. Through this collection, you’ll walk Motown’s mean streets and ride the vast and often brutal frontier; you’ll get an inside look at Jeff Talbot’s killer antiques world, as well as towns struggling for survival—whether they be contemporary Detroit or beyond the lawless threshold of the nineteenth-century west. Award-winning author Loren D. Estleman says in his introduction to JUNCTION: “There are no low points between these covers. Working fields as tried-and-true as the western and the mystery, [Morgan] manages to reinvent the genres with freshness, wit, and a way with a phrase that makes one think of a master cabinetmaker hand-rubbing raw mahogany to a high gloss. Call it talent, genius, or magic; what follows is all those things and the bucket of sweat we call professionalism.”