Cindy O’Donnell-Allen is a full professor in the English department at Colorado State University, where she directs the CSU Writing Project. She was a secondary English teacher in Oklahoma for 11 years and became a member of the Oklahoma Writing Project in 1991. She is a National Writing Project Connected Learning Ambassador, has served on the National Writing Project Board of Directors, and formerly co-chaired the NWP Teacher Inquiry Communities Network. Cindy is the author of numerous articles, chapters, and two books—Tough Talk, Tough Texts: Teaching English to Change the World and The Book Club Companion: Fostering Strategic Readers in the Secondary Classroom—as well as a co-curator for Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom.