Lester L. Laminack is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Birth-Kindergarten, Elementary and Middle Grades Education at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina where he received two awards for excellence in teaching. He is now a full-time writer and consultant working with schools throughout the United States. Lester is an active member of the National Council of Teachers of English and served as co-editor of Primary Voices and the children’s book review column of Language Arts. He is the current column editor for The Writing Department of the ILA journal, The Reading Teacher. His academic publications include several books including Learning with Zachary(Scholastic), Spelling in Use (NCTE), Volunteers Working with Young Readers (NCTE), and his contributions to The Writing Workshop: Working Through the Hard Parts (NCTE), Learning Under the Influence of Language and Literature (Heinemann), Reading Aloud Across the Curriculum (Heinemann), The Writing Teacher’s

Troubleshooting Guide (Heinemann), Writers ARE Readers (Heinemann), Bullying Hurts (Heinemann), Cracking Open the Author’s Craft (Scholastic), and Unwrapping the Read Aloud (Scholastic). 

 

In his Writers ARE Readers session the mutually supportive roles of reading and writing are made visible through the idea of "flipsides": how reader's insights can be turned into his own writing, and vice versa.