Writing begins with unconscious feelings of something that insistently demands to be responded to, acted upon, or elaborated into a new entity. Writers make things that matter-treaties, new species, software, and letters to the editor-as they interact with other humans of all kinds. As they write, they also continually remake themselves. In The Animal Who Writes, Cooper considers writing as a social practice and as an embodied behavior that is particularly important to human animals. The author argues that writing is an act of composing enmeshed in nature-cultures and is homologous with technology as a mode of making. AUTHOR: Marilyn M. Cooper is Emerita Professor of Humanities at Michigan Technological University.