This article was written as a follow-up to several professional presentations on the conversational metaphor for teaching research writing. It has been submitted for possible inclusion in a special issue of Research Strategies focused on the 2005 WILU (Workshops in Library Use) conference in Guelph, CanadaThis article is a follow up to an earlier publication that developed the rationale for using conversation as a metaphor to teach research writing. We presented this proposed teaching approach at several conferences, including WILU in May 2005 at Guelph, Canada. The discussions with participants in these presentations validated the tenets of the conversational metaphor for research writing. Here we provide a description of the ‘research’ activities in the presentations, the subsequent responses by participants, and our follow up thoughts on these responses. This dialogue between participants and the authors/presenters constitutes the metaconversation about teaching research writing.