The purpose of this essay is to discuss current views of public writing and contribute notions of qualitative research and cultural geography to these conversations. The author also provides two pedagogical examples of how these contributions inform student writing and civic participation in various public spaces. The author believes that public writing must identify the actual places and material practices where both the public and the private are experienced physically and spatially, not just socially and rhetorically, if public writing is to have an embodied effect on everyday life. (Contains 9 notes.)