Writing center consultations are built of writer and consultant relationships, interactions, and differences. Listening is a stance that facilitates navigation of these differences that are so inherent to writing centers. Yet listening has long been undervalued in Western society and in rhetoric and composition and writing center scholarship. To that end, I investigated the roles of listening in writing center consultations at the University of Louisville University Writing Center, exploring the perspectives of 14 writer and consultant participants. For this mixed methods case study, I collected observations, surveys, interviews, and asynchronous responses to follow-up questions. I also synthesized three listening theories that attend to relations and differences between self and other: dialogic listening, rhetorical listening, and listening otherwise. Listening's connections with openness, understanding, and power have a number of implications for the writing center. Listening involves openness to alterity and change, which requires and facilitates disruption of preconceptions. Through listening and openness, writers and consultants acknowledge the other as an individual, allowing them to better address the unique person and situation before them. More, through the collaboration inherent to listening and through listening's facilitation of dialogue and agency, listening allows for collaboration within the inevitable power differentials present in consultations. This refutes two common writing center preconceptions: that collaboration requires power balance and that the directive approach precludes collaboration. Finally, listening involves an attempt at understanding the other while acknowledging that a full understanding can never be reached. Listening to understand can help guide consultation approach, strengthen writer development, promote collaboration, and mitigate the risk involved in improvisation. I present this conceptualization of listening as a framework entitled "listening within difference." This framework involves four principles: recognizing self as other, turning toward, co-creating a space between, and co-creating meaning. This project concludes with recommendations for explicitly incorporating listening into consultant training and guidebooks. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]