Literary Arts Workshops

Join the SLCC Community Writing Center (CWC) and the Utah Arts Festival for three days packed with fun writing activities for all, from workshops for kids and adults to the annual Wasatch IronPen competition. For information on performing literary artists, visit the Literary Performances page.

Have Your Say!: Gigantic Magnetic Poetry Walls

Everyone can be a poet, especially with gigantic magnetic words! Come share your words on the CWC’s magnetic poetry walls.

Write Fest Activities

Stop by the Community Writing Center any time to participate in a variety of fun writing activities.

Daily, Noon to 9pm

• Comic Book Panels
• Exquisite Corpse Poems (Community Poetry Writing)
• Flash Fiction
• Flash Poetry
• Flash Wilderness Writing
• Found Poetry
• Letters for the CWC's Letterbox
• Paper Cranes
• Pride Letters
• Songwriting: Write the Line of a Song
• Spinny Wheel Writing
• Zines

Wasatch IronPen Competition

Wasatch IronPen Literary Marathon And Ultra Marathon!

Writers of all experience levels can register for the marathon at the SLCC Community Writing Center (located at Library Square, Suite 8) or register online (IronPen registration or Ultra Marathon registration). Participants must register by Friday, June 28, at 6:00pm. Registration for the IronPen is $10 for one genre (Fiction, Non-fiction, or Poetry) or $15 for the IronPen Ultra (all three genres).

After receiving the prompt on Friday, June 28th at 6:00pm, writers will have exactly 24 hours to write. Submissions are due Saturday, June 29th at 6:00pm. Visit the CWC website or call 801-957-2192 for more details.

Winners will receive a gift card to the King’s English bookstore and a CWC gift bag. Honorable Mentions will receive a gift bag of CWC swag. Competition Winners and Honorable Mentions will be announced and invited to read from their IronPen works on June 30th at the WordFest Stage.

On Friday, June 28, 2024 at 6:00pm, a prompt will be posted on the CWC’s Facebook (@CommunityWritingCenter) and Instagram (@slcc_cwc) feeds. Participants must meaningfully incorporate the prompt into their submission. After receiving the prompt, writers will have exactly 24 hours to write.

Submissions are due via Submittable by 6:00pm on June 29, 2024.

Call for Submissions

Lake as Legacy/Lake as Future: Great Salt Lake Anthology 2024

The SLCC Community Writing Center is part of the Great Salt Lake Collaborative (GSLC), a Solutions Journalism collaborative of more than a dozen Utah organizations working together to share stories about Great Salt Lake and ways to protect our city’s dying namesake. For 2024, we are proud to announce a call for submissions for the "Lake as Legacy/Lake as Future" Community Anthology 2024.

We're especially interested in speculative fiction—written, visual, multimedia, performance—that responds to the themes of "lake as legacy" and/or "lake as future."

What is speculative fiction? There are debates about what this super genre encompasses. For the purposes of the 2024 Great Salt Lake Community Anthology, "speculative fiction" is an umbrella genre in which writers/creators speculate on big the "what if?" question about the past, present, and future. Speculative fiction includes science fiction, climate fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural, apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, dystopian, utopian, and other forms of storytelling centered on that "what if?" question in ways that blend and blur reality with the not-yet-possible or with the entirely fantastical.

• We will consider submissions outside of speculative fiction as long as they directly and meaningfully respond to the "lake as legacy" and "lake as future" themes.
• Text-based submissions over 3,000 words that are accepted will be excerpted for the print edition. The entirety of the work will be published online.
• This call is open to any writer, photographer, performing artist, and visual artist ages 15 and older.
• NOTE: editors and designers will make small edits for clarity and design consistency.
• Submissions must be submitted via Submittable no later than 11:59 p.m. on June 30, 2024.

A "Lake as Legacy/Lake as Future" Reading Gala will be held in the late summer/early fall. Contributors to the anthology will be given a print edition of the anthology and an opportunity to read from their work at the gala. More details will be shared in June.

Submit Your Work  

Schedule

Events held at Community Writing Center except where noted. Please check the Festival app for most up-to-date schedule.