Conference on Community Writing

In partnership with the Coalition for Community Writing and the Honey W. Nashman Center for Public Service and Civic Engagement, the University Writing Program is proud to host the 2021 Conference on Community Writing, October 21-23

This year’s theme is “Weaving Narratives for Social Justice Action in the Local, National and Global.”   

The Conference will bring together more than 450 writers, scholars, students, and teachers from across the country and the world. 

Our agenda is jam-packed with 14 workshops,  6 DeepThink Tanks,  70 live panel discussions,  3 featured lunchtime roundtables,  and 2 evening keynote presentations. We will have 40 on-demand videos to watch before,  during and after the conference. 

The Conference on Community Writing focuses on writing as a framework to explore how change happens. In the work of social change, writing is necessary, contemplative, therapeutic, coalition-building, and action-based. People coordinate strategies, celebrate successes, design curricula, preserve the past, proclaim manifestos, compose grant proposals, measure outcomes, collaborate across expertise, and much, much more. They create space to pause, reflect, meditate, connect with allies, and then act. In each instance, through their writing processes and products, writers convey the values of who they are, and a shared vision for what will come. By exploring, affirming, and questioning writing processes and artifacts, CCW participants name and examine concrete moments of social change, and by doing so, chart a path toward justice.