Cedar City — Writers and English teachers from across Utah received top-notch instruction during the annual Fall Creative Writing Conference Sept. 16 through last Saturday at Southern Utah University.

Dr. Danielle Dubrasky, a published poet and SUU professor of creative writing, organized the event and called it “the most successful” conference yet.

“There are significantly more people attending the conference this year,” Dubrasky said. “And it’s due, in part, to the caliber of writers we get to come in.”

Each year the conference organizes for accomplished writers of all creative genres to come to Cedar City to offer instruction as well as advice about writing and teaching adolescents to write.

One of this year’s visiting writers was poet W.S. Di Piero from Stanford University. Di Piero has written nine collections of poetry, four collections of essays, and has translated poetry by Giacomo Liapardi and Leonardo Sinisgalli. He teaches undergraduate courses on poetry and the Stegner Fellow Workshop at Stanford University.

Joining Di Piero was Alison Deming, a nonfiction writer and professor from the University of Arizona. Deming identifies herself as a poet, essayist and teacher, and much of her work focuses on her interactions with and experiences in nature.

The conference kicked off the evening of Sept. 16 at the Cedar City Library in the Park with a discussion, led by Di Piero, concerning some of his publications as well as his philosophy concerning poetry.

“To me, poetry is about taking that internal world that we all live with and bringing to the real world we all live in,” he said concerning his work.

On Thursday evening at the Hunter Conference Center, Di Piero and Deming gave a reading of their work to a capacity audience. Di Piero read work from his book of poems, “Chinese Apples: New and Selected Poems,” as well as several new, unpublished poems, while Deming read a short essay along with several of her own poems including one inspired by a previous trip to southern Utah.

On Friday Di Piero and Deming both gave workshops focusing on the conferences’ theme of “Writing the Hero/Heroine’s Story.” Participants engaged in discussion concerning methodology and application of writing techniques and engaged in writing exercises to put the theories discussed into immediate action.

There was also a chance for advanced writing students at SUU to engage in small group workshops with the visiting writer. This experience allowed students to get professional advice and critiques on specific pieces of writing, as well as how to be a better writer in general.

Deming said she loves the opportunity to come to Cedar City and work with student writers. “Southern Utah is a very unique place,” she said. “And the writers here have a very unique voice and I just love to see it form.”