The Writer’s Center in downtown Bethesda, which celebrated its 35th anniversary Dec. 17, offers abundant resources for students and aspiring writers alike.

The Center’s mission is to cultivate the creation, publication and presentation of literary work. Most of the events are held in Bethesda, but the Center also has locations in Annapolis, Arlington, Capitol Hill, Glen Echo, Leesburg, McLean and Rockville.

The Center annually offers 260 writing workshops, lectures and seminars for all ages. The “Story/Stereo” series, one of its more innovative workshops, brings emerging writers and bands together to perform.

Many members that attend the readings or classes are regulars, which helps promote a sense of community, representative Jenny Napolitano said.

“The same people are in the classes with each other, and they all keep in touch with each other and get to know the instructors,” she said. “The primary concern is to maintain a sense of literary community.”

Composition assistant Orion Hyson started attending workshops and lectures at the Writer’s Center when she moved to D.C. in 1981 and has kept coming back.

“This summer, I took a wonderful class called ‘The Extreme Novelist,’ and the premise was so refreshing,” Hyson said. “I’ve always wanted to write a novel, but I’ve been too intimidated or busy to do so. Fate and the Writer’s Center converged to make it possible.”

Although Hyson didn’t finish writing the novel in the allotted eight-week window, she said she still enjoyed the class because of its leader, author Kathryn Johnson, and her fresh take on conquering the novel-writing process.

“Our workshop leader Kathryn was a pro,” Hyson said. “She had many tricks for the challenges of writing a novel, and I have really enjoyed all of the classes I have taken.”

Although much of the workshop’s client base is adults, classes are also geared toward high school students. The Center offers teen creative writing workshops, popular workshops on writing college application essays and summer classes for high school students. The teen creative writing class focuses on improving students’ poetry, fiction and non-fiction writing skills in a welcoming environment.

The Center also holds events for school competitions and readings. Junior Ali Foreman participated in the Poetry Out Loud competition at the Center last year.

“I really liked it,” Foreman said. “It seemed like they put a lot of effort into creating an open forum for teaching outside of the classroom.”

Along with classes that help with writing college essays, the Center also offers readings from authors geared toward high school students, such as Charles Shields, who wrote a biography on Kurt Vonnegut. Other planned readings for 2012 are Stanley Plumly, Maryland’s Poet Laureate, and novelist Bharati Mukherjee.

When choosing authors for readings, the Center tries to balance the schedule between well-known and up-and-coming authors, assistant director Sunil Freeman said.

“We like to have a range of ‘big-name’ authors and other good writers who might not be as well-known,” he said. “One challenge we have when scheduling readings is there are simply too many good authors who would like to read here and a limited number of days and times to have readings.”

Hyson strongly recommends the Writer’s Center to students, whether they want to improve their writing or be exposed to other talented writers.

“It’s an extremely welcoming environment with very high quality instruction and an interesting and dynamic community that has certainly stood the test of time marvelously.”