The Lit Crawl has been an annual occurrence for the past seven years during the Mission Creek Festival and will return to Iowa City this weekend. On Friday evening, the crawl will wind its way through numerous locations in central Iowa City.

Joe Tiefenthaler, the Mission Creek Festival literary director, organized the seventh-annual Lit Crawl.

“Literature was a core component of the festival from the very beginning and Mission Creek, now in its 11th year, the literature has definitely grown along with all of these other components,” Tiefenthaler said.

The crawl consists of more than 50 authors and 17 publishers coming together for an evening of reading new work, discussing the literary world, and socializing. Some of the professionals are coming in from Los Angeles and New York to attend the festival.

“[The event] has spaces where you expect to see writers and many, many spaces you don’t normally get to see them,” Tiefenthaler said.

Although he is excited to spend time with various members of the literary profession, he is also eager to see the community members who show up to the Mission Creek Festival.

“I love just seeing people walking around from event to event,” he said. “In past years, I’ve been really excited by the numbers of people I see out, and the faces that I know, and the faces I don’t, people from the community, or people that drive in … some of the audience members who I get to talk to and find out what they liked and what they discovered. Also, what did they not like? And what did they miss? I think it’s always just fun to see that group of audience-goers traveling from one venue to the next.”

Tiefenthaler encourages the community to come to the event because it provides an opportunity they don’t get in everyday life.