Summer Writing Camps For Teenagers
We're offering two summer camp classes for teenage writers entering 10th-12th grade this fall. These Zoom classes will be taught by published experts in the field, compassionate teachers and writers who will motivate your teenager during a summer when normal social and educational opportunities are limited.
The imagination abounds. It cannot be suppressed! Whether your child needs an outlet for expression, a creative community experience, or ideas about how to approach college application essays in the near future, our summer camps are designed to engage and inspire their creative work.
PERSONAL ESSAY CAMP FOR TEENS ENROLLMENT CLOSED
Speaking Your Truth
June 21-25
1-3pm
We all have stories to share, but we don't always have the time or support to share those stories. During this course, we will respond to structured prompts and study various techniques that will help us write about our experiences in a way that will highlight our unique voices and provide a powerful message to share with our readers.
Whether composing our narratives for a college application, or simply learning how to write personal non-fiction for fun, this class will allow you to explore and discover more about yourself through your language, deep reflection, and a few laughs along the way. Join this class if you're interested in professionally and artistically speaking your truth!
POETRY CAMP FOR TEENS
The Music and Magic of Poetry
July 19-23
1-3pm
"If it ain't fun, it ain't poetry," said William Carlos Williams... or something to that effect. With this in mind, join this rigorous, immersive class for younger poets who are interested in dabbling with syllables, rhymes, and images.
During our week together we’ll explore some of the vital genres of poetry, including the sonnet, ode, and love poem. We'll also look at fun titles and forms. Usually we will begin our inquiries into these elements by studying the work of contemporary poets like Danusha Lameris, Chen Chen, Javier Zamora, Victoria Chang, and Jericho Brown.
Workshop discussions and challenging, playful writing assignments will enhance each writer's own unique method of crafting poems. This class will offer strategies and techniques that will create more lyric energy and magic in each writer's writing! The lessons learned here will also translate to other forms of creative writing, such as fiction and narrative nonfiction.
Alan Chazaro taught high school English and writing for 9 years in New Orleans, Boston, and Oakland. He is the author of This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album and Piñata Theory, both from Black Lawrence Press. He is currently a creative writing adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, and is a writer and editor of NBA stories at HeadFake. You can read more about Alan's work here.
David Roderick is the author of Blue Colonial (American Poetry Review, 2006), winner of the APR/Honickman Award, and The Americans (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), winner of the Julie Suk Award. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Roderick’s other honors include the Amy Lowell Traveling Scholarship and a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. David co-directs and teaches at Left Margin LIT, a creative writing center serving writers in Berkeley, California. Before becoming a writer he taught middle school and high school for five years. You can read more about David's work here.