Classes & Workshops For Youth

Creative Writing Day Camps & Workshops
for Children & Teens

For details about SummerWrite 2002, including registration fees, see the SummerWrite 2002 General Information Page.

Week 1: June 24–28

Ages 8-12

Create a Radio Show

• Instructor: Maria Gillard [ bio ]
• Ages: 8–12
• Mornings, 9 a.m.–Noon, June 24–28

Live radio was what people listened to for entertainment before television.

CREATING a show is a BLAST! It involves developing characters, dialogue and stories with sound effects. It's composing jingles for advertising fun things. It's music, poetry and journalism all in one!

This is a great opportunity for you to develop a variety of skills in writing, public speaking, and acting, and a fun way to use your imagination! Anyone who plays a musical instrument, loves to sing and is interested in writing, acting, and comedy is encouraged to attend.

On the last day, we will perform and tape our show before a live audience.

Explore, Experience, Write Now!

• Instructor: Nic Darling [ bio ]
• Ages: 8–12
• Afternoons, 1–4 p.m., June 24–28

In this fun, active workshop, mixing visual arts and writing, we will take observation walks and visit locales and landscapes such as the Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester Museum & Science Center, and artists' studios. We will open our eyes, ears, and pores to the history, the life, the difficulty, the reason, the absurdity, and the fun of the art in our community. Back at Writers & Books, we'll discuss, sort out observations and feelings, and write responses to our experiences in easy-going, creative ways.

Each participant will take away a collection of writing from this week-long exploration.

Ages: 13–18

Travel Writing: Destination Summer

• Instructor: Karen vanMeenen [ bio ]
• Ages 13-18
• Mornings, 9 a.m.–Noon, June 24–28

Are you a traveler? Do you spend summers at camp, on the road with your family, at your grandparents' cottage, or at home basking by the pool? Do you like to document your summer vacations by writing in a journal and taking photographs?

Join us as we get excited about our summer forays and plan the best ways to keep a written and visual record of our adventures. We will read travel writing from around the world and learn the easiest ways of writing about experiences in the moment, keeping things organized and eventually combining them into a book of your summer life experience.

In September, we will gather together again to see what we have come up with, and share the experiences of travel and writing. This course is appropriate for any travelers with an interest in writing and the tendency to observe the world around them, whether in Penfield or Peru.

The Return of Beauregard

• Instructor: David Ruekberg [ bio ]
• Ages: 13–18
• Afternoons 1–4 p.m, June 24–28

What the heck is a Beauregard anyway? I'm not sure either, but maybe we'll find out by the end of the week.

This fabulous course will urge you to write in brand new ways and in the same old ways, using lessons from dead white guys, living blue women, and your own Inner Barney. Poetry, fiction writing, personal narrative–whatever your bag is, we'll color it, stretch it, clip it, give it wings, and sing it.

We'll also work on a "no more tears" approach to sharing your drafts, and end with a chapbook, graduation, and cheese puffs.

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