Youth Summer Camp: 5th-8th Graders with Denise Santomauro

IN PERSON for Summer 2023

StoryStudio is proud to offer multiple week-long writing workshops for young scribes across the nation. That’s right, now that we’re online, you can join us from anywhere. With our talented instructors, young writers can expect to learn elements of writing, build friendships and community with fellow peers, and get feedback on their creative works. Check out our different sessions here, ranging from 5th grade to 12th grade, and a special session for our genre writers.

StoryStudio is pleased to offer full scholarships to students who are unable to meet the tuition requirements.
If your child would like to apply for a scholarship, please ask them to fill out this form.

June 26 – 30 9am – 12pm Central
Welcome back to the Studio! We’re excited to have Denise Santomauro leading an in-person camp for grades 5-8.

Do you love to write? Do you spend your free time scribbling in notebooks, scratching poems in the margins of your math homework, and thinking up stories and characters? Then this workshop is for you—guaranteed to inspire you and keep you writing all summer long!

In this week-long Creative Writing Camp, campers will write without worrying about grades or deadlines, create new work and polish existing pages, and work closely with professional writers who will help to guide their process and answer any questions about writing, publishing, living the writing life, and more.

Throughout the week, writers will craft personal essays, short stories, and poems and present one of their works at our Friday showcase for family and friends. Best of all, campers get to meet other teenage writers who are serious and excited about their stories!

The week will have several components:

• Mentor Readings: Students will read a piece of published creative work and discuss it each day as craft discussion.
• Writing: Writing prompts will spark imagination, help break through blocks, and encourage new heights of creativity. Each day, Zac will have students send their work to him and he will read, make comments, and return the work with feedback the following day.
• Workshopping: You will share work and give feedback on what’s working well and what opportunities we can find in each piece (whether it’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or theater). We’ll talk about where we can extend scenes and dialogue to push the narrative, how word choice can affect the piece as a whole, how to spice up language and how writers can find—and trust—their own amazing original voice.
• Showcase: Campers will have the opportunity to rehearse and perform their written work via Zoom. A link can be shared with friends and family members from around the globe; anyone who wants to tune in is welcome.

Denise Santomauro is a writer, editor, author coach, and teaching artist. She has over a decade of experience in arts education working with young people of all ages. As an arts educator, she’s worked with the Auditorium Theatre, Columbia College, Northern Illinois University, Imagination Theater, and more, and has taught fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and playwriting classes, as well as used the performing arts as a way to help young people tell their stories. In her own writing, she has written middle grade and young adult novels, developed plays and scenes for young people, contributed content to many blogs, been published in the Dear Sister anthology, and performed live lit around Chicago. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.