Writers Read: Summer Camp, June 30

Anyone who has read more than one of these Blogs will note that this is what my site is: it’s about writers reading their works in public — which there is a lot of here in Albany. But not nearly as structured as Writers Read — as it says on it’s website, “We’re a high-quality platform for true, personal stories—650 words, five minutes long—read aloud before an audience by the writer in our highly popular live shows at City Winery New York.” This reading was held in Albany, NY at The Linda, WAMC’s performance space.

The host was Edward McCann, founder & executive editor, with 16 readers of, as far as I could tell without knowing where the line breaks were, prose memoirs on the topic of Summer Camp experiences (or lack there-of). Many of the stories were tinged with humor, sometimes emotionally wrought, sometimes ironic. 

I was surprised by the variety of Summer Camps:

a camp with horses (Wanda Fischer, “Living Camp Through Brochures”); Catholic camps (Susan Toohey, “Ah, Summer Camp, 1968”; Mara Lefebvre, “Misfit Camper”); a camp for the visually impaired (Robert Gumson, “Lighthouse Camp”); gender-segregated camp (Joseph Di Bari, ”The Unenlightened Voyeur”); camp for kids with asthma (Louis Wittig, “Gulag”); Scout camp (Peter Finn, “Unnamed Summit”); a daycare day camp (Casey Vincelettes, “Mulberry”); & then the no-camp/family camp (Carol Fitzgibbons, “Summers on Tully Lake”; Barbara Chepaitis, “Camp Can-You-Dig-It?”).

Then there were the experiences of counselors, either being one (Paul Grondahl, “A Magical Canoe Adventure”), or cruel punishment (Emily Rubin, “Latrine Days”); or trying to pass a swimming test (Kim van Alkemade, “Deep Water Test”).

And sometimes a memory of a specific event, (Stephen Madarazs, “Night March at Camp Wauwepex”); Margaret Reynolds, “Black Tag on Cass Road”); (Anthony Cresswell, “Sentry at the Swamp”).

It all sounded like fun — most of the time. Good writing anyways, whether one went to summer camp, or not. 

There are photos of each of the readers in the album “Writers Read: Summer Camp” at my Flickr site. And visit the Writers Read website for information & for their Call for Entries.