Writers Unbound: Middle School Iowa Youth Writing Project Summer Camp 2025

Iowa Youth Writing Project Summer Camp!

Monday, August 11-Friday, August 15, 2025

Ages: 11-14

8:30am-3:30pm with early drop off and late pick up available for an additional fee

Cost: $250 per participant

Maximum: 20 participants

A writing camp for the adventurous at heart! For five days, campers will engage in generative creative writing activities, craft talks and lessons on fiction, poetry, plays and screenplays, as well as venture out of the classroom for generative writing activities in University of Iowa museums and parks.   

Being a writer unbound requires a healthy amount of curiosity and a utility belt to help you on your way. This camp provides tools such as an introduction to structure, voice, character and worldbuilding, endings and beginnings, dialogue and description, and language elements such as rhyme, rhythm and imagery. We will explore revision in order to become good readers of our own work, learn how to develop a first draft, and practice reading our own texts out loud.

This camp is designed for those searching for their literary voice and willing to explore writing in different genres and stepping out of their comfort zone. By the end of our time together, campers will have chosen one of their texts in any genre to revise and read out loud at our end-of-camp reading event (parents and guardians welcome!)   

Instructor Bio:

Camila Urioste is a writer of poetry, novels, plays and screenplays. She holds an MFA in Spanish Creative Writing (2023) and graduated from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in 2025. She taught fiction writing workshops at the Middle School Writing Conference in 2024 and 2025. Having recently published a Sci-Fi novel in Spanish, she’s currently working on two projects: a novel about ghosts in a college campus, and a sci-fi TV pilot about a scientist searching for love.