The Northwest Mississippi Community College Writing Centers and the University of Mississippi Writing Project are sponsoring a summer writing camp for high schoolers.
The camp will be held at the DeSoto Center in Southaven July 9-13 from 8 a.m. to noon. The fee for the camp is $250 and includes snacks and a T-shirt.
This year’s camp is entitled “Speaking of Mississippi: Writing our Communities”. Its purpose is to inspire creativity and provide a space for writers to find their individual voices through community engagement, according to Josh Green, coordinator of the Northwest Writing Center at the DeSoto Center.
“We are really excited about this opportunity and the fact the camp is a partnership between the Northwest Writing Centers and the Ole Miss Writing Project,” Green said.
Experienced writing teachers will lead the camp and help participants develop writing skills through a series of innovative workshops, activities and challenges. The camp will feature two writers-in-residence, Dr. P.J. Underwood and Bud Hunt.
Underwood, an English professor at Northwest, studied under both Barry Hannah at Ole Miss and Frederick and Steven Barthelme at the Center for Writers. He received his doctorate in creative writing from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2010. Dr. Underwood’s most recent novel is “Waterfront: The First Case File of Gorillahead and Steamdude.” His fiction has also appeared in “Juked’s Year’s Best,” “Blip Magazine,” and “Burnt Bridge.”
Hunt is the IT and Technical Services Manager for the Clearview Library District in northern Colorado. He is a former co-editor of the “New Voices” column of “English Journal,” a publication of the National Council of Teachers of English, and a co-founder of “Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation.” In 2013, Hunt was named a ConnectED Champion of Change by the White House.
