Now accepting registrations for summer 2025!

Add your name to our youth program email list to be kept up to date on all our programs.

Description of Program
2025 Virtual Camps
2025 In-Person Camps
Registration Information
Basic Requirement for Participation

Description of Program

This summer we will be offering both in-person camps and online virtual courses. Both of our programs give children who are interested in writing the time and opportunity to explore writing through a range of genres of writing. Each of our programs this summer draw upon the unique skills of our Bay Area Writing Project Teacher Consultants (classroom teachers from around the Bay Area!). Kids will be able to explore their interests, discover their strengths and take writing risks that they might not be able to in a traditional classroom setting.

Participants will experience writing instruction with trained writing teachers, writing time, flexibility in what types of writing they want to pursue, guided group and peer response, and daily opportunities to share writing. 

Our teachers strive to nurture kids’ growth into independent writers. Instruction includes craft lessons, such as –how to incorporate imagery into one’s writing, how to write clearly, how to create believable characters — as well as method lessons — how to get started, the ins and outs of drafting, how to get a lot out of your peer editors. 

In addition to our regular programs we offer our writers the opportunity to sign up for a remote 1-on-1 revision session with a teacher, join the family write night where we can show off our new writing skills to family and friends, and submit a piece to our end of season Youth Takeover Digital Zine. Stay tuned for all these exciting options during the summer!

Please email bawp@berkeley.edu if you would like to be placed on a waitlist for any of our full courses.

2025 Virtual Camps

Creative Writing 101
Register for this camp
Virtual Camp
June 2 – 13, 2025 (2 weeks)
9:00 am – 12:00 pm PST
Grades 3rd – 8th
$675.00

It doesn’t matter how old you are, you have stories, poems, and adventures to share. In this 2-week remote camp we will write and explore the many genres of creative writing. Whether it’s a tale that you recount factually or a tale that gets taller with each passing moment, this is the place to hone your writing and unleash your creativity.

Telling and sharing stories help us better understand our world and many of the real-life experiences that take place around us. Storytelling helps develop emotional intelligence, improves vocabulary, and builds communication skills. Many studies show the benefits of both listening to and sharing stories help us retain information and details more clearly.

Creative Writing: Science Fiction and Fantasy
Register for this camp
Virtual Camp
June 16 – 27, 2025 (2 Weeks – No program on 6/19/25)
9:00 am – 12:00 pm PST
Grades 3rd – 8th
$675.00

Do you have an incredible imagination? Do you dream of riding on the back of a great winged beast or flying a spaceship through a blackhole? Do you envision a world where witches control your fate or living in a kingdom full of robots casting spells atop floating mountains? Or maybe you are a little more doomsday and have stories of a dystopian society or a post-apocalyptic life. The possibilities are limitless! In this 2-week camp we will focus on world building and writing about worlds that only you can imagine.. As Willy Wonka said, “We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.”

Science fiction and fantasy so often address the themes of what it means to be human and how we fit in the world around us, helping our young writers develop questions about themselves and exploring how they connect with today’s world.

Creative Writing Camp: Explore Your Author’s Voice
Register for this camp
Virtual Camp
July 7 – 18, 2025 (2 weeks)
9:00 am – 12:00 pm PST
Grades 3rd – 8th
$700.00

Each of us has stories inside of us waiting to get out. Learn how to use your unique author’s voice, the style and perspective that only you have, during this two-week creative writing camp. To develop your distinctive style, we will write regularly, experiment with different styles of writing, seek feedback from camp friends, and learn how to read your own work aloud. If you like writing, reading, or telling stories, this camp is a perfect fit.

Sharing our writing with others can be scary and intimidating, but it’s an important part of developing our skills as writers. The purpose of writing is to communicate and it gives young people a way to share their voices and ideas with us and each other – integral in our rapidly connected world.

Writing Academy: Academic Writing Bootcamp
Register for this camp
Virtual Camp
July 21 – August 1, 2025 (2 weeks)
9:00 am – 12:00 pm PST
Grades 3rd – 8th
$700.00

Join this fun 2-week camp as we develop our writing skills as a means to help us improve as academic writers and thinkers. Academic writing is always a story: a good informational essay engages our senses, a strong argumentative piece develops a narrative, and an effective book report immerses us in an experience. Join us as we awaken the author in all of us and head confidently into the new school year.

Writing challenges us to take risks, innovate, and come up with original ideas – skills that help in the development of our academic voices. Experience in different genres can provide self assurance to writers as they develop skills they can use in the classroom and beyond.

2025 In-Person Camps

Creative Writing: Science Fact and Fiction
Register for this camp
In-Person Camp at UC Berkeley at 2121 Berkeley Way
June 9 – 20, 2025 (2 weeks – No Camp 6/19/25)
9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Grades 3rd – 8th
$725.00

Where better than the UC Berkeley campus to explore and write Science Fiction? In this 2-week camp we will imagine how science and technology could impact our future. Using our imagination and real life experiences on campus, we will write about alternate worlds, imperfect futures, and possibly even the return of once extinct life. Let’s visit the life sized skeleton of a T-Rex in the atrium of the Valley Life Sciences building on campus and maybe even write our very own Jurassic Park story – how’s that to inspire your imagination?!

Science fiction addresses the themes of what it means to be human and how we fit in the world around us, helping our young writers develop questions about themselves and explore how they connect with today’s world.

Creative Writing and Storytelling
Register for this camp
In-Person Camp at Park Day School, Oakland
June 16 – 27, 2025 (2 weeks – No program on 6/19/25)
9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Grades 3rd – 8th
$725.00

Good stories make us care. Good stories build our relationships. Storytelling breaks down barriers to foster compassion and respect for difference. Whether it’s a tale that you recount factually or a tale that gets taller with each passing moment, this is the place to hone the craft of storytelling. In this course we help you bring your stories to life. Come tell your story with friends on the beautiful and inspiring campus of Park Day School.

Telling and sharing stories help us better understand our world and many of the real-life experiences that take place around us. Storytelling helps develop emotional intelligence, improves vocabulary, and builds communication skills. Many studies show the benefits of both listening to and sharing stories help us retain information and details more clearly.

Room to Explore
Register for this camp
In-Person Camp at UC Berkeley at 2121 Berkeley Way
June 23 – 27, 2025 (1 week)
9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Grades 6th – 8th
$400.00

Adults are not the only ones who have to think about their race, identity and sexuality. Making sense in this world can be complicated. How do you sort it all out? Writing can definitely help. You choose the topic and together we will discuss and support writing in a space that is safe. This is a course for those who feel curious, upset, open, confused, passionate, alarmed, action-oriented, resistant……the list goes on. This is a course to explore your voice, who you are, and who you want to be.

Berkeley Writing Academy: Argumentative Writing
Register for this camp
In-Person Camp at UC Berkeley at 2121 Berkeley Way
July 7 – 18, 2025 (2 weeks)
9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Grades 3rd – 8th
$750.00

It’s not who has the loudest voice, but who can be the most persuasive. In this 2-week camp we will blend the arts of arguing and persuading. The camp’s focus will be demonstrating different methods of expressing our views on a subject. It will help you share your ideas and opinions in a constructive way, something you’ll rely on in your academic and personal life.

Knowing how to make the best use of these forms of fact-based writing can help in many ways, such as writing school essays, writing letters advocating for a cause you are passionate about, writing a blog, or even writing that sci-fi fiction piece.

Creative Writing: Science Fiction and Fantasy
Register for this camp
In-Person Camp at California High School Campus in San Ramon, CA
July 14 – 25, 2025 (2 weeks)
9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Grades 3rd – 8th
$750.00

Do you have an incredible imagination? Do you wonder about aliens, time travel, and the future? Do you envision a world where we’ve figured out how to reverse climate change or maybe you are a little more doomsday and have stories of a dystopian society or a post-apocalyptic life. The possibilities are limitless! In this 2-week camp we will focus on writing stories that only you can imagine. As Willy Wonka said, “We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.”

Science fiction and fantasy so often address the themes of what it means to be human and how we fit in the world around us, helping our young writers develop questions about themselves and exploring how they connect with today’s world.

Creative Writing Camp: Build Your Writing Toolkit
Register for this camp
In-Person Camp at St. Ignatius College Preparatory Campus in San Francisco, CA
July 21 – August 1, 2025 (2 weeks)
9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Grades 3rd – 8th
$750.00

Join this fun 2-week camp as we explore creative writing as a means to help us improve as academic writers and thinkers. Experience in different genres can provide self assurance to writers as they develop skills they can use in the classroom and beyond. Academic writing is always a story: a good informational essay engages our senses, a strong argumentative piece develops a narrative, and an effective book report immerses us in an experience. Join us in San Francisco as we awaken the author in all of us and head confidently into the new school year.

Creative Writing challenges us to take risks, innovate, and come up with original ideas – skills that help in the development of our academic voices.

Registration Information

Registration coming soon! Using the link below, submit camper information and then select the course or courses you would like your writer to join. Sibling discounts (-$50 for each additional child after the first registration) will be automatically deducted before checking out.

Virtual Courses Registration Link

In-Person Camps Registration Link

If you encounter any issues with the registration process please try using a different browser (Chrome is preferred). If that doesn’t help, email us at bawp@berkeley.edu.

Please email bawp@berkeley.edu if you are interested in being added to a waitlist for any of the full camps