Summer Camp Adventures (Tents & Bug Spray Optional)
Summer Camp Adventures (Tents & Bug Spray Optional)
A Roundtable Discussion with Ann Garvin, Ali Brady, Viola Shipman & Kristy Woodson Harvey
Hosted by Kristy Woodson Harvey
For those of us who grew up spending part of their summer earning badges and making friends while sweating in bunks inside rustic cabins, camp is a beloved tradition that holds a special place in our hearts. But, even if you didn’t grow up a camper, books set at camp can evoke that specific fleeting feeling of childhood summer nostalgia that is so very welcome any time of year.
Here, three authors — Ann Garvin, Ali Brady & Viola Shipman — join F&F’s own Kristy Woodson Harvey in discussing the lure of summer camp and why setting a book there is so appealing.
What is the title of your camp book? And give us a quick sentence or two summing it up!
ANN GARVIN: Bummer Camp: This book has a large cast of characters working to save a summer camp for anxious and depressed adults, run solely by anxious and depressed college students. It is a sister story where underdogs win, and romances and dreams really do come true.
ALI BRADY: Until Next Summer is a romance novel set at an adult summer camp. It tells the story of Jessie and Hillary, two former best friends who come together for one last summer before their beloved camp closes (or will it?!?). They get a second chance at their friendship, both finding love along the way.
VIOLA SHIPMAN: The Clover Girls is an ode to our childhood and adult friendships. It’s about four very different girls who meet at summer camp in northern Michigan in the 1980s and are inseparable for those magical few weeks of freedom—until the last summer that tears them apart. Now approaching middle age, Liz, V and Rachel receive a letter from Emily with devastating news, imploring her former BFFs to reunite at Camp Birchwood one last time to spend a week together and revisit the dreams they put aside and try to repair the relationship they once had when each girl completed the other like the four-leaf clover they found their first day of camp.
Kristy Woodson Harvey: The Summer of Songbirds is a story of three best camp friends and their director who come together to save the camp that raised them. In the process, they uncover secrets that threaten to tear them apart forever and come to terms with the ways in which Camp Holly Springs shaped them—for better and for worse.
Why did writing about summer camp appeal to you?
Ann: I wanted to invent a place to belong no matter what ails us. A place where your resume isn’t part of the conversation. Where nobody is really very good at anything except maybe when playing Two Truths and A Lie. A place where a camp counselor says, “Good Job,” and maybe you believe them, and maybe you don’t, but it doesn’t matter because they treat everyone the same.
Ali: This is actually the second time we’ve written about this particular summer camp…the prologue of our debut novel, The Beach Trap, also took place at Camp Chickawah. We heard from so many readers that they loved the nostalgia of the summer camp scene, we decided to write an entire book set there. Since we don’t write YA, we had to figure out a way to bring adults to camp!
Viola: Setting is as big a character in my novels as my main characters, and I wanted to set a book in a place filled with nostalgia and memories, a place that–when you’re removed–you yearn to return as an adult to have the things we once had.
KWH: I wrote The Summer of Songbirds during the darkest, early shutdown days of the pandemic, and I truly thought: Where do I want to go right now? Where do I want to take my readers? Camp represented the type of freedom and fun we were missing out on, so it became an obvious choice.
Did you go to camp as a kid?
Ali: We both went to summer camp as kids. Alison went to Camp Birchwood for Girls in Minnesota, which we based Camp Chickawah after. We made the camp co-ed, but the rest of it rings pretty true to her camp days. In addition to going to camp, Bradeigh was also a camp counselor at a sleepaway camp, so she brought a lot of those experiences to the story.
Viola: I attended church camp as a kid. My parents and grandparents literally forced me to go after the death of my brother as a way to cope, find joy again, and meet friends who didn’t know me in my tiny town as “the kid who lost his brother.” The experience changed me profoundly.
KWH: Yes! I went to Camp Hollymont, a mountain camp in Asheville, NC. I made amazing friends and got that first taste of the freedom of being away from home and making your own choices.
What parts—if any—of your own camp experience made their way into writing your novel?
Viola: All of the traditional, nostalgic sleepaway camp activities! Each chapter of my novel is centered around a favorite summer camp activity such as Color War, Capture the Flag, Talent Show, Letters Home, Candles on the Lake, Sing-Along, Rope Burn, Talent Night. These activities tie into deeper emotional themes that each of the characters is going through in their lives and in the storyline.
KWH: Viola, I LOVED how you framed the story around the activities. I thought it was so genius! I, like you, based many of the activities around some of my favorites: the blob, the zipline, archery, softball, tennis, arts and crafts. The Make Out Patrol was based on my camp experience too—but the sailing hut scene was not from personal experience! (If you know, you know!) But, honestly, my most formative camp moments were spent in a cabin doing nothing at all, making friendships I’d always cherish.
Why do you think readers are drawn to camp settings?
Ali: We were pretty sure this book would resonate with “camp people” but we were pleasantly surprised how many people connected with the story who never went to camp. Maybe because we all watched so many camp movies growing up—or maybe because so many of the feelings of independence and freedom are universal, whether you went to camp or not. And since most of us have to “adult” during the summer, it’s nice to remember the simpler summer days…
KWH: I feel exactly the same, Ali. I was shocked at the response from non-camp people in the best possible way. It’s so nice to remember those simple days when summer meant summer and sunscreen, whether you were a camper or not.
What do you hope people take away from this novel?
Ali: To remember to check your crevices for ticks! And more importantly, that you don’t have to live ten months for two months—that you can bring the best parts of your “camp self” into your everyday life and who you are year-round.
Viola: That our friends are not perfect. We are human. We, unfortunately, hurt those we love due to our own shortcomings. We make mistakes. But we must learn from those mistakes. Friends are those who love us unconditionally, flaws and all, and accept us for who we truly are. They lift us up when we need it most. They complete us.
KWH: I agree with all of this. But, also, I hope The Summer of Songbirds reminds people that friendships—especially lifelong ones—ebb and flow, but, sometimes, the struggle makes us stronger.
Do you think anything about camp is a metaphor for life as a whole? If so, what?
Ann: I like writing about closed groups and how they mirror a larger group—the world and/or humanity, I love exploring the way people operate in a small group as if it’s the only thing on earth that exists and therefore the people themselves make the rules about what is and isn’t acceptable.
Ali: Summer camp means something different to each of our characters. For Jessie, it represents stability and safety, because it was the only place in the world that felt like “hers” growing up. For Hillary, it represents her true self, the self she abandoned as she grew up and started worrying more about other people’s expectations.
Viola: Yes. We are often our best — or become our best selves — when we get separation from our “real lives.” As kids, that can be at camp, away from those who have already defined us. At camp, we become different, newer, sometimes better people. As adults, we can yearn to return to those people we dreamed of becoming when we were young. That often happens on vacation. I love to write about the impact of environment (all of my novels are set in Michigan resort towns). Where we live and those we live around shape us profoundly. When we travel or go on vacation, we change because the setting challenges our sensibilities and upsets our status quo. Camp was a perfect place to delve into that.
KWH: Well, friends, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
If you’re looking to turn the calendar back a page or two to summer, or want a story of friendship, love, and escape any time of year, check out one of these camp-centered novels. Because, as they say at Camp Holly Springs in The Summer of Songbirds, summer never ends! And, in the pages of a favorite novel, it can be summer all year long.
Happy reading, friends!
Be sure to share your thoughts about summer camp—and the novels written about them—in the comments!
Remember to tune in to Friends & Fiction, where Patti Callahan Henry, Kristy Woodson Harvey, Kristin Harmel, and Mary Kay Andrews interview the authors of some of the year’s most buzzed-about books every Wednesday at 7pm ET on Facebook and YouTube. You can also catch these interviews on our podcast, with episodes released every Friday.
About the Contributors
KRISTY WOODSON HARVEY is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including The Wedding Veil, Under the Southern Sky, and The Peachtree Bluff series, which is in development for television with NBC. A Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's school of journalism, her writing has appeared in numerous online and print publications including Southern Living, Traditional Home, USA TODAY, Domino, and O. Henry. Kristy is the winner of the Lucy Bramlette Patterson Award for Excellence in Creative Writing and a finalist for the Southern Book Prize. Her books have received numerous accolades including Southern Living's Most Anticipated Beach Reads, Parade's Big Fiction Reads, and Entertainment Weekly's Spring Reading Picks. Kristy is the co-creator and co-host of the weekly web show and podcast Friends & Fiction. She blogs with her mom Beth Woodson on Design Chic, and loves connecting with fans on KristyWoodsonHarvey.com. She lives on the North Carolina coast with her husband and son where she is (always!) working on her next novel. Learn more HERE.
ANN GARVIN, PhD, is the USA Today bestselling author of There's No Coming Back from This, I Thought You Said This Would Work, I Like You Just Fine When You're Not Around, and other funny and sad novels about people who do too much, in a world that asks too much from them. Ann teaches in the low-residency master of fine arts program at Drexel University and lives in Wisconsin with her anxious and overly protective dog, Peanut. She is the founder of the Tall Poppy Writers and is dedicated to helping authors find readers and vice versa. Learn more HERE.
ALI BRADY is the pen name of writing BFFs Alison Hammer and Bradeigh Godfrey. The Beach Trap is their first book together. Alison lives in Chicago and works as a VP and creative director at an advertising agency. She's the author of You and Me and Us and Little Pieces of Me. Bradeigh lives with her family in Utah, where she works as a physician. She's the author of the psychological thriller Imposter. Learn more HERE and HERE.
VIOLA SHIPMAN Wade Rouse is a popular award-winning memoirist and internationally bestselling author of twelve books, which have been translated into twenty languages and selected as Today show Must-Reads, Indie Next Picks and Michigan Notable Books. Rouse writes fiction under his grandma's name, Viola Shipman, to honor the woman whose heirlooms inspire his writing. He lives in Michigan and California, and hosts Wine & Words with Wade, A Literary Happy Hour, every Thursday. Learn more HERE.
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