By Jun Lowenhar, age 16
“Is that her real name?” I’ve heard some campers asking. I had to investigate! Maggie can verify that yes, her real middle name sounds just like the day of the week — but is spelled M-U-N-D-A-Y — and she uses it along with her first name because she thinks it’s fun and memorable.
As an aspiring WriCampia counselor myself, I was more than willing to profile a counselor. Maggie Munday Odom, 21, is a rising junior at Northwestern University, where she majors in theatre and English. This is her first year at WriCampia.
Maggie Munday first heard about Writopia when participating in the Worldwide Plays Festival during her high school years. She won first place for her play Big, about a girl who finds confidence in her body through the power of spoken word poetry. During the process, she worked with playwright and Artistic Director of the Festival, Dan Kitrosser (who also worked at camp for years!) She says of the experience, “It was one of the moments in high school where I realized I wanted to be a writer.”
Even before she fully fell in love with it, Maggie Munday started writing at maybe the earliest age of anyone in camp. When she was a toddler, she would dictate poems to her grandmother from the comfort of her playpen. As she grew up, she began acting in school plays, and in freshman year, her theatre teacher encouraged her to combine her two passions in the art of playwriting. She self-produced her first play as part of a local fringe festival.
After the Worldwide Plays Festival, Maggie Munday kept tabs on Writopia, waiting for an opportunity to pay it back, and this year, she found it. At night she’s with a Lower Camp girls bunk, but by day she is the resident counselor in Jem’s Middle Camp workshop. On her partnership with Jem, Maggie Munday says that the moment she knew it was a perfect match was at the WriCampia Dance, when “Pink Pony Club” started playing and she and Jem ran laps around the field house.
This may be her first summer at WriCampia, but Maggie Munday has worked creatively with kids before. While living on a military base in Germany, she ran an improv-focused afterschool program. She says that when working with kids, imagination has no limits. “I feel inspired by the boundless imagination and willingness to say yes that kids have.” With WriCampia kids in particular, Maggie Munday is inspired by their authenticity and impressed that everyone here is one hundred percent themselves. “People are willing to be bold on the page and in person.”
In addition to her unique, alliterative name, Maggie Munday is known at WriCampia for her lakeside yoga classes. She is a certified yoga instructor, and teaches classes at Northwestern and separate studios. Yoga is one of her biggest passions in addition to writing. When I asked her to elaborate, she almost couldn’t find the words. She began by saying that she loved yoga’s ability to be a tool for something — “I can’t articulate it, I love it so much” — before settling on the word healing. Once she was able to find the correct turn of phrase, she continued by expressing her desire to create a yoga space that is accessible to everyone, regardless of age, body type, physical ability, or anything else.
Above all, Maggie Munday loves to teach and give back to the community. She’s grateful for the opportunity WriCampia provides to be an educator and a leader, all while being inspired by the uninhibited creativity of the campers. She most certainly will be back next year!
