Thirteen and a half years ago, in 2013, Writopia was no longer brand new. It ran year-round programs, but didn’t yet have a sleepaway camp. It held a fun, writing-based day camp for kids in New York City that was loved by its kids and parents. Until one day, a parent in the Writopia community said to Rebecca W.-S., “I wish that there was a Writopia sleepaway camp for my child to attend.”
This changed everything.
It so happened that one of Writopia’s longtime staff members, Danielle Sheeler, absolutely loved sleepaway camp as a child – and as an adult. She thought that it would be amazing, and so fun, if Writopia began its own sleepaway camp.
“Danielle convinced me to start a camp,” Writopia founder and CEO and WriCampia director Rebecca Wallace-Segall confirmed. “Danielle convinced me by telling me she had won a best camper award as a kid. We laughed and then we did it.”
In the summer of 2013, WriCampia was ready to go. It had been around 4 months since it was decided that there would be a Writopia sleepaway camp, and everyone was super excited.
Originally there were only supposed to be 20 campers at the camp for this trial, but in the end 40 campers piled onto the buses. Within a year, the campers themselves jokingly started calling it WriCampia, and it stuck.
The first summer was located at Pocono Environmental Education Center, a lakeside one week retreat. It was a success! It was extremely fun, but also very different from Writopia, because most attendees had previously gone to Writopia at the Upper West Side location, where they would go home at the end of the day. Campers and staff weren’t yet used to eating and bunking together.
“It was such a new experience to eat together, to sleep in bunks, and to sing around campfires,” Instructor Eunju Namkung, who back then was a counselor, told The WriCampian. “We were not only teaching creative writing, but also making sure our writers were comfy in both the cabins and in nature!” As a nonprofit, Writopia is dedicated to making sure anyone who wants to attend can. “We wanted to help people and offer scholarships. It was important for us to get that right the first time – we wanted to make sure that everyone got a chance,” Eunju added.
She started the filmmaking program all the way back to 2013, and it continues to this day. “WriCampia is a great laboratory to cultivate things like filmmaking and songwriting,” Eunju said.
There was even a scavenger hunt all the way back then, though it wasn’t perfect. “My riddle was, When does red mean ‘go’ and green mean ‘stop’?” Eunju recalled. “But there was no walky-talky so I didn’t know the hunt had been canceled due to rain, so I sat on top of a hill by myself for an hour.”
New supplies were purchased, and WriCampia fully opened its doors the next year at IHC. For the next six years, WriCampia grew there and learned how to run a robust sleepaway camp from them. It was amazing, but they couldn’t accomodate all of our needs.The next move was to a camp called Independent Lake Camp, or ILC. ILC had a sophisticated music and recording studio, a circus, a skate park and more. The Tracks system also was established during the second year at ILC in 2022. Unfortunately, ILC’s food was not as great as Danbee’s and there was also a huge hill to climb to the nurses’ office, which created an access problem.
But the most important problem was that the schedules did not align. So after two years at ILC, camp moved to a place called Danbee, which is where camp is located now, and where camp has been for four years. “We have been thriving here and have no plans to change campsites at the moment,” Rebecca W.-S. said.
Meanwhile, some things have changed. “Danielle is no longer a regular at Writopia and WriCampia but WriCampia is still close to her heart,” added Rebecca W.-S. “She fell in love with the social work component of working with youth and still works at the organization once in a while in that capacity.”
Also, in its first year, WriCampia was only expected to host 20 campers. Now, in 2026, that number has grown ten times over and may keep growing. After all, this is our biggest year for adult staff and CITs.
But maybe we are big enough. Some camps are too big and people don’t even know each other. Here, the directors of the camp know every single kid, counselor, and instructor, and no one gets forgotten about.
