the book your child can write this fall

What if your child could look back at 2020 and say, “That’s the year I wrote my first book.”

Or, even better:

What if your child could look back at 2020 and say, “That’s the year I found my best friends.”

This is happening right now:

2020 has been a year of unimaginable fear and isolation. And yet a few rays of light have emerged. I’m thrilled and proud to say that our Written Out Loud Storytelling program has been one of those rays of light. And we will continue to be.

Written Out Loud has given creative kids - I’m talking about well-read, hyper-articulate, ultra-imaginative kids who can often be the most prone to self-isolation - Written Out Loud has given over 300 of these kids a real and recurring tribe of like-minded friends; an inspired group activity; a lasting feeling of validation and accomplishment.

This summer, Written Out Loud is publishing a new child-authored book every day. Here are just a few of them:

Our storytellers are writing these books together, finishing each other’s sentences, standing on the shoulders of each other’s ideas, in small, inspired nuclei of 2 or 3 or 4 or even 9. Our crews completely forget that they are in a Zoom environment; when the group storytelling energy kicks in, they are truly together, in the far-away land of their collective imagination. It's awesome.

If you’re hearing about this program for the first time, welcome. We want your child to write and publish their first novel this fall - and if you sign up, we guarantee that they will. (If they’ve already gone through our program, we promise, they will publish their second.:)

Our “crewing process” - finding the best possible creative collaborators for your child - is at the heart of what we do. Our educational leadership team rigorously studies your child’s tastes and influences, and places your child into the best and most joyously-collaborative crew we can create. Then, throughout the fall, we’ll work with them closely to ensure that their book is finished, professionally illustrated, and published by Christmas. Even more importantly, we’ll make sure that their group is as tightly-knit, trusting, and flat-out fun as it can be. (Oh yeah - did we mention - our sessions are really, really fun? Watch that video again.)

Important: we are placing a hard cap on our fall enrollment at 300 total storytellers, between the ages of 8-15. We limit our enrollment, of course, in order to maintain our quality of instruction and mentorship.

Our fall program meets twice a week, starting the week of September 14. We have several day- and time-slot options to accommodate your schedule. Our program costs $50/session and runs for 12 weeks (24 sessions, $1200 total for the fall). And we are offering significantly reduced “early bird” pricing ($995 for the program) if you register your storyteller this month (i.e. in July 31.) On Aug 1 our pricing will rise to $1075, and then to our full price of $1200 on August 17.

We will sell out. Without question. We sold out our spring programs, we sold out every week of our summer camps, and we will sell out our fall program as well, probably around mid-August. Our 300 storyteller enrollment cap will be real and enforced, in order to maintain the high quality of our instruction.

To reserve your storyteller’s space in our fall program, please register here. Even if your storyteller is currently enrolled in a summer or ongoing spring program, we do need you to register again for fall. Choose the story genre, and day- and timeslot pairing options that work best for your child. If they have a friend or two or three who would be a good fit for your storyteller to create with, please guide them to our website. And please indicate all friend requests in the form.

We know that the fall ahead is filled with uncertainty, and greatly reduced school and activity time. But we now know enough about our program to be able to promise you that we can deliver on our program’s core promise. Your child will be able to look back at 2020 and say, “I wrote my first book. And I found my creative crew.”

Please forward this email to the creatively inclined kids and families in your world.

Thank you,

Josh