East End Creative Writing Camp Seeks Scholarship Fund Donations

The founders and organizers of Rena’s Promise International Creative Writing Camp have launched an online fundraising campaign to beef up its scholarship coffers in anticipation of the summer 2014 enrollment season.

The name “Rena’s Promise,” founded by author and teacher Heather Dune Macadam, is based on Macadam’s nonfiction book of the same name, which tells the story of Rena Kornreich-Gelisson and her sister Danka, two survivors of Auschwitz. The camp is a one-week intensive workshop series held on the grounds of the Quinipet Retreat Center on Shelter Island. It is open to kids ages 14-17. In its four years of existence it has welcomed students from all walks of life: from the Bronx to Canada, from Wales to South Africa and China.

After last year’s program, the foundation ran into the financial red and is now seeking help from arts supporters to keep the program running by offering multiple $1,000 scholarships to students who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford the experience.

For Macadam, who attended the M.F.A. program at LIU Southampton College and later taught at the new Stony Brook Southampton, the labor of love came from personal grief. Her mother’s health deteriorated and by 2011, she was dying. Macadam decided she needed to put her energy into something positive. Her decision to name the camp after Rena derived from Rena’s limited education despite having a powerful story to tell.

“[Rena] only had an eighth-grade education;” Macadam told Patch in an email. “She was embarrassed about that and needed help from a writer to tell her story – I want young people, who were her age when she went to Auschwitz, to know that they have important stories to tell; I want them to feel free to tell their stories through whatever creative writing medium they desire and I want them to have the freedom to write whatever is on their minds at our camp.”

The writing workshops are headed up by established authors who often make the East End a regular stop; writers such as Melissa Bank, Dava Sobel, Simon Worrall, Caroline Doctorow and Simon Van Booy to name just a few. The camp also has a songwriting workshop.

There are seven days left on the Indigogo fundraising site and to date, the foundation has raise $901 of their desired $5,000. Macadam said she was blown away not only by the level of support, but from whom it came.

“I had one of my camp counselors donate half of what I paid her last year as a counselor, despite being a college student and probably needing that money herself,” Macadam stated.

Applications for the camp this year have already been submitted. For those wishing to donate, the fundraising microsite is available here. The foundation is also accepting laptop donations so each student is provided with a computer. More information is also available at the Rena’s Promise website.