Swill Children presents
BEACH CAMP
by Chelsea Hodson



The first thing on the island is a wooden sign in the shape of a rainbow: Welcome to Camp Fox. We were herded onto the boat, but now lines are important. We are single filed, tanned. Everything is new. I can't hear what anyone is saying, but we each make our own sounds. We are buzzing.


BEACH CAMP, a story collection by Chelsea Hodson, explores a space detached from the mainland—an island where girls sleep in cabins without walls, throw chicken nuggets across the cafeteria, threaten towel-wearing boys, and go looking for the buffalo. Hodson separates her journey into tidy sections shorter than the time it takes a counselor to say I will arrange a boat to take you off this island tonight so help me God.


Order BEACH CAMP from Swill Children




PRAISE FOR BEACH CAMP:

Like the buffalo "left to their private multiplication" after a film set is struck, the girls of BEACH CAMP are left at Camp Fox in a chaos of new freedom. In masterfully condensed sections, Hodson shows us how they grow publicly and privately, wanting to hide and to be seen. Her unassuming sentences cut to the quick.
—Sarah Manguso, author of The Two Kinds of Decay

Beach Camp is beautifully evoked—sad, funny, sweet,
haunting—and vividly recalled, like "crumbled
Cheez-Its" in the sleeping bag of youth.
—Davy Rothbart, creator of FOUND Magazine
& frequent contributor to This American Life

I don't like writing that doesn't rhyme,
but I'm glad you're doing something.
—Marcene Seitz, Chelsea's grandma


Photo by Jesse Hlebo 		ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Hodson's work has appeared in EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts, Water Science, and the _ Quarterly blog. Her Travel Journal collection was featured in a PaperWorks exhibition at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and her zine, Maybe Your Love Can Live Forever, was featured in Kick My Heart's Ass, an exhibition at Apex Art in New York. Honors for her writing include the Margaret Sterling Memorial Award and Hattie Lockett Award.

Born and raised in Phoenix, she received her journalism degree at the University of Arizona. Currently 23, she lives in Los Angeles.



MORE INFORMATION: Swill Children & Chelsea Hodson