Shared Worlds
2025 Dates: July 13–26!

 
 

Shared Worlds is an annual summer program designed for teen writers interested in speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, steampunk, etc.). The students work in groups with an experienced “world-building coordinator” to design and build a world. 

Supported by an Amazon grant and featured by The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post, Shared Worlds is a unique writing camp that brings together rising 8th-12th grade students from all over the world. Students work with critically acclaimed and bestselling fantasy and science fiction writers to imagine, build, and write their own stories.

Shared Worlds takes the ideas and enthusiasm of young writers seriously, and encourages their creativity in a fun, dynamic, and safe learning environment on the beautiful campus of Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC. 

Shared Worlds strives for an outstanding residential camp experience where students can make meaningful connections with other students and grow as collaborators and as writers. This experience is possible only when we can all meet safely together. Shared Worlds is also committed to the health, safety, and well-being of its campers and staff members.

 
 

Meet this year’s Guest Authors!

2025 Guest Authors

Introducing our Guest Authors for Shared Worlds 2025!
We are pleased to have Roseanne A. Brown, Amanda Foody, Micaiah Johnson, Naz Kutub, and Rosiee Thor as our second-week guest authors for 2025!

They bring amazing talent to our program and will be in our classrooms and working with students one-on-one during the program in week two!

ROSEANNE A. BROWN is an immigrant from the West African nation of Ghana and a graduate of the University of Maryland, where she completed the Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House program. Her debut novel A Song of Wraiths and Ruin was an instant New York Times Bestseller, an Indie Bestseller, and received six starred reviews. She has worked with Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney among other publishers.
Web: roseanneabrown.com IG: @rosiesrambles.

AMANDA FOODY has always considered imagination to be our best attempt at magic. She is a New York Times, USA Today, and indie bestselling author of fantasy novels, including the Wilderlore series, the All of Us Villains duology, the upcoming A Fate So Cold duology, and more.
Web: amandafoody.com IG: @amandafoody

MICAIAH JOHNSON is the Compton Crook Award–winning author of The Space Between Worlds. Her debut novel was an Editors’ Choice of The New York Times and named one of best books of 2020 and one of the best science-fiction books of the last decade by NPR. She was raised in California’s Mojave Desert, surrounded by trees named Joshua and women who told stories. She received a bachelor of arts in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside, and a master of fine arts in fiction from Rutgers University–Camden. She now studies American literature at Vanderbilt University, where she focuses on critical race theory and automatons. Web: micaiahjohnson.com IG: @micaiahthewriter

NAZ KUTUB is a half-Indian, half-Malay immigrant from Singapore. His debut novel, The Loophole, was inspired by his personal experiences growing up as a gay Muslim, and as someone raised on a calorie-dense diet of Eastern lore.
Web: nazkutub.com IG: @nazkutub 

ROSIEE THOR is the Pacific Northwest Indie Bestselling author of Tarnished Are the Stars, Fire Becomes Her, and tie-in novels for franchises like Life is Strange and Firefly. They live in Oregon with a dog, two cats, and an abundance of plants. 
Web: rosieethor.com IG: @rosieethor

Featured
JEREMY L. C. JONES, CAMP CO-DIRECTOR
JEREMY L. C. JONES, CAMP CO-DIRECTOR

Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and lecturer. He contributes regularly to the third-party role-playing game magazine Kobold Quarterly. He also writes for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites.

Jones is a board member for The Hub City Writers Project and The South Carolina Academy of Authors. Along with collaborators at the Alzheimer's Association, The Hub City Writers Project, and the Department of Psychology at Wofford College, Jones helped create Living Words, a creative writing program for people diagnosed with dementia and their caregivers.

Jones is a shameless fan of shared world fiction in general and Forgotten Realms in particular, which lead to his creating a pilot of the shared worlds program at a high school in Lexington, KY. His favorite fantasy novelists are R. A. Salvatore, Greg Keyes, and David Gemmell. He prefers Robert E. Howard to J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings, and is still not convinced that one day he won't find the magic doorway to Narnia. He's pretty fond of Greek drama, southern literature, Vietnam War novels, and American nature writing, too.

Website:www.jeremylcjones.com

Jeff VanderMeer, Camp Co-Director
Jeff VanderMeer, Camp Co-Director

Jeff VanderMeer's NYT-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy has been translated into over 37 languages. The first novel, Annihilation, won the Nebula Award and Shirley Jackson Award, and was made into a movie by Paramount in 2018. Recent works include Hummingbird Salamander, Bliss, and A Peculiar Peril, in addition to Theo Ellsworth's graphic novel adaptation of his short story Secret Life. Dead Astronauts, Borne (a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award), The Strange Bird, set in the Borne universe, are being developed for TV by AMC and continue to explore themes related to the environment, animals, and our future.

Over a 35-year career, VanderMeer has been a four-time World Fantasy Award winner and 20-time nominee. For eleven years, VanderMeer served as the co-director of Shared Worlds, a unique teen SF/fantasy writing camp he helped found, located at Wofford College in South Carolina.

VanderMeer grew up in the Fiji Islands and spent six months traveling through Asia, Africa, and Europe before returning to the United States. These travels have deeply influenced his fiction, which he started writing at age eight, publishing his first short story at age 14. Early on, he wrote and published poetry and short fiction extensively, in addition to running a publishing house, the Ministry of Whimsy, and holding literary events featuring National Book Award winners like Richard Wilbur and other major poets at the Thomasville Center in Gainesville, Florida. The Ministry became the first small press to have a book win the Philip K. Dick Award. (Stepan Chapman’s The Troika) and he edited the award-winning Leviathan series, which published writers such as Rikki Ducornet, Brian Evenson, and Michael Moorcock.

VanderMeer also co-edited (with wife Ann VanderMeer) ground-breaking anthologies such as Best American Fantasy 1 and 2, Steampunk 1 and 2, New Weird, The Weird, The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, The Time Traveler’s Almanac, The Big Book of Science Fiction, The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, and The Big Book of Modern Fantasy.

Website: www.jeffvandermeer.com

Tim Schmitz, Director of Summer Programs
Tim Schmitz, Director of Summer Programs

Tim is Professor of History and Associate Provost for Administration at Wofford, but for twelve of the past sixteen years, he has spent his summers working for the Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth (CTY) summer academic program as a history instructor and as a site director. He has worked in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York for CTY. In 2008, CTY selected him to direct the inaugural year of the CTY International site in Spain, which was held at the European University of Madrid.

Tim teaches European history at Wofford. His research interest is the intersection of state power and religious reform in sixteenth-century Spain.