Let’s Start a Book!

Camp at a Glance

In this course, students will learn how to start a book project. Students will work on character development, plot outlining, and how to create settings and characters that hop off the page. The first week will be on book writing basics, and the second will be a workshop style so each student will walk away with the beginnings of their own book.

Program Details

Anna Butrico Conti (’14) was ten years old when she started her first book. She sat in her grandmother’s house, cross-legged on her couch, and wrote The Half Birthday, a story about a young girl named Maggie who goes into the past on her half birthday and discovers a special power nobody ever told her about. Anna ended up working with an editor at Scholastic on The Half Birthday in her teens, but never got to finish it. 18 years later, she finally has.

In this course, students will learn how to start a book project. Anna was 10 when she started The Half Birthday, the protagonist is 10, and the reader is around 10 years old, so Anna thinks long and hard about how young writers can create strong, creative stories. Together, Anna and the class will work on character development, plot outlining, and how to create settings and characters that hop off the page. The first week will be on book writing basics, and the second will be a workshop style so each student will walk away with the beginnings of their own book project.

Meet the Teacher

Anna Butrico Conti graduated from Pingry in 2014, as a member of the cum laude society. After Pingry, Anna matriculated to Vanderbilt University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, after spending time at St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford.

Upon graduating from Vanderbilt in 2018, Anna returned to McChrystal Group, where she advised a Fortune 100 oil and gas company and initiated Leader Development programs with the firm’s top executives. With her writing background in mind, Anna was then selected to serve as General (Ret.) Stan McChrystal’s speechwriter, where she wrote speeches for domestic and international audiences. Anna served as General McChrystal’s thought partner as he translated lessons learned from commanding the Joint Special Operations Command to companies around the nation.

Anna was then selected to be the co-author of Stan McChrystal’s latest book, entitled Risk: A User’s Guide, which was published in October 2021. Anna then served as the Chief of Staff at Odgers Berndtson, an executive search firm, and is now on the Content Studio team at Meta, working on their Newsroom team.

On a more personal note, Anna is married to a Pingry classmate, Hunter Conti, class of 2015. They married in December 2023