She was used to being the only teen pulling out a book during social gatherings. When everyone did it at this Utah writing camp, she realized, ‘My gosh, there’s more of us.’

When 14-year-old Ellie Seegmiller walked into a room at Southern Utah University for writing camp last summer, it was full of what seemed like hundreds of kids. Her heart sank.

Seegmiller, who’s written a book a year since she was in sixth grade, was excited about the chance to work with famous authors during the first-ever WriteOut camp. But she’d been picturing a classroom setting, sparsely populated with a few other kids from Cedar City.

It wasn’t just that she got better at writing, thanks to the hands-on mentoring from working authors like Ally Condie and Brandon Mull.