Camp: Putting the Out in the Great Outdoors
$10.99 USD
paperback
A Lambda Award Finalist, A Today Show Best Book, A Forbes Best Book, and an ALA Rainbow List Top Ten selection.
Set in a summer camp, this sweet and sharp screwball comedy set in a summer camp for queer teens examines the nature of toxic masculinity and self-acceptance.
Sixteen-year-old Randy Kapplehoff loves spending the summer at Camp Outland, a camp for queer teens. It’s where he met his best friends. It’s where he takes to the stage in the big musical. And it’s where he fell for Hudson Aaronson-Lim—who’s only into straight-acting guys and barely knows not-at-all-straight-acting Randy even exists.
This year, however, it’s going to be different. Randy has reinvented himself as ‘Del’—buff, masculine, and on the market. Even if it means giving up show tunes, nail polish, and his unicorn bedsheets, he’s determined to get Hudson to fall for him.
But as he and Hudson grow closer, Randy has to ask himself: How much is he willing to change for love? And is it really love anyway, if Hudson doesn’t know who he truly is?
Lev Rosen is the author of books for all ages. Two for adults: All Men of Genius (Amazon Best of the Month, Audie Award Finalist) and Depth (Amazon Best of the Year, Shamus Award Finalist, Kirkus Best Science Fiction for April). Two middle-grade books: Woundabout (illustrated by his brother, Ellis Rosen), and The Memory Wall. And two young adult novels: Jack of Hearts (and other parts) (American Library Association Rainbow List Top Ten, Guardian’s Best Books of the Year, B&N Favorite Books of the Year) and Camp (Lambda Award finalist, ALA Rainbow List Top Ten, a best book of 2020 from Forbes, Elle, the Today Show, SLJ, Booklist and others), which is being adapted into a film directed by and starring Billy Porter. His books have been translated into many different languages and sold around the world. His next book, Lavender House, an adult historical mystery, will be released fall of 2022.
Lev is originally from lower Manhattan and now lives in even lower Manhattan, right at the edge, with his husband and very small cat. He has an MFA in fiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College and teaches creative writing.
"This novel has the appeal of a rom-com movie-makeover but with more substantive explorations of self-betrayal, self-evaluation, and eventual awakening. Secondary characters are ethnically diverse; Hudson is Korean and Ukrainian. A drag act that plays with compassion and camp."—Kirkus
*"An essential pick for teens figuring out who and how to love."—Booklist, starred review
"The gay summer camp romp of my dreams: a romantic summertime joyride and a thoughtful examination of gay culture. Gay teens or anyone who knows a gay teen should read this book."—Cale Dietrich, Author of The Love Interest
"Camp is a divine treat. A subversive explosion of masc/fem stereotypes wrapped inside a sparkly, funny, heartstring-plucking romance. At once delightfully cynical and buoyantly hopeful, Rosen uses Camp to take aim at everything the LGBTQ community is currently wrestling with and needs to hear."—Adam Sass, author of Surrender Your Sons
"Joyful, exuberant, incisive, and terrifically queer. CAMP is a romcom with bite and heart, one that examines the walls we build around ourselves-and promises us we have the power to tear them down. This is literary wizardry."—Adib Khorram, award-winning author of Darius the Great is Not Okay
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