Workshops! Passing along word of two fantastic ones for budding fantasists. The first notice is a forward from Ellen Gunn, Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of Clarion West:
Applications are open for the 2009 session of the Clarion West writers workshop, an intensive six-week, live-in workshop for writers preparing for professional careers in speculative fiction.
Gifted writers are found in all races, but because speculative fiction reflects the prejudices of the culture around it, proportionately fewer writers of color are successful. Clarion West is dedicated to improving those proportions. Co-founded in 1984 by J.T. Stewart, a woman of color, and Marilyn J. Holt, Clarion West has produced some of the most exciting and creative new writers in the field, including Kathleen Alcalá, Andrea Hairston, and Nisi Shawl.
Our 2009 instructors are John Kessel, Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth Bear, Nalo Hopkinson, David Hartwell, and Rudy Rucker. Hopkinson, winner of the World Fantasy and Gaylactic Spectrum Awards, has edited four anthologies focused on representing people of color in narratives of the fantastic.
A number of scholarships to the workshop are available, including the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship, awarded annually to a writer of color.
For more information on the workshop and application process, please visit the Clarion West website.
I never went to Clarion, but I always wished I could go. Yeah, I’m doin’ okay without it, but there’s still something about the intellectual thrill of being among one’s fellow writers for six weeks, challenging oneself to produce and critique and think like a pro, and so on, that appeals to the romantic in me.
I did get a taste of that, though, by going to Viable Paradise in 2002. VP is amazing. Though it’s only 1/6th of a Clarion in length, they manage to fit an astonishing amount of breadth and depth into that single week. I can honestly say it was a transformative, incredibly motivating, deeply spiritual experience for me. My favorite moment of it was one day, after a morning of critiquing and a midday spent with Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, my eyes growing bigger and bigger as I listened to them tell me that yes, I was a good writer and yes, I could make it (because I didn’t believe that, not really, before then)… I rented a bike and pedaled down this long strand to an isolated section of beach. There I sat for a couple of hours. I’d brought my laptop, but I didn’t open it. The work I needed to do was all internal. I sat there and gazed at the waves and decided, in that moment, that I was going to be a writer. That it wasn’t just a hobby; it was a calling. And I’d ignored that calling for far too long.
Applications just opened, so if you’re interested, here’s how to apply.