Clarion West Alumni News for August 2014

The long, lazy days of summer are finally here, but Clarion West is busy with preparations for the fall and winter One-Day Workshops, as well as getting ready for next year’s Six-Week Workshop. Our newest alumni have returned home and are taking up their lives once again.

Just as a reminder, the Write-a-thon is still open for sponsorships as of this writing—your sponsorship helps keep the community and the workshop strong.

The Seattle Weekly recently featured Clarion West in an article. Thank you to Neile Graham and Caroline Bobanick for their contributions to this piece.

If you sent us news and it’s not featured here, we may not have received it due to technical problems with the form on this page. For the moment, send any news to alumni@clarionwest.org. Thank you!

Honors
Leslie Howle, our distinguished Workshop Director emeritus, has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award for her years of work with the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Congratulations, Leslie—it’s well deserved!

The finalists for the 2014 Parsec Awards have been announced. Among the finalists are Tina Connolly (CW ’06) who is up for the “Best Speculative Fiction Magazine or Anthology Podcast” award for her podcast Toasted Cake, and Benjamin Rosenbaum (CW ’01) who is a finalist for the “Best Speculative Fiction Story: Large Cast (Short Form)” award for his story “Night Waking”.

Publications
The Birthday Problem, by Caren Gussoff (CW ’08) is available now wherever awesome books are sold.The Birthday Problem is a post-apocalyptic SF novel about nanotech and survival.

The latest issue of Three-Lobed Burning Eye features stories from Lauren Dixon (CW ’10) and Cat Rambo (CW ’05).

Henry Lien (CW ‘12) has recently sold two stories: “The Ladies’ Underwater Gardening Society” to Asimov’s, and “The Shadow You Cast Is Me” to Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Jenni Moody’s (CW ’11) story “Sister Winter” was published in the Summer 2014 issue of The Colored Lens.

The second issue of Witchfinder: The Mysteries of Unland, co-written by Maura McHugh (CW ’06) and Kim Newman, is out now from Dark Horse Press.

Passages
Lucy Seaman (CW ’68, CW ’72) passed quietly away on July 25, 2014, after a long fight with ovarian cancer.

Her friend Lin Nielsen Cochran writes:

“I first met Lucy at the original Clarion Writers Workshop in Clarion, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1968. She was a writer—I was a high school student attending a summer program in archaeology. For me, Lucy opened the door to science fiction fandom, the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) and a whole world of writing. She also introduced me to Vonda N. McIntyre, which led to my first attending Clarion West in ’71. Lucy and I did Clarion West together in ’72.

“After Clarion, Lucy had a brief career writing for TV shows like Mission Impossible and The High Chaparral. She also worked on the ground crew for the Goodyear blimp, which led to her writing a Harlequin romance about blimpers titled Love Lighter Than Air. Lucy was an artist, an adventurer and a larger-than-life presence who will be missed by everyone who knew her.”

Margot Adler (CW ’73) passed away on July 28, 2014. Margot had a long and storied career as an NPR journalist and commentator, novelist, and well-respected writer on Pagan religions. Adler joined NPR in 1979 as a general assignment reporter and was a regular voice on Morning Edition and All Things Considered. She was also co-producer of an award-winning radio drama, War Day.

Her book Drawing Down the Moon is considered a watershed work among the Pagan community.

She is survived by her son, Alex Dylan Gliedman-Adler.