Clarion West Alumni News for August 2018
Welcome to the August Alumni News!
August is traditionally a slow month for us at CW. The Summer Workshop has let out, the Write-a-thon is over, and everyone is realizing that there is only a little time left to get out and enjoy the sunshine this summer.
We want to take this time to give a big round of applause to everyone who participated in, donated, or even thought seriously about participating in the 2018 Write-a-thon. At final tally, we raised a total of $21,468 for Clarion West, meeting and exceeding our $20,000 goal in a difficult year. Thank you so, so much.
Among our 210 Write-a-thonners this year were participants from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, France, India, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the USA. We triumphed over all three challenges from our wonderful matching donors, and created hundreds of works of art together.
The Write-a-thon Participation Trophy this year belongs to the Class of 2012 and Class of 2017, for rounding up the most members of their class for the Write-a-thon and securing $500 worth of donations in their collective name. Additional credit goes to the Class of 2017, a.k.a. Team Eclipse for creating a little Write-a-thon class reunion story, “Mars is Burning,” which they will be offering to all their Write-a-thon sponsors. It’s actually not too late to throw a couple bucks their way if you’re curious to see how their story turned out.
One-Day Workshops
With the fall comes our first crop of One-Day Workshops, which take place in the Seattle University District. In case you missed it, here’s the lineup:
Monster Making
Instructor: Jesse Bullington
September 2, 2018
Worldbuilding for Disabled Characters
Instructor: Elsa Sjunneson-Henry
October 7, 2018
Building Characters
Instructor: Tina Connolly & Caroline M. Yoachim
October 21, 2018
Original Story Content
Instructor: Henry Lien
November 18, 2018
Our first workshop, featuring novelist Jesse Bullington, is coming up soon, so check it out if you’d like to up your writing game this fall!
Alumni News
The World Fantasy Award finalists have been announced, and they include: Natalia Theodoridou (CW ’18) for best short story, with “The Birding: A Fairy Tale”; Caroline M. Yoachim (CW ’06) for best short story, with “Carnival Nine”; and JY Yang (CW ’13) for best novella, with “The Black Tides of Heaven.”
David Rees-Thomas (CW ’11), has a new story, “Bleeding Through the Shadows,” up at Shimmer.
Samuel Kolawole’s (CW ’15) novel manuscript Son of a Dog was a top three finalist for the Graywolf Press Africa Prize, out of more than 200 novels.
Tina Connolly’s (CW ’06) new novelette, “The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections,” was released on Tor.com this month.
Mimi Mondal (CW ’15) has published a short story, “The Trees of My Youth Grew Tall,” at Strange Horizons. It is the first of her CW stories to be published.
Arinn Dembo (CW ’90) has a story in What October Brings, an upcoming anthology from Celeano Press.
Greg Cox (CW ’84) won the Scribe Award for Best Speculative Original Novel at San Diego Comic Con, for his book The Librarians and the Mother Goose Chase.
Jay O’Connell (CW ’94) has sold a story to Asimov’s: “Not Only Who You Know.” This is his second sale to Asimov’s this year.
James Robert Herndon (CW ’12) did an interview with Analog, including a little shout-out to Clarion West!
Sheree Renée Thomas (CW ’99) guest-edited for two magazines this month: A special Southeastern USA issue of Strange Horizons, and a Zodiac-themed issue of Apex.
Robert Guffey’s (CW ’96) new novelette, “The Vorpal Report,” has just been published in the latest issue of The Temz Review.
Congratulations, all! Send in your news for next month, and thank you for being part of the Clarion West community!