Clarion West Alumni News for March 2019

It’s March, and you know what that means.

Wait, what does that mean? Oh, right. It means applications responses are coming. In the next few days, our workshop staff should be finished with the difficult task of selecting our Class of 2019 from the extraordinary pool of applicants this year. These eighteen lucky and unsuspecting individuals will come to Seattle from all around the world to study with Elizabeth Hand, Stephen Graham Jones, Amal El-Mohtar, Ibi Zoboi, Jack Dann, Jonathan Strahan, and Ann Leckie this summer. If you follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, you’ll be among the first to know when we cast off our cowl of secrecy and trumpet this year’s class to the world. Of course, we’ll announce it right here in the Alumni News too.

Meanwhile, our wonderful Clarion West alumni are out there shaking up the literary world. The Nebula Awards ballot this year, which was just announced, features no less than five Clarion West alumni.

Our talented alumni are nominated for:

Best Novelette:
“The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections,” by Tina Connolly (CW ’06)
“An Agent of Utopia,” by Andy Duncan (CW ’94)

Best Short Story:
“And Yet,” by A.T. Greenblatt (CW ’17)

Best Game Writing:
Rent-A-Vice, by Natalia Theodoridou (CW ’18)

The Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book:
Peasprout Chen: Future Legend of Skate and Sword, by Henry Lien (CW ’12)

If you’re at the Nebula Awards conference this year in Los Angeles, be sure to stop by and say hi — CW staff and alumni will be there to cheer our workshop talents on.

Oh — in case you’ve forgotten, our April and May One-Day Workshops are still very much open for enrollment. They feature World Fantasy Award winner Fonda Lee and romantic urban fantasy author Rashida J. Smith. These short workshops are great for any level and take a deep dive into a specific focus in the world of speculative fiction and the craft of writing.

Romantic Elements in Speculative Fiction Instructor: Jasmine Silvera April 28, 2019 Learn how romantic attraction between characters can be used to add dimension to conflict and raise the stakes in the plot while avoiding the common pitfalls that elicit reader groans (and not the good kind).
Revision Bootcamp Instructor: Fonda Lee May 5, 2019 Focus on breaking the revision process down into manageable chunks. Audit your draft for common problems, heighten your story’s themes, and deepen its layers.

Register here:One-Day Workshops

Alumni News

Mimi Mondal (CW ’15) has a new novelette, “His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light,” on Tor.com. She has also begun writing a column called Other Indias, available on her Patreon at the $1 and above patronage level. It covers obscure South Asian history and mythology.

Shiv Ramdas (CW ’16) has a new short story, “Guardian,” in the January issue of Fireside.

Colleen Anderson (CW ’87) edited the anthology Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland. She also recently published the following poems: “How to Cook With Children” (in Grievous Angel); “The Enlightened,” “Washday Blues,” and “Learning to Run” (in Polar Borealis); “Mermaid’s Comb” (in The Future Fire), “Cinderella’s Pumpkin” (in Polu Texni), “Savor” (in HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. V); “The Sand Witch” (placed 2nd in the Balticon poetry contest); “Ode to Andrew Brechin” (placed 3rd in the Wax Poetry Angela contest); and “A Good Catch” (received honorable mention in the 188th Poetry Nook competition). A number of her short stories were published or reprinted as well: “Shoes” (in Polar Borealis); “A Taste of Eden” (in Worlds of SF, Fantasy & Horror Vol. III); and “Sir Tor and the River Maiden” (in By the Light of Camelot). Her collection of dark fiction, A Body of Work, was published by Black Shuck Books in the UK.

Lora Gray (CW ’16) has a story, “The Wallflowers,” in the anthology Gorgon: Stories of Emergence.

Tina Connolly (CW ’06) has, in addition to her Nebula nomination, two flash stories out this month: “A Sharp Breath of Birds” in Uncanny, and “miscellaneous notes from the time an alien came to band camp disguised as my alto sax” in F&SF.

Robert Guffey (CW ’96) has a new story, “Dymaxion Love,” in Hypnos Magazine.

Helen Marshall (CW ’12) has released her first novel! The Migration, a literary science fiction novel about a mysterious immune disorder that afflicts the young of the world, is available in stores now.

Emily C. Skaftun (CW ’09) has a new story, “The Thing With the Helmets,” in Clarkesworld.

Kij Johnson (CW ’87) has a reprint of her World Fantasy Award-winng story “26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss” up at Clarkesword.

Louise Marley (CW ’93) has made the Barnes and Noble bestseller list with her book A Secret History of Witches.

Sandra Odell‘s (CW ’10) essay on writing, encouragement, and personal struggles, “More Writerly Than Thou,” is up at the SFWA blog.

Evan J. Peterson (CW ’15) has released a new interactive fiction experience from Choice of Games. Entitled Drag Star!, the game is a 150k word interactive novel/RPG in which the player competes in a prime time drag reality show.

See you next month!