Welcome New Board Members and Staff
by Marnee Chua, Executive Director
As we approach the end of this year, I am pleased to share that several individuals have joined the Clarion West Board of Directors in 2020. Their addition to the board will help us better position the organization to grow, build capacity, and achieve our plans to make our workshops more accessible. They have already been engaging in our identity review and workshop review process and will be key to implementing our goals for the coming year.
The following individuals joined the board in 2020:
Shweta Adhyam (she/her) grew up in Madras, lives in Seattle, and writes speculative fiction. She has graduate degrees in physics and astronomy, has worked as actuary and data analyst, speaks five languages, and strongly believes escapism is vital. She is frenemies with aDhD, knows far more about Hindu mythology than is good for her, and attended Clarion West in 2017. She lives with her spouse and child. Shweta can be found on the web at www.shweta-adhyam.com and on Twitter as @shweta_adhyam.
Betsy Aoki (she/her) is an industry pioneer with 20+ years of experience leading technical teams. Her jobs have centered on v.1 products and platforms for social interaction, metrics platforms, and gaming. With Eileen Brown, she is co-author of Digital Marketer, published by the British Computer Society.
Linda Breneman (she/her) is a writer in Seattle. She works on fiction, essays, and video game journalism and pub- lishes Pixelkin.org. She is interested in games and learning, consciousness, virtual worlds, cockapoo dogs, literature, speculative fiction, and her family. In 1996, she co-founded Seattle’s literary center, Richard Hugo House.
In 2012, M. Huw Evans (he/him) left a career in health sciences and research to pursue his childhood dream of writ- ing fiction. He attended Clarion West (where he wrote the first version of a story for none other than the master of time travel herself, Connie Willis), then served as Workshop administrator for four years (2014–2017). Huw is a freelance editor, a stay-at-home dad … and a writer.
Scott Sherman (he/him) is a software engineer and writer. He enjoys reading (anything from a new perspective), writing (stories and programs), and ‘rithmatic (including advanced mathematical topics like flexagons).
In addition, a new staff member, Evan J. Peterson (all pronouns accepted) joined Clarion West in June, as our Marketing & Social Media Coordinator. Since joining the team, Evan has also increasingly taken on a role with our fundraising efforts, with an eye toward moving into our Fundraising & Outreach Coordinator position by the end of the year. Evan writes strange stories, nonfiction, poetry, and interactive games such as Drag Star! He was the founding creative editor and then editor-in-chief of Minor Arcana Press and founder of the SHRIEK: A Women of Horror Film Series. Find Evan online at www.evanjpeterson.com.
Please join me in welcoming them. This year has been an especially challenging time for our workshop and community. I am so thankful our board and staff’s dedication to moving forward and keeping our programs thriving.
This article appears in the Fall 2020 edition of The Seventh Week, Clarion West’s semiannual newsletter. You can read the entire newsletter at www.clarionwest.org/seventhweek.