Clarion West Selected As Amazon Literary Partnership 2021 Grant Recipient

Grant to Be Earmarked for Evolving Workshop Culture to Inspire Equity, Empowerment, and Innovation in Writing Workshops.

Seattle, WA June 3, 2021 — The Amazon Literary Partnership today announced that Clarion West received a grant to support its program and operations. Clarion West is among the list of 80 Amazon Literary Partnership Grant Recipients for 2021, collectively awarded a total of more than $1 million.

The Amazon Literary Partnership (ALP) supports writers to help tell their stories and find their readers, empowering writers to create, publish, learn, teach, experiment and thrive. Since 2009, ALP is committed to uplifting and amplifying the voices of overlooked or marginalized writers by supporting the literary community through grants to writing programs and nonprofit literary organizations, including groups like Clarion West whose mission is to support emerging and underrepresented voices by providing writers with world-class instruction to empower their creation of wild and amazing worlds. Through conversation and public engagement, we bring those voices to an ever-expanding community.

This grant supports the review and design of Clarion West’s writing workshops and other programming, including critiquing methods and social interactions, to ensure that their workshop culture is distinctive to their mission of equity, empowerment, and innovation — by providing a safe space for participants to explore concepts of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation within and beyond the genre of speculative fiction.  

“Organizations like ours must recognize our responsibility to the writing community, especially those writers who have been traditionally marginalized and underrepresented in publishing,” states Clarion West Executive Director Marnee Chua. ” We must continue to assess our mission effectiveness and our place in the world of speculative fiction in order to ensure a place of equity and inclusion.” 

“The Amazon Literary Partnership awards grants to innovative groups who create deep impact on the lives of writers and the broader literary and publishing community,” said Alexandra Woodworth, manager of the ALP program. “We are delighted to support all of this year’s grant recipients and commend their continued commitment to nurturing a vibrant and diverse literary landscape.”

About Clarion West

The Clarion West Writers Workshop has been held annually in Seattle, WA, since 1986. Our program was founded on the belief that writers from diverse backgrounds need an opportunity to be heard — and to experiment with new forms of storytelling. With over 600 graduates from the Six-Week Summer Workshop, Clarion West has been a significant actor in helping the careers of speculative fiction writers, including women and other writers who have been traditionally underrepresented in the field. Clarion West provides year-round programs to over 1,500 writers annually. 

Learn more at www.clarionwest.org

About The Amazon Literary Partnership

Since 2009, the Amazon Literary Partnership has provided more than $14 million in grant funding to more than 150 literary organizations, assisting many thousands of writers. Among the organizations Amazon has supported over the years include the National Book Foundation, PEN America, Poets & Writers, Girls Write Now, Graywolf Press, Lamda Literary Foundation, Loft Literary Center, National Novel Writing Month, Words Without Borders, Yaddo, WriteGirl, and many more. Through Amazon’s annual grants, Amazon supports literary centers, writing workshops, residencies, fellowships, literary magazines, independent publishers, and poetry and translation programs. Writers supported by some of these organizations have gone on to become best-selling and award-winning authors.

To learn more about the Amazon Literary Partnership, please visit www.amazonliterarypartnership.com