Week 5 Write-a-thon Partner: Two Hour Transport!

We hope you’re enjoying Week 5 of our annual Write-a-thon. Sheree Renée Thomas, a Clarion West alumna herself, is teaching the six-week workshop participants. We all just heard that her collection NINE BAR BLUES is up for a World Fantasy Award, alongside several other Clarion West alumni and instructors! 

We’ve moved our two-session workshop,  How to Build a Better Con with L.D. Lewis (FIYAH) and Iori Kusano (CW ’17), to this Friday and Saturday at  4:00 – 6:00 PM Pacific time. We hope this will better accommodate attendees living outside of convenient time zones. On Monday, board member Yang-Yang Wang moderated a panel on Mental Health and Writing, featuring three stellar professionals in medicine (they also happen to be alumni!). The recording can be viewed at the previous link.

Coming up: Two Hour Transport offers a performance workshop on reading live, tomorrow (Thursday) from 3:00 – 5:00 PM Pacific. On Friday, we’ll have an open mic night from 7:00—9:00PM Pacific for Write-a-thon participants featuring special guest readers Nana Nkweti and Erin Roberts. Want to attend either event? Register for the Write-a-thon! It’s never too late to join this community.

Here’s more about our Week 5 partner, Seattle’s own speculative fiction reading series, Two Hour Transport:

Two Hour Transport is a community group dedicated to showcasing new voices in science fiction and fantasy and supporting a thriving and inclusive speculative fiction community. Mostly, we love writing, we love spec fic, and as Patrick Hurley pointed out over an after-the-show pint, “You may not get fame and fortune in this business, but you do get this, the ability to sit down with writers whose work you really admire and talk about life and writing.”

We’ve had a blast working with Write-a-thon participants this week and are looking forward to our upcoming performance workshop and joint Clarion West & Two Hour Transport reading!

Two Hour Transport Main Event:

Our readings take place on the 4th Wednesday of every month, currently over Zoom, which has allowed us to include authors from as far away as New Zealand!  We hope to return to our home at Cafe Racer soon (pandemic willing) but have some crafty plans in the works to make it easy for people to attend virtually and even hang out.  Our plans do not involve web-controlled robots, though we would welcome the donation of web-controlled robots.

Our next reading is virtual and will take place Wednesday, August 25th, 2021 7- 9pm PDT – featuring Karen Joy Fowler & Eileen Gunn. There will be one hour of (always fantastic) open mic, and in the second hour we will hear from our esteemed featured readers! The quality of our open mic is high, our audience is friendly and welcoming, and we would love to hear your original speculative fiction.  Arrive a little before 7pm and plan to read for a little under five minutes. We hope you’ll join us!  We post the Zoom link on our WordPress and Facebook pages a week ahead of the event.

Two Hour Transport Reading Group:

This group meets quarterly to discuss a new science fiction or fantasy anthology or novel by a contemporary Black author or editor. We are currently reading A Master of Djinn by double Nebula & Locus award-winning author P. Djèlí Clark. We’re meeting virtually on Thursday, August 12th, 2021 to talk about it!  Grab a copy and join us.  More info about the book group here: https://twohourtransport.wordpress.com/reading-group/, please give it a read before you come.

Two Hour Transport Critique Group:

On non-book-group months, we meet on the 2nd Thursday of the month to read our work aloud and get developmental feedback from other writers and readers in our community. We’re interested in turning this into a more formal textual critique group. More info coming soon!

Two Hour Transport Anthology:

In 2019 we put together an anthology made up of work from authors in our community. Some of the authors have been nominated for and won Nebulas, and some had never published a piece before we met them. It’s a wonderful snapshot of the distinct voices that have animated our events year after year.  All proceeds are split evenly between the anthology contributors. You can pick up a paperback or ebook copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Two-Hour-Transport-Anthology-2019/dp/109548043X

Two Hour Transport Web Presence: 

Follow and like us to get event notifications!

WordPress: https://twohourtransport.wordpress.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/twohourtransport
Instagram: @twohourtransport
Twitter: @transport_two