Celebrating Six Weeks of Write-a-thon, Workshop, and Readings

We made it! The six weeks of Clarion West’s summer programming conclude today, and we couldn’t be more impressed by the enthusiasm and hard work we’ve seen throughout that time. It’s time for a big round of applause and thank yous to everyone who made it happen!

Write-a-thon

To our participants, we say a deep thank you for your dedication to your writing goals and the Write-a-thon community, and your fundraising to help Clarion West continue to serve a diversity of speculative fiction writers. We had a record-breaking 600+ writers sign up from 27 countries and we surpassed our $20,000 fundraising goal!

A hearty thank you to all the authors who contributed classes, sprints, video lectures, and more for our Write-a-thon community to benefit from. Because of you, we were able to share 17 free writing classes and 43 writing sessions!

We thank Andy Duncan for providing guidance, inspirational videos, and critiques to the Flash Fiction Workshop, as well as Tor.com for sponsoring it.

Thank you to each of our weekly partners, who gave interviews, shared their events, and provided content for our Write-a-thoners: Sistah Scifi, Seattle Urban Book Expo, the Horror Writers Association, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, Take This, and Two Hour Transport. Please continue to follow our partners to support their activities and events!

Six-Week Summer Workshop

Our 18 Six-Week Summer Workshop students toiled hard on their writing, and we are thrilled to welcome them into our alumni community: Kel Coleman, Sam Davis, Naomi Day, Varsha Dinesh, Louis Evans, Tania Fordwalker, Kerstin Hall, Ana Hurtado, Jonathan Kincade, Steph Kwiatkowski, P H Lee, Wen-yi Lee, Sloane Leong, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, Issa Marc Shulman, Subraj Singh, Alex Veras, and Takim Williams. Congratulations!

We deeply appreciate each of the instructors who took a week out of their lives to teach and mentor our students: Susan Palwick, Phenderson Djèlí Clark, Fonda Lee, Tobias S. Buckell, Bill Campbell, Annalee Newitz, and Charlie Jane Anders.

(If you missed our announcement of next year’s instructors and workshop dates, take a peek here!)

Summer of Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Series

Again, we thank the summer instructors for sharing their work through our summer reading series each Tuesday night, as well as board member Nisi Shawl for serving as interview host twice. The Seattle Public Library and Town Hall Seattle were invaluable site hosts for the in-person readings and livestreams, and University Book Store was our dependable bookseller for each event.

We greatly appreciate the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, King County 4Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts for sponsoring the reading series.

Last but certainly not least, we want to thank all the Clarion West alumni, volunteers, and staff who put in countless hours to make this summer’s programming a fun, engaging experience for all!

We look forward to seeing you this fall for our online classes! Stay tuned for an official announcement of our offerings in mid-August, as well as registration opening. We’ll have writing sessions and courses from H.D. Hunter, Tara Campbell, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dean Francis Alfar, Wendy Wagner, LaShawn Wanak, Cat Rambo, and potentially more.

To stay up-to-date on all our upcoming activities, sign up for our email newsletter. In the meantime, we wish you a productive, community-filled summer!