Updates for the 2024 Six-Week Workshop

Housing

We are excited to announce that Clarion West’s Six-Week Workshop will return to its traditional home in Seattle’s University District next summer! We are hosting the workshop at the University of Washington, which will give our students plenty of opportunities to work in nearby coffee shops, visit the rest of Seattle easily by light rail, and try out lots of dining options. We’re also pleased to share that this location is ADA accessible! More information about housing is available in our FAQ.

Tuition

Clarion West will be raising our in-person tuition from $4,800 to $5,200 due to the rising cost of housing in Seattle. We know that a tuition increase, even a small one, can feel like a barrier to many potential workshop applicants. We’re committed to helping our accepted students get to the workshop, and we do our best to meet the financial needs of everyone who requests tuition assistance. In recent years, up to 94% of our class has received scholarship aid. At the time of publication, we have ten full tuition scholarships and six named partial scholarships, and we’re actively seeking more.

Scholarships

We will continue to do our best to secure scholarships so that the cost of the workshop doesn’t prevent eligible students from being able to attend. (Applications for scholarship support are part of the workshop application and do not affect an applicant’s chances of being accepted.)

Scholarships may be earmarked for specific students or applied from a pool of funding on an as-needed basis. We are so grateful for the generosity of our donors in their support of our students. If you are interested in donating a scholarship, please reach out to Marnee Chua at . 

Instructorships are also very appreciated! These cover the costs of paying our instructors a fair wage and flying them to Seattle for the week. More information is included here. You can also reach out to Marnee with questions about instructorships.

ADA Accessible Housing Prioritized

As Clarion West has commenced its search for long-term workshop housing, we are determined to find an accessible location that allows us to house and feed our 18 students, our instructors, and our long-distance staff. Accessibility is an expanding goal of Clarion West’s, and beginning in 2022 we contracted to use accessible housing for the first time (after we postponed our 2020 workshop due to the pandemic and went online in 2021). While our 2024 Workshop will be in ADA-accessible facilities, the cost will continue to rise at this location. In order to continue hosting the Six-Week Workshop in Seattle, we need to find a housing partner who meets our needs for space, accessibility, dining, etc. Please see our blog article from a year ago, “Clarion West Workshop Needs New Home,” for more on what we’re looking for and how you can help.

Age Update

Finally, one more change we are making in 2024: We will now accept students 18 years of age and older. We’re excited to accept students in this age range, especially since many of them fall between eligibility for most youth and adult workshops. Since our founding, we’ve had workshop attendees as young as 21 and as old as 70. The median age of our students tends to be in the mid-20s to low-30s, but each year’s makeup is different, and we find that having students of many ages is a boon to a class. We look forward to serving more young adult writers in the future!