The 2025 Summer Workshop Instructors & Format
The Clarion West Six-Week workshop will be virtual in 2025, with a new format designed to give students more time to write, additional lecture time with instructors, and more experimentation with workshopping models.
If you’re interested in learning more about our housing situation and our decision to alternate virtual and in-person workshop years, click here.
Our instructors for the 2025 Six-Week Workshop are:
The Clarion West 2025 Six-Week Workshop will take place from June 22 – August 2, 2025. Applications for the 2025 Workshop are planned to open December 1, 2024. Each year, Clarion West is able to provide full and partial scholarships to a significant number of applicants, thanks to our generous community of donors and sponsors.
Founded in 1971, Clarion West holds a six-week workshop each summer geared toward helping writers of speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, and horror) at the beginnings of their professional careers. Each workshop is limited to 15–18 students, and each week features a different instructor, a highly-regarded author or editor offering a unique perspective on the field. Applicants and students come from everywhere in the world, and graduates frequently go on to professional success.
More information about the virtual workshop will be available soon on our workshop page, but here is a sneak peek at how the workshop will run in 2025:
- Led by our workshop staff, Week 1 will focus on workshop models practiced during the rest of the workshop. Students will also have opportunities to brainstorm and prepare stories for the following weeks.
- In Weeks 2 and 3, students will put these writing and workshop techniques into practice by submitting a story each week and spending Monday through Friday critiquing, guided by Maurice Broaddus and Carlos Hernandez.
- Week 4 will give the class a brief respite from workshopping; instead, it will involve daily lectures and exercises for the class to learn more from each of the instructors.
- In Weeks 5 and 6, the summer will conclude with two final weeks of writing and workshopping led by Diana Pho and Martha Wells.
At Clarion West, we’ve seen how new workshopping models in the classroom can improve students’ overall experience. We’ve found that virtual students benefit from additional training and downtime; this schedule offers more opportunities for the class to get to know each other, gain additional expertise with unfamiliar workshop models, and stay caught up with the thousands of words they’ll be writing and reading in a summer. This updated virtual format will be more accessible and will allow us to better practice our core values.
