The 2026 Workshop Co-Facilitators: Workshop Week One and Beyond
In 2025 and 2026, Clarion West updated the workshop format to improve the online experience. With three years of practice, we’ve found that students joining us virtually benefit from additional training and downtime. As a result, Week One is now led by our Workshop Co-Facilitators.
Week One focuses on idea generation, small-group conversations, and workshop models. Students may also experiment with critique of a flash piece and receive craft lessons from guest instructors. Returning to facilitate the workshop this year is co-facilitator, Amy Hirayama. This summer will be Amy’s fifth year co-facilitating for the Six-Week Workshop!
We are pleased to welcome a new co-facilitator to the workshop this year, Naomi Day (CW ‘22). Naomi Day is a writer, editor, and teaching artist. She works primarily with speculative fiction to examine the politics of the Black body, constructs of social monstrosity, and generational trauma as inheritance. Her short fiction has been published in FIYAH Magazine and Uncanny Magazine, among others, and her editorial and classroom work is rooted in her belief that art making is world making. In her various other lives, she’s a film photographer, an engineer, and an aspiring gardener.
We asked Amy and Naomi a few questions in preparing for the summer:
What are you most excited about working with the workshop this summer?
Naomi: I’m psyched to collaborate with students and instructors and my wonderful co-facilitator to create an inspirational and deeply welcoming environment for creative magic!
Amy: I’m thrilled to be working with Naomi, who I first met when they were a six-week workshop student and I was in my first year on staff. Another highlight for me is getting to sit in on the workshops and be present during the creative evolution of the students. I learn so much!
What do you think is most important for a workshop facilitator to do/keep in mind?
Naomi: Facilitation can be a delicate balance of bending towards needs and creating a framework strong enough to hold all those needs. I think about my role as one of silent effectiveness – if I do my job right, mostly I’ll be invisible and the workshop attendees will feel safe and supportive and creatively inspired.
Amy: I think keeping an eye on students’ general well-being is most important. They come into the workshop with so much energy and enthusiasm and this deep understanding of what a special experience it is to work and learn with a cohort of preternaturally talented, like-minded people. It’s almost impossible to pace yourself in that situation! We work really hard to keep up that momentum, but also make sure it’s sustainable.
What has been the most impactful experience for you that supports your own writing?
Naomi: Clarion West! But seriously, the mental leap it took to set aside time from my “regular” life and write at such an intense pace for six weeks straight changed my relationship to my writing. Since my own CW summer, I’ve been able to see my writing as something worthy of shifting my life to create space for, which no other experience was able to do.
Amy: Hearing people discuss each other’s writing with this incredible combination of care and really sophisticated insight has helped me as an educator and as a writer. It’s also taught me that talking about writing is an important part of the writing process (second only to actually writing haha).
Do you have any publications/work that you’d like to share?
Naomi: No recent publications (working on a longer project!) but I’m finding I really like how this flash fiction has aged (“Homeland in Verse”). I’m also always excited to talk about my FIYAH Magazine publication, “A Small, Bloody Gift“, especially because I keep encountering high school teachers who are reading it with their students. It’s the most flattering and inspiring compliment I’ve ever gotten!
Amy: I have seven micro stories in the most recent edition of Moss Magazine.
What are you reading right now?
Naomi: After a long stint of memoirs and self-help books, I’m returning to the speculative by way of fairy tale retellings. First up is Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher. I’m also working through Andrea Hairston’s Archangels of Funk, which is deliciously written and I would live within forever if I could.
Amy: Butter by Asako Yuzuki