Mission & Vision

Our Mission

We support emerging and underrepresented voices by providing writers with world-class instruction to empower their creation of wild and amazing worlds. Through conversation and public engagement, we bring those voices to an ever-expanding community.

Our Vision

We aim to set writers on the path to success, foster greater equity and inclusion in the speculative fiction world, help bring quality speculative fiction to light, and bring writers and readers together.

Speculative fiction—science fiction, fantasy, horror, magic realism, and slipstream—gives voice to those who explore societal and technological change, along with deeper considerations of underlying archetypes of human experience. Although there are fine science fiction and fantasy writers of all ethnicities, races, and genders, historically the field has reflected the same prejudices found in the culture around it, leading to proportionately fewer successful writers of color and women writers than white male writers. Within the limitations of the workshop, Clarion West is dedicated to improving those proportions.