Each week during the workshop, we present one of our six current instructors reading his or her best new work from recent books, unpublished stories, or novels-in-progress. The featured reader also answers questions about writing, teaching, editing, and other topics. Copies of the readers' works are available onsite for purchase and signing.
This was the fourth year we were able to offer the readings for free and our third year in a row inside the University Book Store. Attendance was solid, with most readings attracting over 50 people. The series was a resounding success.
We’ll post details of the 2011 Summer Reading Series on our website early next year. Until then, you may want to find out about this month's author events at the University Book Store; the readings they host are often of interest to the Clarion West community.
Readers
The readers for the 2010 Clarion West Summer Reading Series were:
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Michael Bishop - June 22
 In his more than forty years of writing Michael Bishop has won two Nebulas, four Locus Awards, and a Shirley Jackson Award for his provokingly beautiful, sometimes satirical stories and novels. Bishop’s voice is a poet’s: surprising, precise, unflinchingly honest. His observations on the moral implications of fantastic situations (a typewriter possessed by an evil spirit, the baseball career of Frankenstein’s monster) keep his audiences entranced. Copies of Bishop’s books will be on sale at the reading, with a signing session to follow.
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Maureen McHugh - June 29
 Maureen McHugh stands genre conventions on their heads yet writes realistic, scientifically plausible stories. Unpredictability, imaginativeness, and a feminist take on families normal and strange has marked McHugh’s work from her debut novel China Mountain Zhang, winner of the Tiptree and Lambda awards, through her collection Mothers & Other Monsters, to her alternate reality games I Love Bees and Year Zero. Copies of her books will be on sale at the reading, with a signing session to follow.
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Nnedi Okorafor - July 6
 Nnedi Okorafor blends science fiction, fantasy, and her family’s Nigerian culture into vividly original tales. Her focused, energetic approach to manifesting creativity and reforging myths makes her readings inspiring experiences. Okorafor’s first novel, Zahrah the Windseeker, won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and her second, The Shadow Speaker, won the Carl Brandon Parallax Award. Copies of Okorafor’s books will be on sale at the reading, with a signing session to follow.
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Graham Joyce - July 13
 Graham Joyce’s novel The Facts of Life won the World Fantasy Award; he has also received four British Fantasy Awards, numerous additional nominations, and heaps of critical praise. In Joyce’s books, ordinary people encounter the supernatural in landscapes filled with eerie promise and charming menace, ranging from Jerusalem to the jungles of Thailand to his native English countryside. Copies of Joyce’s books will be on sale at the reading; a signing session will follow.
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Ellen Datlow - July 20
 Ellen Datlow is one of the field’s most important editors. She has an intimate knowledge of the genre from its essential core to its outermost limits, and is noted for her early publications of William Gibson, Ursula K. Le Guin, and many other significant writers. Her credentials include six years at the helm of SciFi.com’s SCIFICTION magazine and a host of anthologies, among them 20 volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Copies of her books will be on sale at the reading, with a signing session to follow.
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Ian McDonald - July 27
 Ian McDonald’s cyberpunk-tinged stories of artificial intelligence, postcolonial ironies, and virtual life and death win him prestigious awards and international acclaim. From Belfast, Ireland, McDonald brings to Seattle the sardonic eye and cutting wit of an outsider living inside the confines of the British empire. He is the 2010 Susan C. Petrey Fellow. Copies of his books will be on sale at the reading, with a signing session to follow.
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The 2010 Clarion West Summer Reading Series was presented by Clarion West and University Book Store, and co-sponsored by King County 4Culture and Amazon.com.
