At our Annual Meeting March 5, three new members joined our Board of Directors and two longtime board members retired. Kelley Eskridge is our new board chair, and Kij Johnson ('87) is now our vice chair. Karen G. Anderson will take on some development duties such as grant writing, as well as her general board responsibilities. Both Kelley and Kij are award-winning authors with close ties to the Clarion West community, while Karen has a background in digital journalism and is active in the Seattle-area fan community, especially with the Foolscap convention.
Our outgoing chair, Deborah Fisher, remains on the board. Eileen Gunn, our outgoing vice chair, has retired from the board but remains active as a volunteer, as does outgoing Development Director Kate Schaefer.
Kate, a board member since 1990, served originally in community relations, as treasurer from 2000 to 2005, and then as development director, creating a strong fundraising operation to support running the workshop and providing scholarships. Eileen joined the board in 1988 and served as director of communications until 2007, managing our public presence. She also served as chair pro tem in 2006. Deborah Fisher joined the board in 2003, became chair in 2007, and has been instrumental in managing CW's growth and structural development.
The changes are part of the Clarion West board's succession-planning program, which is designed to manage the transition of individual board members, maximize Clarion West's continuity, and minimize individual burnout.
Bios for incoming Clarion West board members:
Kelley Eskridge (www.kelleyeskridge.com) is a fiction writer, essayist, and screenwriter. She's the author of the New York Times Notable Books novel Solitaire and the short fiction collection Dangerous Space. Solitaire was a Borders Books Original Voices selection, a finalist for the Nebula, Endeavour, and Spectrum awards, and is in development as a film with Eskridge attached as the revision writer. Her short stories include an Astraea prize winner, two finalists for the Nebula, three Tiptree Honor List stories, and a story adapted for television. Kelley is a graduate of Clarion (1988) and taught Clarion West in 2007. She has volunteered for Clarion West as a submissions reader, organizational consultant to the board, and party host. She is a professional facilitator, organizational development consultant, and former vice president at Wizards of the Coast. She also edits, mentors and coaches writers at Sterling Editing (www.sterlingediting.com) with her partner, novelist Nicola Griffith.
Kij Johnson is the author of three novels and more than thirty fantasy, science fiction, and slipstream stories; a winner of the 2009 World Fantasy, Sturgeon, and Crawford Awards; and a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards. She is also an associate director for the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. She attended Clarion West in 1987.
For the past decade Karen G. Anderson has designed, written, and produced innovative online communications for business and consumer audiences. She currently writes, edits, and consults on a contract basis for companies including Cardiac Science, Custom Toll Free, Web 1 Marketing, Muse Indigo, and TidBITS Electronic Publishing. From 2000 through 2006 she worked at Apple as a writer for iReview and the iTunes Music Store and as the managing editor for the one million-member .Mac Internet services website (the forerunner of MobileMe). Anderson is a member of Women in Digital Journalism, Biznik, and the National Book Critics Circle and is a Publishers Weekly reviewer for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest. She has served on boards and committees for a variety of nonprofit organizations including the Pat Graney Dance Company, Northwest Folklife, and Foolscap.
