“I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.”― Octavia E. Butler Even though we find ourselves already at the end of February, it feels…
Speculative Fiction Trivia Night is back in 2022! Join us on Sunday, March 20 at 5pm Think you know a lot about speculative fiction? Our quizmaster Seanan McGuire leads the multiverse’s most challenging trivia night of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. This event will be held online to preserve the health of our fleet; no…
The following message was sent to us from Tania Chen as part of our 2021 #successstories series: My name is Tania Chen, and I am a Chinese Mexican queer writer living in Mexico City. I guess I consider myself primarily a speculative horror writer. I love horror, whether it’s in film format, or book, or…
Introduction by Greg Bear, with obituary by Ian K. Hagemann, originally published to Facebook on January 8, 2022 Here’s to the passing of Jane E. Hawkins, one of our esteemed Clarion West students from the class of ’88. We have also lost from this class Mary Rosenblum and Kathy Ann Goonan. As a teacher of…
Applications are open for the 2022 Clarion West Workshop for speculative fiction writers. Offered every summer in Seattle, Clarion West has over 600 graduates, including Russell L. Bates (winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Miami International Science Fiction Film Festival), editor Sheree Renée Thomas (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction), Nisi Shawl…
We wrap up November and the United States’ Native American Heritage Month with the following list of recommended speculative fiction reading by Indigenous writers of North and Central America and the surrounding islands. On this list, we focus primarily on those writers who are current members and/or descend from the First Nations of Canada, the…
During our 2021 Write-a-thon, we spoke with three writers who are also a chaplain, an ICU nurse, and a doctor of psychiatry, to hear their insights on the topic of mental health for writers–as well as writing about mental health. That panel is recorded on YouTube here: Mental Health for Writers. The time went so quickly…
Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Recipients This summer, the Carl Brandon Society generously donated two full scholarships to Clarion West students. Lue Palmer of Toronto, Canada, and Shakirah Peterson of Los Angeles, California, were each recipients of the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship. Since 2007, the Carl Brandon Society has donated this scholarship in Octavia’s…
As we reach the close of Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States, we’ve put together the following list of recommended reading by authors of science fiction, fantasy, and horror who are also of Hispanic and Latinx descent. We recognize that the United States’ Hispanic Heritage Month has a history of exclusion and misrepresentation of the Spanish-speaking community,…
Imposter syndrome. Doomscrolling. Adult attention deficit disorder. These are just a few of the mental and emotional experiences that make our stories feel like failures and rob us of the joy of our craft. So how do we deal with them? During our 2021 Write-a-thon, we spoke with three writers who are also a chaplain,…