Clarion blogs, journals, articles and interviews
Last updated 16 February 2010
An organically growing collection of blog posts, journals and interviews by people who have attended Clarion. To be included the posts must be specifically about the Clarion experience. There are some additional links at the bottom for general Clarion stuff. Enjoy.
The list is updated about once a month – I find journal entries from kind people sending me e-mails or comments and searching. If you add a comment with links and it does not appear within a day please e-mail me, it may have set off the spam filter. I try to check the spam box regularly, but spam is a pernicious beasty that poisons everything it touches and sometimes I might not find it.
You may wish to begin at the beginning, get cozy with Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop written by Clarion co-founder Kate Wilhelm. I love learning through examples, stories and anecdotes. I must sit down with it again, very practical, very lovely… and, this time round, a little nostalgic.
Direct links to journal entries (or tagged collections of entries)
NEW Random Jane – Clarion West 2005
- Short and sweet with some unusual metrics (I wonder how the yoga mat is)
NEW Artemis Jones – Clarion West 2002
NEW Allan Rousselle – Clarion West 2001
William Shunn – Clarion 1985
Geoffrey A. Landis - Clarion 1985
- Survival tips (still relevant today), a few thoughts looking back, and where are they now statistics
Philip Brewer – Clarion 2001
Neile Graham – Clarion West 1996
Pamela Rentz – Clarion West 2008
Wendy A. Shaffer – Clarion West 2002
Clarion South on Tor.com – an overview
Aidan Doyle – Clarion South
Angela Slatter – Clarion South
Tiffani Angus – Clarion 2009 (one of my Clarion Buddies)
- Week 1
- Week 2
- Week 3
- Week 4
- Week 5
- Week 6
- And a general Clarion tag, for pre-Clarion and post-Clarion briefings
David Levine – Clarion West 2000
Liz Argall – umm, yeah, me! Clarion Class of 2009
- Post Clarion and moving to the USA reflections – We do it because it is hard
- I wrote about lessons learned when I was a guest at the Conflux virtual mini-convention in 2009
Lee Batersby hosts guest blogs and other juicy Clarion things – Clarion South 2009
- Clarion tagged thingies on Lee Battersby’s Blog
Ken Schneyer – Clarion 2009 (one of my Clarion buddies)
- Index of posts relating to Clarion (some of his posts even have pretty pictures!)
Shauna Roberts – Clarion 2009 (one of my Clarion buddies)
- Shauna reflects on the process on her personal blog
- Shauna writes about it in Novel Spaces
Mishell Baker – Clarion 2009 (one of my Clarion buddies)
- Fantasy Magazine article on pregnantly preparing for Clarion
Rochita Loenen-Ruiz – Clarion West 2009
- In Fantasy Magazine she writes of her anticipation
- She wrote many blog posts in her Livejournal, this is when she arrives at Clarion and you can trace her steps from there
Rudy Rucker – Clarion West 2009
- Some sage words from an instructor How to write
Jordan Lapp – Clarion West 2009
Jeff VanderMeer, Clarion South 2009
Steve Mitchell, Clarion South 2009
Gavin J Grant – Clarion 2000
Alex Wilson – Clarion 2006
Clarion South on Wordpress, including interviews with tutors on the process.
Clarion South Collective of 2007
- What comes first the successful writer or the workshop part one
- What comes first the successful writer or the workshop part two
- Getting creative part 1
- Getting creative aka the physics of unicorn horns part 2
- Quantity versus quality part one
- Quality over quantity part two
- Everything I need to know I learned at clarion south by laura e goodin
- Working-with-the-big-bad-bold-tutors
and the achievements of the 2007 class over the last two years
Alessio Bresciani – Clarion South
Ben Rosenbaum – Clarion West
- http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com/journal/2001_06_20.html
- http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com/journal/2001_07_12.html
- http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com/journal/2001_08_17.html
The Ferret – Clarion
- Collected Journal entries about Clarion (updated to a new and improved launchpad 1 Apri 09, thanks Mr Ferret)
Suzy McKee Charnas – A tutor’s perspective
Keyan Bowes – Clarion 2007
- Keyan Bowes has created a lovely index page chronicling her Clarion experiences
Clarion related and more alumni
Tina Connolly maintains a lot of knowledge love and linkage love for Clarion West, her year and other years
General blogs and linkage love for Clarion class of 2006
Blog links for Clarion West class of 2006
David Barr Kirtley – After Clarion
The Clarion Actual
Clarion (San Diego, USA)
Clarion West (Seattle, USA)
Clarion South (Brisbane, Australia)
And down below, that’s my Clarion – 2009, San Diego
Filed under Conventions, Uncategorized | Comments (20)
Clarion call – the workshop that will eat Liz in June and July
At last I am able to speak those jewelled words, “I have been accepted and am going to Clarion.” We were asked to stay mum and keep our itching fingers away from the keyboard until everything was finalised.
What does this mean? Clarion is an amazing 6 week writers’ workshop. There’s Clarion South, Clarion West and the original Clarion (originally in the East and now in the significantly less East location of San Diego, University of California). I’ll be going to Clarion at UCSD, where I shall be taught by amazing authors, critiqued by amazing Co-Clarionators (my official word for classmates) as well as hone my own art of critiquing. I’m also excited about staying in a dorm at a college, not something I had during my own university experience (which involved a lot more time at home feeding chickens).
I have heard so many good things about Clarion and chatted to good people who rave about the Clarion experience. It is a workshop you can only do once, so this year it is my once in a lifetime opportunity.
You can see more information at the Clarion Website, but swiftly said, my tutors will be Holly Black, Larissa Lai, Robert Crais, Kim Stanley Robinson, Elizabeth Hand, and Paul Park.
My co-clarionators will be:
Heather Albano
Mishell Baker
Stacie Brown
Katie Crumpton
Nicolas Dayton
Edward Gauvin
Grady Hendrix
Tanner Jupin
Nina Kuruvilla
Matthew London
Patrick Nolan
Leonard Pung
Shauna Roberts
Kenneth Schneyer
Eric Schultz
Nicholas Stenner
Nicole Taylor
Some of us have already found each other on facebook and twitter and we have a members only blog where we’re getting to know each other as well. They seem like a really interesting and diverse crowd with a lot of love for the craft.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (4)Drawing Monsters Competition
The lovely Anne-Marie, Director of the ACT Writers Centre passed on to me this competition info from Murdoch books:
Murdoch Books is on the hunt for an unpublished, funky new illustrator for an upcoming children’s title! $10,000 cash prize, plus naming rights on the cover… see PDF
The only downside is you have to design 3 monsters, and if you win you have to design even more. Who would want to do that?
… I expect at least half the people I know to apply.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)Pro paying comics gig – Pencillers only
Hi all I hope your projects are going well. Life is pretty hectic on planet Liz, hectic but happy.
I am once again talent scouting for an educational comics company, pencillers only this time round. If you have sent stuff to me previously keep drawing, but please don’t submit to this round. My client does not want to see any names he has seen before.
Style must be DC/Marvel realistic, tight clean pencils that can go straight from pencils to colour. Must be professional quality (of the two that got through last time both have done pro work for major players). Must be able to commit to doing 24 pages over a reasonable period. Must be able to work from photographic references and depict people from diverse backgrounds. Must follow artistic direction well, there will be a lot of corrections at storyboarding stage (storyboarding is paid for).
Please pass on to anyone who might be interested.
Submission info:
Please do not attach samples of artwork, send relevant url that shows your mighty awesomeness. As a general note please don’t make your website so wanky I do not know which links to click or have to click through outdated stuff you did in primary school before I get to the good stuff.
Final decision on who gets gigs will not be made by me. If I think your stuff has potential I will pass it on to the man who makes the decisions. Depending on the number of submissions I may be slow to respond. Follow up e-mails to see how things are going are fine.
Tips on what I’m looking for here: http://lizargall.com/2008/12/artist-search-over-for-now/
e-mail liz@lizargall.com
Filed under artist search | Tags: art, comics, pencillers, work | Comment (0)Fires, grief, stories and sense making
I have been reading Gary Hughes’ account of his first week after the fires in the Weekend Australian Magazine (March 7-8). A moving and intelligent account of the dislocation of a disaster like that. I cannot find a version of that article online, but here is his account of fleeing the fires. It is no wonder the guy has won Walkley awards. His account reminds me of the paralysed dislocation I felt after the Canberra fires. Minute in comparison, but with palpable comparisons. My family and friends were spared during those fires, although my father and sister on the other side of the town put out embers near the family home with the rest of the neighbourhood.
The many layers of grief, of letting go, of coping, surviving and thriving are fascinating, layered and complex. And these events are never in isolation. My mother died two days before September 11, burning trade centres another nail in a coffin on the day we were planning her funeral, compounding the fractures and disassociation. It took me a year and a half to find space to begin to grieve for her, sometimes grief takes time. I was unpacking grief when the 2003 fires came to Canberra and added a new sense of heartbreak and disconnection, opening up to then become self protectively numb again. It was nice to hear of seasoned survivors speaking of the anger after disconnect, it’s not personal, it’s almost physiological.
Six months, a year, after the fires I was in a workplace with a man who had lost his home while out fighting fires to save other people’s homes. He was still affected by the fires (of course) and there was a heightened consciousness and degree of conversation about the fires that stirred conflicting feelings. It assisted in spurring on an irrational anger every time a person mentioned their elderly parents. I was in a workplace where most of my colleagues were decades older and a number were struggling with roles of carers and the finite span of their parents. Every time they complained or expressed a fear of their parent’s mortality I wanted to yell across the room “Fuck you, my mother’s dead.” I can only imagine how hard this would be if you lost a parent younger and had to endure peers bitching about parents when you’ve lost one and would love to be in the position to bitch. My unexpected rawness providing new levels of understanding for friends who had lost parents in highschool. The anger was powerful and passed easily if I considered it to be a physiological response, passing through like running water and nothing personal. All of this flows through my mind as I see a new crimson sky in Victoria.
I was speaking to a friend about the numbness and trauma she and friends had been experiencing in Victoria, to be so close and while not personally touched by the fires, psychologically touched and rattled. I remember how rattled I felt by the Tsunami not that long ago, similarities and dissimilarities and sense making processes and how I control information flow.
Sometimes I don’t want to know anything, I will protect myself and close my eyes. Sometimes there is such a hunger to know and consume information and details, be hypnotised by the details and draw on them to make sense of it, make sense of the world, normalise events and contextualise the experience… lay down a map, like sketching a figure, look at the proportions, sketch out the physical space, sketch out the interior space, situate it in an environment, both current and historical. Processes like these spontaneous essay. Connecting this incident to the other stories I know can be life affirming, but also rattling as old wounds become re-energised, if they have not had the time grieve and flow like water through the consciousness so that they are not personal anymore.
I think of people who have been through so much more, people my father helps in war torn Africa who have seen more siblings die than live, witnessed, survived or perpetrated atrocities. I think of people in Afghanistan who have never known peace. I think of the layers of tragedy and grief, of complex survival systems, coping mechanisms, ways of thriving and how they intersect, bump into each other. It’s messy, difficult, magnificent and poignant, how humans love, lose, care and rebuild. That we live and love, make beauty and stories, imagine and will still dance (be it in words, bodies, sounds or sights) is magnificent. Our resilience and fragility is inspiring.
I am filled with admiration. I love how the world develops layers as I grow older, each year, each experience (my own or explored through one of the arts) is a piece of filo pasty, a layering that makes the world more interesting, more complex and extraordinary. As I get older, people become more extraordinary. I am able to see and imagine more layers to their filo pastry. The magnificence and brutality of the world. I cry more at the movies, in sorrow and joy. At times I feel more jaded, less attuned than I did a handful of years ago… but that is a self protective facade, brought about because I feel more, feel a greater complexity and my imagination can draw more lines in the air. Although I am not thrown into the air by my passions the way I used to, my passions have more nuance and depth, they are not diminished (though they are more manageable).
To draw on the wonderful Michael Marshal Smith’s Only Forward. When the wave has crashed, when the storm passes, as it will. What joy when we are able to bring ourselves fully into the present, bring our integrated selves with us and detangle our fragile selves from the barbed wire of the past… how extraordinary to have all those experiences like a magnifying lens to bring to our present selves and wonder at the world around us.
There is so much to learn, so much to remember, so much to make sense of when an extreme event happens (be it love or disaster). Gary Hughes’ essay was a lovely point of reflection, moving and powerful. His words moved me and took me here. Our words, stories and sense makings are important.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (5)Western Australia Adventures and Bio Update
Thanks to everyone who sent me crits and comments on the bio, version 3 is now on my about page (http://lizargall.com/about/).
In exciting news I will be heading to Western Australia to work on some educational comics in a week or so.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)