The instructors for Clarion and Clarion West have been announced.
Clarion will have the pleasure of:
Jeff and Ann VanderMeer will be the bring it home team for the last two weeks. I’ve just finished reading Delany’s essay on Clarion, I’m so excited for next year.
As I mentioned a very long time ago, I’m a guest panelist at the Conflux Virtual Mini-Con. Conflux is a wonderful Speculative Fiction Convention held in Canberra, Australia every year in October. I’ve had a wonderful time every time, with top notch panels, interesting workshops and lovely people.
The panel will be starting in a few hours (Sunday 30 August for folks in Australia, Saturday 29 August for folks in the US) and will be archived. I’ve ‘been’ to a few virtual festivals (although this is the first time I will be guesting) and have been surprised at how much I have learned either during the festival or after the festival has officially ended. So check it out, either soonish, participate in real time and ask squirly questions, or check it out later and see what gems of knowledge have been casually dropped. Conflux Virtual Mini-Con coming to the interwebs near you, wherever you are.
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
John F. Kennedy – September 12, 1962.
Words on our wall. My sweetheart just put them at the entrance to our room – next to bible thick books in leather, a papier mache chicken and stands above library books, new books and old books from Powells and a few precious tomes from Australia.
Updated 5 September – as I go through my notes and find more recommendations.
One of the many joys of Clarion was to get recommendations for good reads from wise teachers and co-clarionerds. This is an incomplete list, I forgot to jot down the list on the fridge and I’m sure there are ones mentioned in passing that I neglected. My dear co-clarionitics, if you read this and see absences and would like to recommend… or indeed other wise minds who read this and want to add to my enormous reading list please make some suggestions. It’s delightful to have such a rich and diverse list.
Clarion Writers Workshop is over for 2009. Wow.
Going by the numbers:
People writing descriptively about it:
Clarion is seriously good stuff for any writer, and given the close relationship between genre fiction and comics I particularly recommend that comics writers get their short story writing hats on and go for this experience as well. I’m excited by how this short story workshop can enrich comics as a form.
Goodnight all.
Life has been an amazing and frantic. Since last I wrote I’ve reached the United States unpacked in a big rush in Portland (turning a rather nice basement into a cosy home) and then zoomed down to San Diego.
I’m in the third week of Clarion Writer’s Workshop, the bees knees of creative development. I’m working with really talented people to make our work shine and it is just fantastic. Week 1 was Holly Black (of Spiderwick Chronicles fame), week 2 Larissa Lai (When Fox is a Thousand & Saltfish Girl) and we’ve just started working with Robert Crais (Elvis Cole novels fame, crime/mystery books and used to write for top TV shows).
Robert Crais is a Clarion graduate, as is Kim Stanley Robinson who will be teaching us next week.
Sleeping 5 hours a night, working like a dog and loving it. Must dash, I’m starving and class starts at 8am.
Kathryn Heyman was the last Ambassador to speak, novelist and with a very sharp mind. After her speech I chatted to her over coffee and she was very thought provoking. In addition to her writing she teaches workshops and occasional mentoring. From my brief and fascinating encounter with her I would not recommend her for a shy author still finding their voice… perhaps because I think it’s important to write that self indulgent poetry without fear when finding your voice (which is very different to expecting that work to be published).
Once you’ve found your voice and are prepared to be properly challenged and made uncomfortable she’s fascinating, fearless, intelligent, will ask you hard questions and won’t let you wimp out on the answers. I can see why she’s very picky about who she mentors. After and while I was speaking to her I went through a rainbow of emotions… and then went back to the hotel and made the script stronger.
If Ambassador Milroy has a website I can’t find it, but google David Milroy and you will find his name attached to a range of really interesting and well regarded projects. He’s a musician, writer, playwright, artistic director, he’s won Deadly Awards and he has a really nice presence. I found him to be a really down to earth interesting guy with that rare combination of thoughtful plus active plus playful mind. His key points were:
And in other news I’m writing and doing all sorts of things while waiting for our flight. Update of our adventures by the numbers:
It still hasn’t quite sunk in. We’re going, we’re on our way. I am so full of enthusiasm and excitement. We are in a state of becoming.
Rachel Hills was the third Ambassador to speak at the Emerging Writers Festival. Rachel’s a widely published journalist and editor. She’s also an awesome blogger (with many of her articles available to view) and posts interesting tweets linking to interesting articles. I wish I was half as retweetable as her. I was excited to finally meet her, having met her virtually years and years ago when she was working on a story about labiaplasty (now that’s a long story).
Rachel has in her fabulous blogging way put up a transcript of her full talk, you may find it interesting to see the difference between what I distilled and what she said. The distillery says: