The hunt for applicants to Clarion UCSD and Clarion West is ramping up. Both instructor line-ups are really great this year (across both workshops, three of my instructors are back at it — Nalo, Kelly, and Neil were great teachers). If you’re thinking about applying to either of the Clarions, I’ve blogged about it consistently. Some relevant posts (maybe) are here and here.

Also, if you have more questions and for some reason I’m the one you want to go to for them, you can drop me a line in email. Some people also choose to ask me things through Facebook, but that requires you to be lucky that a) Facebook will actually forward the note to my email, since I don’t log in if I can possibly avoid it, and b) that I then remember to log in and respond to you. (I just find the user interface completely unusable.)

 

BUT! Clarion costs thousands of dollars and takes six whole weeks out of your summer. If you don’t have that much time or money, I’d like to recommend another workshop, especially if you happen to be on the west coast, so getting to Portland, OR for a weekend won’t break the bank. (Alternately, since the workshop is only a weekend, you could take a vacation and visit the rugged pacific northwest… or whatever.)

Cascade Writers Workshop is a Thursday-Sunday workshop with classes/talks by various people (including ME!) and Milford-style critiques. That’s the same critique style used at most major workshops, including the Clarions.

The workshop leaders are pretty cool:

Claire Eddy, Tor Editor
Nisi Shawl, Author
Delilah Marvelle, Author
Cameron McClure, Agent
J.A. Pitts, Author
Patrick Swenson, Editor/Author

It’s also reasonably priced, and there are two tiers. So, if you want to do the whole thing, it’s $245. If you just want to go to the talks and don’t want to get critiqued, it’s less.

AND! There are now scholarships available that will fund your registration fee. So that’s pretty awesome.

I’d recommend registering ASAP. Registration is open until June 15, but the deadline to apply for the scholarships is May 15th. Also, I believe that unlike Clarion it is entirely first-come-first-serve, so if it fills up, you’ll be doing the sad waiting list dance.

Anyway! I hope to see some of you this June.