In a special event, the Fantastic Fiction at KGB Reading Series on Wednesday 15 July 2009 honored Clarion West on its 25th anniversary, with a quartet of readings by alumnae of and past instructors at the renowned science fiction and fantasy writers’ workshop.
The free reading series, hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel, is held on the third Wednesday of each month at the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street in Manhattan’s East Village. After a brief welcome to the SRO audience (this writer was among the standing, and glad that he brought a small flashlight), Datlow turned things over to the evening’s guest host, Rajan Khanna, a graduate of the Clarion West Class of 2008.
Clarion West, he expounded, is a non-profit literary organization that administers the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop, an intensive six-week workshop for writers (18 per class) preparing for professional careers in science fiction and fantasy, held annually in Seattle, Washington. Among its graduates are many of the leading lights in the current generation of sf and fantasy writers, and its roll call of instructors is a veritable Who’s Who in sf and fantasy. The 26th term is currently in progress.
Between readers, Khanna shared reminiscences from Clarion West alumni, including Daniel Abraham (Clarion West Class of 1998) and Kij Johnson (1987). The intense pace of writing and the razor-sharp critiques are, for some, relieved by silly pranks (and super-water gun battles); but, it was reiterated, at the Workshop, the students learn about writing… about structuring, plotting, dialog, and titles “that don’t suck.”
The first reader of the evening, Kris Dikeman (2005), was joined by her classmate Cat Rambo (2005) for a riotously entertaining reading of Dikeman’s story “Dearest Cecily”, an epistolary fantasy of witchiness and bitchiness, of curses and counterspells in escalating warfare. The story, which first appeared in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, will be in David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer’s Year’s Best Fantasy #9 this fall.
Philip K. Dick Award-winning author Jack Womack was the next reader. Womack, who has twice taught writing at Clarion West, read from the beginning of his upcoming “family novel”, Ashland: A Kentucky Murder Ballad, an episode recounting a shower of meat.
Following an intermission, Khanna spoke at length about the importance of Clarion West, called for donations and sponsorships, and cited Amazon.com’s challenge grant, which matches and effectively doubles donations. Further information may be found on the Workshop’s website. (In the interests of full disclosure, this writer is the longtime Administrator of the New York Science Fiction Society—the Lunarians, Inc.’s Donald A. and Elsie B. Wollheim Memorial Scholarship Fund, which has provided partial scholarships to over three dozen aspiring writers at the Clarion, Clarion West, and Odyssey Writers’ Workshops.)
Cat Rambo returned to the podium solo as the event’s third reader, offering excerpts from two stories, “Events at Fort Plenitude”, a fantasy set at a frosty outpost that ran in Weird Tales; and “The Dead Girl’s Wedding March”, wherein the titular teenager, residing in a town frozen in time by a wizard, receives a marriage proposal from a rat, which appeared in Fantasy Magazine (before, she hastened to add, she became an editor there); and a piece of flash fiction, “Up the Chimney”, set in a cat’s fairyland.
The final reader of the night was Samuel R. “Chip” Delany, Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning novelist, critic, and writer of non-fiction, and teacher who, he related, has been involved with Clarion West from its inception. Delany read from his forthcoming novel, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, affecting a drawl to convey the account of an adolescent’s visit to the run-down Gothic mansion that’s home to the eccentric rustic island-dwellers whom he’s befriended.
Kressel concluded the evening by thanking everyone. At the rear of the room, Mobile Libris sold books by the readers.
[Edited 17 July 2009: Ellen Datlow offers this link to her photos of the evening.]