The 2021 Odyssey writing workshop is accepting applications until April 1, 2021. The six-week workshop will be held June 1 – July 7, 2021, though exactly where and how is yet to be determined:
If the world has returned to a post-COVID state of near normality, it will be held as usual on the campus of Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. If social distancing is still necessary but ...Read More
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The Odyssey Writing Workshop has announced that its summer 2021 classes will be held online. The six-week course is normally held at Saint Anselm College in Manchester NH, though the 2020 session was also held online due to COVID concerns. Odyssey director Jeanne Cavelos said,
Odyssey brings together adult students of all ages from across the globe. Many may not have the opportunity to be vaccinated by summer. If one ...Read More
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Pocket Workshop: Essays on Living as a Writer, Tod McCoy & M. Huw Evans, eds. (Hydra House 978-0997951073, $17.95, 196pp, pb) February 2021.
Gathered here are 28 essays (six reprints, 22 originals) by instructors of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, intended, as Tod McCoy explains in his foreword, as “a way to give back to a community who may not be able to attend the workshop by delivering thoughts ...Read More
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Clarion West is offering free writing workshops for teens and adults on a first come, first served basis. The classes and writing sprints will run from March 30 – April 24, 2020. Instructors include K. Tempest Bradford, Marie Brennan, Tobias Buckell, Curtis Chen, Andy Duncan, Eileen Gunn, Elizabeth Hand, James Patrick Kelly, Fonda Lee, Henry Lien, Seanan McGuire, Ian Muneshwar, Brooks Peck, Laurie Penny, Erin Roberts, Nisi Shawl, James Sutter, ...Read More
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The Odyssey Writing Workshop has announced several scholarships available for students attending in 2020, ranging in size from several hundred dollars to over $4,000. Scholarship applications and information queries should be made by contacting director Jeanne Cavelos. Scholarships include the Miskatonic Scholarship funded by George R.R. Martin for writers of Lovecraftian cosmic horror; the Walter & Kattie Metcalf Singing Spider Scholarship for novelists (applicants must submit a novel excerpt as ...Read More
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“Whenever I start to read a new story by the incomparable Ellen Klages, I feel as if I’m on the edge of my seat in the front row of the theater: keen-eyed and determined, this time, to ...Read More
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The Alpha workshop for young writers was held July 24 – August 4, 2019 in Greensburg PA.
This story and more like it in the September 2019 issue of Locus.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE ...Read More
Read more“A revolution is happening in speculative fiction, and Annalee Newitz is leading the vanguard.” —Wil Wheaton
TURN YOUR OBSESSIVE RESEARCH INTO AMAZING WORLDBUILDINGIn this class, Annalee will give you the tools to build another world. They’ll talk about how to create believable, nuanced cultures, environments, and geographies ...Read More
Read moreSESSION ONE: AMAL EL-MOHTAR: USING POETRY TO WRITE PROSE
Poetry and ...Read More
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The Odyssey Writing Workshop has announced several scholarships available for students attending in 2019. Scholarship applications and information queries should be made by contacting director Jeanne Cavelos.
The Miskatonic Scholarship, funded by George R.R. Martin, covers full tuition, textbook, and housing. It will be awarded to a promising new writer of Lovecraftian cosmic horror. Martin said, “What we want are nightmares new and resonant and profound, cosmic terrors that will ...Read More
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The Odyssey Writing Workshop has announced instructors and dates for its 2019 summer session. Guest lecturers are Scott H. Andrews, Joshua Bilmes, Holly Black, Neil Clarke, Sara King, Nisi Shawl, Fran Wilde, and Paul Witcover. The workshop will be held June 3 – July 12, 2019 at Saint Anselm College in Manchester NH.
Early action application deadline for “those who, if admitted, need several months to arrange their affairs” is ...Read More
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The Odyssey Writing Workshop has announced the instructors for its online Winter 2019 classes: Barbara Ashford will teach “Getting the Big Picture: The Key to Revising Your Novel” from January 2 – February 13, 2019; Lucy A. Snyder will teach “Riveting Descriptions: Bringing Your Story to Life in the Reader’s Mind” from January 3-31, 2019; and Scott H. Andrews will teach “Emotional Truth: Making Character Emotions Real, Powerful, and Immediate ...Read More
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The Alpha workshop for young writers was held July 25 – August 5, 2018 in Greensburg PA.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and ...Read More
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Tina Connolly taught a YA-novel writing workshop at the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, held June 24-29, 2018.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT ...Read More
Read moreWorldbuilding means different things to many people, whether it’s starting ...Read More
Read moreThe Odyssey Writing Workshop has announced several scholarships available for students attending in 2018.
The Miskatonic Scholarship, funded by George R.R. Martin, covers full tuition, textbook, and housing costs. It will be awarded to a promising new writer of Lovecraftian cosmic horror. The winner will be selected by a panel of three judges.
The Parasite Publications Character Awards, funded by Sara King, will provide three scholarships in the amounts of ...Read More
Read more» David Langford’s Ansible 299
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» Washington Post: Bill Sheehan reviews Tim Powers’ Hide Me Among the Graves
» NY Times’ Leo Dillon obit, with a slideshow
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» LitReactor is hosting an ...Read More
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» Washington Post: Michael Dirda reviews Michael Saler’s As If
» Seattle Post Intelligencer: Richard Marcus reviews Saladin Ahmed’s Throne Of The Crescent Moon
» LA Times: William Gibson talks to Wired
» Huffington Post: Brave New World Turns 80 ...Read More
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» LA Times: David L. Ulin reviews Don DeLillo’s The Angel Esmeralda; Nick Owchar reviews Atwood’s In Other Worlds; and Michael Hiltzik explains the copyright controversy over Philip K. Dick’s “Adjustment Team”
» NY Times: Christopher Buckley reviews Charles J. Shields’ book about Kurt Vonnegut; Robert Christgau reviews Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence
» NY Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2011 include titles by DeLillo, King, Duncan, ...Read More
Read moreThe application period for the six-week Clarion writing workshop is open from December 1, 2010 through March 1, 2011. The six-week workshop will be held June 26 through August 6, 2011, at the University of California, San Diego. Scheduled instructors include Nina Kiriki Hoffman, John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, David Anthony Durham, John Kessel, and Kij Johnson. For more information, visit the Clarion application information page.
Clarion West‘s application period is ...Read More
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Your debut novel Mort(e) came out in 2015 and launched the War with No Name Series. Tell us about that book and the world it introduced.
The sales team likes to call it either “Animal Farm on steroids” or “Animal Farm with machine guns.” In short, the series is about a war between humans and sentient animals. In this world, a hyperintelligent queen of a globe-spanning ant colony has vowed ...Read More
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When I was a baby writer, I obsessively collected career advice from established writers, reading books and essays and attending panels on ‘‘How I broke in’’ featuring established pros. It’s a testament to the irrational, burning desire to publish that I continued to do this long after it became apparent that there was nothing of contemporary applicability in these discussions.
I mean, it was entertaining to hear a writer describe ...Read More
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The Odyssey Writing Workshop has announced recipients of several of its scholarships available for students attending in 2021.
Mars Hawthorne and Erina Lee won the Miskatonic Scholarship, funded by George R.R. Martin and covering full tuition and housing for a promising new writer of Lovecraftian cosmic horror.
Catherine Yu won the Walter & Kattie Metcalf Singing Spider Scholarship, funded by Pam Metcalf Harrington, covering full tuition for “a fantasy novelist ...Read More
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It’s not often one sees the theatrical release of a 700-year-old poem, and just as rarely is there a modern adaptation of an Arthurian myth that does not involve either the Sword in the Stone or the Holy Grail. The Green Knight (or, as it calls itself onscreen, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Anonymous) is about Arthur’s (Sean Harris) nephew Gawain (Dev Patel), who embarks on a ...Read More
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Arizona State University (ASU) has announced Libia Brenda, Xia Jia, Hannah Onoguwe, and Vandana Singh as its 2021 Climate Imagination Fellows.
Each fellow will write an original piece of short climate fiction, building on local opportunities, challenges, resources and complexities, and drawing on conversations with experts in a variety of fields, ranging from climate science to sociology to energy systems to biodiversity. They will also write a set of shorter ...Read More
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Two blockbuster-scope films dropped within a week of each other, with similar budgets and big-name casts. They could have been the summer’s perfect popcorn movies, yet were overall disappointments — so we’ll just do brief discussions of both in one review.
Josh: All right. So, what are we going to talk about first? Let’s do Black Widow first, because you hated it so much.
Arley: Yeah, I mean, I think ...Read More
Read moreAuthor, editor, scholar, and frequent Locus contributor Elizabeth Anne Hull, 84, died in the early hours of August 3, 2021.
Elizabeth Ann Hull was born January 10, 1937 in Upper Darby PA. She attended Illinois State University, Northwestern University, and Loyola University, where she earned her MA in 1970 and PhD in 1975. She taught English for over 30 years at William Rainey Harper College in Illinois before retiring and ...Read More
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Here’s some feedback I’ve received from editors, agents, and marketing managers in response to my work over the years:
“This is just a jumble of words.”
“I think this suffers from a failure of the imagination.”
“This is sorta too emotional.”
“Try again.”
One of the most difficult skills a writer must learn – whether writing novels, screenplays, marketing copy, or news articles – is how to receive, process, and ...Read More
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CHRISTOPHER TRACY BROWN was born June 10, 1964 in Des Moines IA. He grew up there, then went to Phillips Exeter, a prep school in New Hampshire, for high school (where his classmates included author Dan Brown; no relation). He spent a gap year traveling in Europe and working in Washington DC, then attended college at Tulane University in New Orleans, studying political economy, and spent a year at Oxford ...Read More
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The 2021 SFWA Nebula Conference was an online event, held June 4-6. There were 812 attending members from 27 countries, up slightly from 2020’s online event, which had 808 members from 33 countries. 2019’s in-person event in Los Angeles had seen a record-breaking 475 registered members.
Thirty panels were offered over the course of three days, with 111 program participants. Early online programming began on March 15, before the event ...Read More
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Arley: I don’t know if it was a callback, or if it’s just one of those images that’s becoming a copy-paste in these kinds of movies, but there was a shot that was right out of The Exorcist.
Josh: That was a direct reference, for sure. The clothes, the streetlamp, the dramatic pause. The filmmakers are trying really hard to tie the Conjuring series to that lineage. The fonts,
Bacchanal is a richly imagined historical fantasy. Tell us a bit about the book: the world where it takes place, and the characters who inhabit that world.
Bacchanal is set against the backdrop of The Great Depression and culminates with the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. At the center of this maelstrom is an unusual young woman, Eliza Meeks. She’s alone, ostracized and struggling to navigate her reality – a family that ...Read More
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