by Theodora Goss
When I teach writing, I teach craft. Art goes beyond craft, and has to do with what a writer, as an individual, brings to writing. Art is in the way Virginia Woolf explores consciousness. In the way George Orwell writes about politics.
by Helena Bell
The application season for Clarion West and other Clarion (UCSD) has begun. I’ve already seen posts on twitter from past alums encouraging people to apply and telling the world what wonderful, glorious experiences they had.
I’m not going to do that. I’m going to tell you not to apply. To not go. And here are my reasons:
Dragons in your pickle jar. Devils at the diner. Sentient space ships named for epic poetry. All these and more inhabit the pages of the annual Alphanthology, an illustrated collection of flash fiction by alumni of the Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers. Alpha is a nonprofit, ten-day residential workshop for teen writers of genre fiction, held every summer in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
by Deborah J. Ross I love to take conventional wisdom and turn it on its head, following the tradition of rules are made to be broken but first you have to learn them. Beginning writers make mistakes. At least, I did, and I don’t know anyone who’s gone on to a successful writing career who didn’t. At […]
Anyone who grew up yearning to become a writer knows it’s hard to do it alone. The Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers provides an environment for young writers ages 14-19 to build a community of likeminded wordsmiths. Each year, 20 students spend 10 days on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh’s Greensburg campus, crafting a short story and participating in peer critique groups.
by Caren Gussoff Note: Part One appears here: Lit Fic Mags for Spec Fic Writers 101. Part Two appears here: Lit Fic Mags for Spec Fic Writers 102: Is It Literary? ••• Now, you’ve decided to submit to a literary market for a particular story. You’re hip to the fundamental differences between lit mags and SFF mags […]
by Caren Gussoff Note: Part One appears here: Lit Fic Mags for Spec Fic Writers 101 This may seem totally obvious, but is actually worth a deeper dive: if you want to market your speculative fiction to literary markets, it has to be significantly literary. Literary markets, though they may protest that they do not like/accept/read […]
by Caren Gussoff I’ve sat in a lot of panels — and eavesdropped on a bunch of conversations — lately, in which genre writers have asked, debated, and/or mused about crossing over from SFF magazines and journals into straight-up literary fiction ones. Seems to many, and I agree, that the notorious snobbery and befuddlement of […]
This manual is intended to focus on the special needs of the science fiction workshop. Having an accurate and descriptive critical term for a common SF problem makes it easier to recognize and discuss. This guide is intended to save workshop participants from having to “reinvent the wheel” (see section 3) at every session.
If your writing features a richly detailed universe, full of names, places, and historical events, you may want to explore using a wiki to chronicle it. A wiki’s structure allows intricate details to be recorded in a way that both preserves it in an easy to locate fashion but also allows devoted fans to browse the longtime story of your work.
From the cosmic to the ghostly, A Prisoner of Dreamland and Other Oneiric Terrors presents fourteen tales that take the reader on a tour de force journey through the twilight kingdom of dreams.
Michelle Knudsen is the New York Times bestselling author of 50 books for kids & teens, including the Trelian (MG) and Evil Librarian (YA) trilogies and the picture book Library Lion (one of Time magazine’s 100 Best Children’s Books of All Time).
