Hugo Finalists Announced!!!

April 7, 2020 at 5:11 pm

The final ballot for this year’s Hugo Awards was announced today, via Facebook and YouTube, by my friends at CoNZealand.

Congratulations to all the finalists… and condolences to all those who did not make the ballot. Take some consolation in the knowledge that much fine work gets overlooked every year.

The Hugo Award is the oldest and most prestigious award in science fiction and fantasy… not only for writers, but also for artists, editors, and fans. First given in 1953, it was the original award. Many worthy honors have joined it in the half century since: the Nebulas, the Bram Stokers, the World Fantasy Awards, the Dragons, the Tiptrees, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Prometheus, the British Fantasy Award, the Ditmars, the Auroras, the Saturns… even the Alfies. (Yes, I have forgotten some, beyond a doubt). All wonderful honors. But the Hugo Awards remain the greatest accolade that our field has to offer.

One of the reasons is that it is an award chosen by the members of worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention, the granddaddy of them all. By fans, in other words. By YOU, if you like. You need not even attend the convention: supporting memberships, considerably cheaper, also allow you to cast a Hugo ballot. So if you would like your voice to be heard, head over to the CoNZealand website and sign up.

Sad to say, no one will actually be attending this year’s worldcon in Wellington, thanks to coronavirus. The concom, prudently, has decided to make this year’s convention entirely virtual. A necessity in this time of pandemic, I think, but a sad necessity.

I am the Toastmaster for CoNZealand, the host at the awards ceremony,so originally I was going to get to be the guy handing out the rockets come Hugo night, a once-in-a-lifetime honor that I was looking forward to immensely. I am still the Toastmaster, as it happens, but I guess that now I am going to be a Virtual Toastmaster. I suppose I qualify. I did once write two scripts for MAX HEADROOM, after all (though neither one was produced, which could be an omen). Alternatively, I could just tie the rockets to the legs of ravens… really big ravens…

Current Mood: excited excited

Tags: awards, conventions, hugo awards, worldcon

No Fooling

April 2, 2020 at 12:53 pm

April is here, though up where I am there is still a lot more snow than flowers.

The weirdness continues, all around the world. Sometimes it is hard to recall how much has changed in just one month.

Regular readers of my Not A Blog and the Wild Cards website know that I usually do an April Fools post. We have had some great ones over the years, even fooled a few people. Not this year, though. None of the ideas we were playing with seemed quite appropriate, with everything that is going on. Or maybe I just wasn’t feeling very funny.

Science Fiction writers are supposed to be good at predicting the future (that’s a myth, actually, but never mind), but I have to confess, I have no notion where or when any of this is going to end. I can see half a dozen branching alternatives, some of which are very grim indeed, and some much less so. One does not want to be too alarmist, of course. But at the same time, it would be folly to be too dismissive of the dangers. All we can do is shelter in place, keep an eye on the news, and take this day by day.

The Jean Cocteau Cinema and Beastly Books remain closed. When I first shut them down a few weeks ago, it was only for a month… the idea being that we would re-evaluate on April 15 and see where things stood then. As I write this, on April 2, that April 15 date is looking wildly optimistic. If things change at all in the next two weeks, they are likely to be changing for the worse, not the better. Most likely, then, both cinema and bookstore will need to remain closed… for how long, I have no idea.

Our mail-order service at Beastly Books remains open, however. Unlike Amazon, we don’t sell toilet paper or medical equipment, so nothing will take priority over your book orders. Take a look at the selection at https://jeancocteaucinema.com/product-category/signed-books/

All our books are autographed, and reading is one of the best ways to pass the time while quarantined. (I know I am doing a lot of it). Also, truth be told, your book purchases will help us keep paying our staff at the cinema and bookstore, since there is no other source of income at present. And we have some great, great titles in stock.

In other virus-related news, conventions and festivals and sporting events continue to cancel or postpone all over the world. Including SF cons. Some of them, I fear, may never come back, since — in some cases, not all — venues and hotels are refusing to let the events out of their contracts, which means the sponsoring organizations could have huge debts with no income to help offset the costs. This year’s Nebula Weekend is going virtual. Some of the writer’s workshops at which I sponsor scholarships — Clarion, Clarion West, Odyssey, and the Taos Toolbox — may need to do the same. None of them have made that determination yet, since the workshops are still months away, but I know all of them are exploring their options.

The biggest news in that regard is that this year’s worldcon, CoNZealand, has also decided to go virtual. I know what a difficult decision that was for the Kiwis, who have worked so hard bidding and winning the con, and dreamed so long of bringing fandom to their magical island. New Zealand is one of my favorite places in the world, and Parris feels the same way. We have been there several times before, and I know we will visit again… just not this year, alas. I gather that pushing the con back to late 2020 or early 2021 was not feasible, for various logistical reasons, which meant that going online was the only real alternative to cancellation. How that will work, I have no idea. No one does, really. It has never been done before. The technical aspects are going to be daunting, no doubt… but I know that everyone concerned is going to do their best. Fingers crossed.

If there is a silver lining in these clouds, this will give me more time to finish WINDS OF WINTER. I continue to write every day, up here in my mountain fastness.

Want something to read while you’re waiting? This would be a good time to check out my Wild Cards series, if you haven’t done so already. There are twenty-nine of them (some still in the pipeline), which should keep you reading for a good long time. If it is more Westeros you want, and you just know A SONG OF ICE & FIRE, take a look at A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS (the Dunk & Egg novellas) and FIRE & BLOOD (wherein you will find the source material for the new HBO series, HOUSE OF THE DRAGON). And there are some other wonderful writers out there as well. The QUILLIFER series by Walter Jon Williams is the best work WJW has ever done, and I am really enjoying the new AFTERSHOCKS series from Marko Kloos.

Need something to binge watch? The third season of OZARK is riveting, HBO’s recent Stephen King mini-series THE OUTSIDER is a faithful, engrossing adaptation of his novel, and the DOCTOR SLEEP film is very good as well. I am also really enjoying THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, an adaptation of the Philip Roth novel that seems more timely than ever before. And WESTWORLD and BETTER CALL SAUL are must watch too.

However you spend your days, my friends, stay safe.

Current Mood: anxious anxious

Tags: everyday life, life and death, writing

Crossovers and Cameos

March 26, 2020 at 9:57 am

I got a message from my friend Jonah Nolan last week. Jonah is one of the creators and showrunners of HBO’s WESTWORLD, along with his wife Lisa Joy, and he told me to be sure to catch Sunday’s episode, there might be something that would amuse me.

Truth be told, I would have been watching in any case. WESTWORLD is a terrific show, and I’ve been watching it since the beginning. In any case, I was indeed watching, and I was indeed amused when we came on the cameo of The Three Ds: David Benioff, Dan Weiss, and Drogon. I thought it was a fun moment, and it made me smile.

Subsequently, of course, the internet has blown up over the cameo, as the internet is wont to do. Some people loved the cameo, some hated it, and everybody, it seems to me, is making way too much of it. Hey, folks, c’mon. It was just a bit of fun. A sort of Easter Egg. You all like Easter Eggs in your video games, don’t you? If you blinked, you could have missed it… kind of like the appearance of Yul Brynner’s “man in black” robot from the original WESTWORLD movie that appeared first season. I have been known to do that sort of thing myself. Sharp-eyed readers of A SONG OF ICE & FIRE long ago noticed the appearance of the Three Stooges in the first novel, and my subsequent mentions of how giants devoured Triarch Belicho and a knight wearing Dallas Cowboys heraldry. And if you missed those… as 98% of the readers did… that’s fine, they were just a tip o’ the hat. I also have houses named after the great fantasists Jack Vance, Roger Zelazny, and Robert Jordan, for what it’s worth. More tips o’ my hat. (I wear a lot of hats).

I’ve done my own cameos over the years as well. You can catch a glimpse of me (young, dark-haired me) in two different episodes of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. The first one you’d need to be blind to miss; the second one you’ll miss if you blink. More recently, I played a zombie version of myself in Z NATION (still signing books), and had my head bitten off by a shark in SHARKNADO 3 (though they cut all my lines, pfui). I also filmed a GAME OF THRONES cameo in the pilot, as a guest at Dany’s wedding to Khal Drogo. They gave me an enormous hat and really big balls, which might have been some sort of commentary.

But that was when Dany was being played by Tamzin Merchant. When we recast, the whole wedding had to be reshot and I wound up on the cutting room floor. A little later, I wanted to be a severed head on the walls of the Red Keep next to Ned Stark (and David & Dan, ideally), but our budget was not so robust first season, and those severed heads are damned expensive. I also campaigned to die horribly at the Red Wedding, which seemed only fair since I was responsible for it, but it was felt that my presence in that powerful, wrenching, bloody scene might have taken the viewers out of the moment. Fair enough. And not wrong.

One thing led to another and I never did appear in a cameo in GOT, but that’s cool. I’m a writer, not an actor… or even an extra. And standing around in costume for all those hours in Morocco while we filmed Dany & Drogo’s nuptials gave me a helluva backache. (Ian McNeice, our original Illyrio Mopatis, gave me some great advice afterwards: when filming a long sequence like a feast or a wedding, make sure you have a comfortable seat).

Had I been in Los Angeles at the time of the filming, I might well have been part of that WESTWORLD cameo as well. Jonah and Lisa have also stated that the whole thing was my idea.

Which is true. Kinda sorta. No, I had no idea this particular moment was coming until I caught it on HBO… but back during WESTWORLD’s season one, I did suggest to Jonah that, seeing as how the original WESTWORLD film featured a Medieval World, the TV version could easily have a Westeros World. I never wanted a full crossover, never thought that WESTWORLD’s hosts should adventure in Westeros World as they have in Samurai World and War World… but a brief scene or two could have been fun, and would have been in keeping with the Delos concept. And, hey, I even suggested that they could bring back actors from GOT, characters we had killed. The hosts die almost weekly, after all. The fans might have gotten a kick out of catching a brief glimpse of Richard Madden, Sibel Kekilli, Esme Bianco, Ron Donachie, or Mark Addy again… and I suspect the actors would have been game as well. But it was not to be.

Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy mentioned that I worked in television back in the 80s, when crossovers between shows were more common. That’s true. Philip DeGuere, the showrunner on TWILIGHT ZONE version 2, who gave me my first job in Hollywood, was also the creator of a show called SIMON & SIMON, and like to tell how his show was struggling in the ratings until they did a crossover with MAGNUM P.I., after which ratings for the Simon Boys went through the roof and he had a hit. We actually tried to do the same thing with TWILIGHT ZONE, and had several meetings with the writers and producers of MIKE HAMMER, the series that followed us on Friday nights. Now THAT would have been a crossover, Mike Hammer in the Twilight Zone, like some surreal meeting of Mickey Spillane and Rod Serling. Not only that, but Phil told me I could write the script, and I had just the story too… I wanted to buy the rights to Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag” and adapt that. Alas, alack, we could never get around the insistence of the Mike Hammer guys that the whole thing end up being just a dream, so it never happened. A pity. That was a script I would have loved to write.

As for the WESTWORLD cameo… y’know, Robbie the Robot had a long career in film and television after FORBIDDEN PLANET. Why would we want to begrudge Drogon the same?

Current Mood: amused amused

Tags: game of thrones, hbo, television

The Visitor Returns

March 20, 2020 at 8:28 am

Good news, Wild Carders.

Mark Lawrence is back with a brand new Visitor story, a sequel to his story in KNAVES OVER QUEENS.

It’s on Tor.com and it’s FREE.

The Visitor: Kill or Cure

Check it out. I think you’ll really enjoy this one. The Visitor is an amazing character, and Mark’s a wonderful writer.

And what better way to spend a day in self-quarantine than reading a great new story.

Current Mood: pleased pleased

Tags: tor, wild cards

And Stranger Still

March 19, 2020 at 11:28 am

The world is changing so quickly around us these days that it is hard to keep up.

New Mexico has requested that all non-essential businesses close, to help fight the spread of the coronavirus. Accordingly, we are going to go ahead and shutter our bookstore, Beastly Books, on Montezuma Street in Santa Fe. As with the adjoining theatre, the Jean Cocteau Cinema, the store will remain closed until April 15, at which point we will re-evaluate and act accordingly.

I am going to continue to pay the Beastly Books staff during the closure, just as we’re going with the JCC. I urge all small business owners… and all large business owners, for that matter… to do the same. The economic consequences of the virus are going to be severe enough without throwing people out of work and cutting off their paychecks.

Although the brick-and-mortar side of Beastly Books will be closed, we will continue to sell books via mail order. You can choose from among our large stock of autographed books in all genres at https://jeancocteaucinema.com/product-category/signed-books/

JCC and Beastly Books will be back as soon as it’s safe, better than ever.

Thanks for your patience and understanding. And do keep safe, friends, wherever you are.

Current Mood: sad sad

Tags: Beastly Books, jean cocteau cinema bookstore, life and death, signed books

Strange Days

March 17, 2020 at 3:09 pm

Strange days are upon us. As ancient as I am, I cannot recall ever having lived through anything like the past few weeks.

We’re taking steps here in New Mexico, like everywhere else.

Meow Wolf is closed. A wise precaution, given the huge size of the crowds that customarily gather daily to see the House of Eternal Return. MW draws people from all over the country, indeed all over the world, and it is very much a hands-on exhibit where visitors are encouraged to touch everything and go everywhere. Shutting it down promptly was a good move.

As of today, I am also closing the Jean Cocteau Cinema. The JCC only has a seating capacity of 130, and we achieve that no more than three or four times a year; attendance at the theatre and the bar is usually well below the state-mandated cap of 50. Even so, why take chances? I prefer to err on the side of caution, so we’re shutting down the theatre until April 15, at which time we will take stock and re-evaluate. Honestly, I have no idea where things will stand in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the US, or the world in a month’s time. Things have been changing so fast. But our intent is to keep the theatre closed until the relevant authorities tell us that it is safe to reopen.

I am also shutting down my non-profit, the Stagecoach Foundation, for the duration. Stagecoach customarily holds classes and workshops in various aspects of film and television production, for kids aspiring to have careers in the entertainment industry, but we won’t be having any while the coronavirus is still raging.

Despite the shutdowns, we will continue to pay our employees at Stagecoach and the Jean Cocteau, for the foreseeable future.

We are keeping our bookstore, Beastly Books, open for the time being. The bookstore never has more than a handful of customers at any one time, except for author events — and we’re cancelling or postponing all of the signings and readings we had scheduled. We have stocked the store with disinfectants and sanitizers, and we will be carefully monitoring the situation going forward. If it seems best to shut the bookstore too, we will do that.

Meanwhile, however, our mail order service will also remain open. With quarantines, lockdowns, and social isolation on the menu everywhere, and all the usual entertainment venues closing their doors, reading is the best way to pass the empty hours. If you need a few books to get you through the next month or so and distract you from all that is going on in the world, we have some great reads on offer, and ALL our books are autographed. Have a browse at https://jeancocteaucinema.com/product-category/signed-books/

For those of you who may be concerned for me personally… yes, I am aware that I am very much in the most vulnerable population, given my age and physical condition. But I feel fine at the moment, and we are taking all sensible precautions. I am off by myself in a remote isolated location, attended by one of my staff, and I’m not going in to town or seeing anyone. Truth be told, I am spending more time in Westeros than in the real world, writing every day. Things are pretty grim in the Seven Kingdoms… but maybe not as grim as they may become here.

Some days, watching the news, I cannot help feeling as if we are all now living in a science fiction novel. But not, alas, the sort of science fiction novel that I dreamed of living in when I was a kid, the one with the cities on the Moon, colonies on Mars, household robots programmed with the Three Laws, and flying cars. I never liked the pandemic stories half so well…

Let us hope we all come through this safe and sound. Stay well, my friends. Better to be safe than sorry.

Current Mood: stressed

Tags: life and death

Who Will Be the New American Hero?

March 3, 2020 at 10:34 am

The year was 2007 when twenty-eight aces from all over the United States gathered in Hollywood to compete for a million dollars in the first season of the hit television series American Hero. Men and women, young and old, all gifted with astonishing powers, they were divided into four teams: Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades. Each week they were sent out to face an amazing array of challenges to test their courage, their resourcefulness, their teamwork, and their cunning. The winning team won immunity for a week; the others were required to discard one of their members.

As every Wild Cards fan know, the show did not go entirely as planned. Midway through that first season, a large group of discards and a couple of the contestants still in the fight abandoned Los Angeles for Egypt, where a community of jokers was faced with genocide. Some of them would die there. Their story was told in INSIDE STRAIGHT, volume eighteen in the series. But over the years, many readers have asked us — what happened to the rest of the contestants, the aces who stayed in Hollywood to finish the competition? What challenges did they face, who excelled, who stumbled, who was betrayed and discarded, who won the million dollars?

Their stories can at last be told in full, in AMERICAN HERO, a new ebook from Tor. Here is the flip side of INSIDE STRAIGHT, with material taken straight from the show’s official website. Here is every challenge told in detail, from the first week to the last, supplemented by confessionals from the contestants themselves, and commentary by the show’s three judges. Come revisit those halcyon days when a new generation of heroic aces stepped onto the national stage and showed their stuff. Jonathan Hive, Toad Man, Brave Hawk, Jade Blossom, the Amazing Bubbles, Jetman, Hardhat, Dragon Huntress, Simoon, Gardener, the Candle, Lohengrin, John Fortune, and many more… they’re all here.

AMERICAN HERO will be distributed through Tor’s usual ebook retailers and can be purchased for Kindle, iBooks, Kobo, Nook, eBooks.com, and Google Play. Download to your platform and format of choice to read however you wish (iPad, ereader, computer, etc).

All of the buy links are listed here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765396402

And if by chance you missed INSIDE STRAIGHT and want to check that one out too, signed copies are available from Beastly Books… all of them autographed not only by me, but by several of the other contributing writers as well:

Wild Cards: Inside Straight

Current Mood: excited excited

Tags: signed books, tor, wild cards

Cosmic Horror in New Hampshire

February 26, 2020 at 1:31 pm

Odyssey, held each summer in the ghastly haunted mountains of New Hampshire, is an intensive six-week workshop for aspiring writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. I taught there once, years back, and witnessed first hand what an amazing experience it was… and in more recent years, I have sponsored an annual scholarship for a promising writer of Lovecraftian cosmic horror.

Applications for the workshop and my scholarship… and a wide range of other scholarships and financial aid packages… are now open, and will be accepted until APRIL 1.

All the details are here, in this press release from Odyssey itself:

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN SCHOLARSHIP

AND OTHER FINANCIAL AID FOR THOSE ATTENDING

THE ODYSSEY WRITING WORKSHOP

The Odyssey Writing Workshop is an acclaimed, six-week program for writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror held each summer in New Hampshire. Writers apply from all over the world; only fifteen are admitted. For those attending, Odyssey is pleased to announce that five scholarships and one work/study position are available.

Financial aid and scholarships are made available by supporters, alumni, various organizations, and Odyssey itself. We are very grateful for those who have donated to reduce the financial burden on students. Scholarships are awarded based on financial need, merit, or the specific criteria listed below. They range in size from several hundred dollars to over $4000.

NOTE: Several of the scholarships below require that you fill out the Odyssey Financial Need Statement. Contact Director Jeanne Cavelos for the form, which is due April 1.

The Miskatonic Scholarship

Bestselling author George R. R. Martin is funding a scholarship for a horror writer attending Odyssey. The Miskatonic Scholarship will be awarded to a promising new writer of Lovecraftian cosmic horror. It will cover full tuition and housing. To be considered, you must complete the Odyssey Financial Need Statement by April 1 and indicate on the form that you are interested in the Miskatonic Scholarship. A panel of three judges will select the winner from among the applicants who have demonstrated financial need, using the short story or novel excerpts sent with the workshop applications. As George notes, “we are not looking for Lovecraft pastiches, nor even Cthulhu Mythos stories. References to Arkham, Azathoth, shoggoths, the Necronomicon, and the fungi from Yuggoth are by no means obligatory…though if some candidates choose to include them, that’s fine as well. What we want is the sort of originality that H. P. Lovecraft displayed in his day, something that goes beyond the tired tropes of werewolves, vampires and zombies, into places strange and terrifying and never seen before. What we want are nightmares new and resonant and profound, comic terrors that will haunt our dreams for years to come.” Scholarship monies will be applied directly to tuition and housing for the 2020 workshop.

The Walter & Kattie Metcalf Singing Spider Scholarship

Funded by Pam Metcalf Harrington, Odyssey class of 2001, the Walter & Kattie Metcalf Singing Spider Scholarship is offered in honor of Pam’s parents, who encouraged a lifelong passion for reading and writing fantasy. The scholarship is also named for the infamous singing spiders, fictional characters who appeared in a novel excerpt submitted at Odyssey 2001. The scholarship will be awarded to a fantasy writer whose novel excerpt shows great skill and promise. A successful fantasy novelist spins a web of wonder, adventure, and intrigue that captivates readers and holds them spellbound through the lyrical flow of the prose. The novelist is, in essence, a ‘singing spider.’ To be considered for this scholarship, you must complete the Odyssey Financial Need Statement by April 1 and indicate on the form that you are interested in the Walter & Kattie Metcalf Singing Spider Scholarship. You must also use a novel excerpt as the writing sample for your Odyssey workshop application. A panel of three judges will select the winner using those novel excerpts. The scholarship covers full tuition.

The Fresh Voices Scholarship

Funded anonymously by an Odyssey graduate, this scholarship provides support to an outstanding writer of color each year. Those eligible include African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and others. The Fresh Voices Scholarship seeks to offer opportunities for underrepresented racial and ethnic minority writers to learn at Odyssey and enrich the fantasy, science fiction, and horror genres as a result. To be considered, you must complete the Odyssey Financial Need Statement by April 1, indicate on the form that you are interested in the Fresh Voices Scholarship, and provide your race/ethnicity. A panel of three judges will select the winner using the short story or novel excerpts sent with the workshop applications. The scholarship awards $2,000 toward Odyssey tuition.

The Enchanted Bond Scholarship

Funded anonymously by an Odyssey supporter, this scholarship provides support to an outstanding fantasy writer each year. When readers are immersed in a fresh, vivid, believable fantasy world; engaged with compelling characters; involved in a suspenseful situation; and living, moment by moment, through an experience that could never occur in reality, the author has succeeded in creating an enchanted bond between reader and story. To be considered for this scholarship, you must complete the Odyssey Financial Need Statement by April 1 and indicate on the form that you are interested in the Enchanted Bond Scholarship. A panel of three judges will select the winner using the short story or novel excerpts sent with the workshop applications. The scholarship awards $1,000 toward Odyssey tuition.

The Quantum Entanglement Scholarship

Funded anonymously by an Odyssey graduate, this scholarship provides support to an outstanding writer of science fiction each year. According to quantum mechanics, when a pair of particles interact, they become entangled. Entangled particles remain connected so that the state of one determines the state of the other, even when the particles are far apart. Albert Einstein famously referred to this as “spooky action at a distance.” Powerful science fiction not only presents a compelling novum (new idea) based on science and builds a world consistent with that novum; it draws readers in past the science to a moving human story with characters that readers can care about and a conflict in which every twist and turn has an impact on readers’ emotions. When that happens, the author has succeeded in entangling readers and story, an effect that may last long after the story is finished and put away. To be considered for this scholarship, you must complete the Odyssey Financial Need Statement by April 1 and indicate on the form that you are interested in the Quantum Entanglement Scholarship. A panel of three judges will select the winner using the short story or novel excerpts sent with the workshop applications. The scholarship awards $1,000 toward Odyssey tuition.

The Chris Kelworth Memorial Scholarship

The Chris Kelworth Memorial Scholarship will be offered to a Canadian writer admitted to Odyssey. Chris, a 2013 Odyssey graduate, was an inspiration to many Odyssey alumni and a strong believer in creating systems and participating in events to increase his productivity, such as setting goals, attending workshops, and participating in NaNoWriMo. This scholarship, funded by alumni and friends of Chris, will cover $900 of tuition. A separate application is required and due April 1. Contact Director Jeanne Cavelos for the Chris Kenworthy Memorial Scholarship application. A panel of three judges will select the winner using the information in the scholarship applications and the short story or novel excerpts sent with the workshop applications.

Wollheim Memorial Scholarship Fund

Applicants from the New York Metropolitan Area (including New Jersey) who are accepted into Odyssey are eligible to apply for a scholarship from the Donald A. and Elsie B. Wollheim Memorial Scholarship Fund. This fund was created in 1989 by the New York Science Fiction Society–the Lunarians, one of New York’s oldest and largest science fiction and fantasy clubs, to help developing writers attend major science fiction/fantasy writing programs affiliated with higher institutions of learning. The amount of the scholarship is variable depending on need and the availability of funds. Scholarship monies will be applied directly to tuition for the 2020 workshop. If you are accepted into Odyssey and would like to pursue this possibility, contact Director Jeanne Cavelos for the special application form immediately upon your acceptance.

Horror Writers Association

If you write horror, you are eligible for one or both of the scholarships offered by the Horror Writers Association, each worth $2,500, which can be applied toward Odyssey tuition and housing. Applications open on May 1.

Kurt Brown Prizes

Since Odyssey is a member of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, those accepted into Odyssey can apply for AWP’s three Kurt Brown Prizes, scholarships of $500 each for emerging writers. Applications are accepted from December 1 to March 30.

Work/Study Position

One work/study position is also available. The work/study student spends about six hours per week performing duties for Odyssey, such as photocopying, sending stories to guests, distributing mail to students, and preparing for guest visits. Odyssey reimburses $800 of the work/study student’s tuition, half at the end of Week 3 of the workshop and half at the end of the workshop.

The work/study student will be expected to fulfill the regular requirements of Odyssey in addition to these duties. This will make for a very demanding six weeks, but for a student who needs the financial assistance, the work/study position offers a good opportunity. Contact Director Jeanne Cavelos for more details and a work/study application. Work/study applications are due April 30.

Current Mood: pleased pleased

Tags: writing

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