They’re back! The Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop returns to UC San Diego for a summer of sci-fi and speculative fiction, with intensive work spinning yarns that could involve time travel, dystopian disasters or any adventure imaginable. These scribes will study, learn and create right here at our “mothership,” Geisel Library, in a special classroom set aside for them.
UC San Diego Library staff has always had a special place in their heart for the Clarion students. Welcoming the writers into the iconic, brutalist, Pereira-designed “mothership” Library at the center of the campus is a rite of passage unto itself.
This exhibit is currently on display in the glass cases of The Nest on the 2nd (main) Floor of Geisel Library. The exhibit features various sci-fi and fantasy books of interest from the Library’s circulating collection. Academic texts from physics, chemistry, and engineering are also displayed, encouraging visitors to include more science in their science fiction writing. Otherworldly props from the years that Library staff threw formal steampunk teas at the iconic Geisel Library for incoming Clarion visitors are also on view.
Clarion alumna Octavia Butler receives special attention in the exhibit. Now known as the mother of Afrofuturism, Butler’s hand-corrected galley of “The Parable of the Sower” is featured in one corner of the exhibit, with supporting documents courtesy of recently retired UC San Diego literature instructor Stephen Potts, a Butler colleague.
The Library worked closely with Jac Jemc, faculty director of Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, to ensure Clarion writers felt at home at the mothership. Jemc also teaches creative writing at UC San Diego in the Department of Literature, and so is in the position to relay all the extra resources UC San Diego has to offer these visitors. Playing a key role in the workshop over the years here on campus is The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination.
Learn more about the Clarion program and this year’s Clarion faculty.
Partners: Department of Literature
Contact:
Scott Paulson
spaulson@ucsd.edu