kate_schaefer | Clarion West: Amazon.com challenge met three months early

Here's the official word on Amazon.com's challenge grant to Clarion West:

In celebration of Clarion West’s 25th consecutive annual session of one of the world’s premiere writing workshops, Amazon.com offered us a challenge grant of $25,000 last October. They asked us to raise $25,000 by October 31, 2009, but we did better than that—we raised $35,000 by July 31. This amount is amazing, given the current economic climate. The donations and Amazon.com’s matching grant will form a cornerstone of our Founders Fund endowment, and we’re very grateful to all our many supporters for helping us meet and surpass this challenge.

Deborah Fisher, Chair of Clarion West’s Board of Directors, says “I’ve been grateful to Amazon.com since they offered us this generous challenge grant, and now I’m also grateful that our community has come forward to meet the challenge in record time—that’s the sort of support that will keep Clarion West going strong for decades to come.”

“Amazon.com is proud to support Clarion West’s mission to nurture and develop a new generation of talented authors of science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism,” says Jon Fine, Director of Author & Publisher Relations for Amazon.com. “The program’s faculty and alumni have written some of the very best works in the field, and we eagerly await the great new writing that Clarion West’s graduates will create in the years to come.”

Kate Schaefer, Clarion West’s Acting Development Director, says “The best part of this is that we met and passed the target figure during our Write-a-thon, when donors give us money based on participants’ writing goals. I love it when we can make a direct connection between writers doing their work and financial support of the workshop.”

Clarion West, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, has presented the Clarion West Writers Workshop annually in Seattle, Washington since 1984. This intensive six-week workshop prepares writers to pursue professional careers in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and magic realism. For more on Clarion West, visit www.clarionwest.org.

The unofficial word on the challenge met? Hooray! And thank you so much!