Welcome to the fifth and last in my series of interviews with fellow graduates of the Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers! Sarah Hollowell will be posting two more interviews this week, so keep an eye on her blog.

Today, I’m interviewing Evelyn Lumish! Evelyn attended Alpha in 2010 and has been talking about it ever since. She recently had a poem published in Futuredaze, a science fiction anthology for young adults.

SB: What is your most vivid memory of Alpha?

EL: I remember sitting in one of the classrooms, listening to Tamora Pierce speak, and she told us that she had wanted her character to do something, but her character hadn’t wanted to do it. All I could think, listening to that, was “this is how writing should work.”

SB: What is the coolest and/or most useful thing you learned at Alpha, and how did you learn it?

The most useful thing that I learned at Alpha was that, in a story, magic needs to have consequences. Holly Black was explaining how to make magic work, and that was the biggest thing she stressed. Every time I think about a magic system, now, I remember that magic—and, in the end, everything in a story—needs to have consequences.

SB: What was it like to spend ten days with so many others who shared your interest in writing? Had you ever had that experience before?

Spending ten days with people who shared my interest in writing was the coolest thing I did. We would sit outside at one in the morning, trying to piece together story ideas to make them work. We were different ages, from different backgrounds, but this connected us.

SB: How did your experiences at Alpha impact what you’re doing now, in writing or in life?

Before Alpha, I wrote stories for fun, and because I had some vague idea of wanting to be published someday. Now, after Alpha, the idea of publishing and making a commercial piece that I can submit to a publication or the Dell Awards is a possibility instead of just a dream. I now have a greater understanding of how to write stories, and I have the greatest support group of alumni in the world.

SB: What would you say to teenagers deciding whether to apply to Alpha 2013?

EL: Love what you do. If you love writing speculative fiction, Alpha will be the best experience in the world.

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Thanks, Evelyn!

And, one last time: if you’re between the ages of 14 and 19 and you love to write science fiction, fantasy, or horror (or strange mashups of any of the above!), you should by all means apply to Alpha. Applications are due March 3, so you’ve still got a week… and if you haven’t started your story yet, Alpha graduate Jameyanne Fuller just posted on the Alpha blog with some tips for procrastinators.

Everyone else: Alpha’s scholarship fundraiser has raised just under $900 so far. While $900 is definitely better than $0–in fact, it could mean the difference between one or two students attending the workshop or staying home–this will probably not cover all of the scholarship requests that Alpha will receive this year. Donating any amount is a huge help (and nets you a super-sweet illustrated flash anthology), and telling your friends is fabulous, too.

As always, thanks for reading!

Welcome to the fourth in my series of interviews with graduates of the Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers! Today, I’m interviewing Laurel Estes. Laurel is a 2011/2012 Alpha alum and currently a sophomore at Pomona College. She writes science fiction and fantasy, and particularly appreciates morally ambiguous fantasy and science fiction that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

SB: What is your most vivid memory of Alpha?

LE: Oh, you’re going to want me to pick just one, aren’t you? I’m sorry, Sarah, but I’m afraid I can’t do that… Here are three, though:

• Going with a group of Alphans and Tammy Pierce to give bread pieces from lunch to the crows and sparrows, and seeing how her care and respect for animals shaped her stories.
• Sitting at twilight in the graveyard across the street from the campus and listening to Scott Johnson, the guest horror author, tell us ghost stories.
• Staying up far too late in the common room with other Alphans, all of us frantically attempting to pin that short story down on the page as some sort of draft, and ending up: 1) listening to lectures on astrophysics from the staff 2) singing every single Disney song we could (collectively) remember 3) laughing until our faces hurt.

SB: What was it like to spend ten days with so many others who shared your interest in writing? Had you ever had that experience before?

LE: The feedback you get from everyone at Alpha is insightful, thoughtful, and extremely helpful. Most importantly, realizing that your fellow Alphans know what you mean, in too many ways to ever list individually, is heartening, freeing, and galvanizing. Talking for hours dissecting the motivations of a character? Check. Getting asked those impossible-but-vital questions about cause, continuity, and what you’re actually trying to say while attempting to hammer out a plotline? You bet. Learn a marvelous new word? Yep—and, let’s be honest, you thought that was impossible, didn’t you? Yelping in delight and bouncing up and down in shared, ecstatic hyperventilation about a favorite book, favorite character, and/or favorite plot twist? Oh yeah. These are people you will never forget.

SB: What was the biggest change in your writing post-Alpha?

LE: Alpha made me able to take much bigger risks with my stories, and also gave me the tools to much more deliberately and concretely shape the multiple elements of a story, so that they all work together instead of in parallel. For example: my natural inclination is generally towards crazy, rollicking adventures with (overly) detailed worlds and happy endings, sprawlingly-sized and hardly ever fully finished. My application story fit squarely into this category. The story I wrote during my first Alpha was not only one of my first actual attempts at science-fiction, but was also an internal, not-so-happy story about a divorced, middle-aged bureaucrat in collusion to bring about an alien invasion. That I was able to go so very outside of my comfort zone is a testament to Alpha’s ability to simultaneously support you unconditionally and hit you with that metaphorical gauntlet challenging you to push yourself.

SB: What would you say to teenagers deciding whether to apply to Alpha 2013?

LE: Just applying gives you an excellent excuse to write a new short story or tune up an old one—and that’s the entire application, so what are you waiting for?

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Thanks, Laurel!

Everyone else: workshop application form if you’re between the ages of 14 and 19, fundraiser donation page if you have a few dollars to support the scholarship fund. Thanks for reading!

Welcome to the third in my series of interviews with graduates of the Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers! Be sure to check out Sarah Hollowell’s interview with Lara Donnelly, which was posted over the weekend.

Today, I’m interviewing Seth Dickinson! Seth is a 2006/2007 Alpha alum, and since 2011, an Alpha instructor. His fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Analog, and – in 2011 – captured the top spot in the Dell Awards. He writes science fiction and fantasy, with a particular interest in gender and systems of oppression.

SB: What is your most vivid memory of Alpha?

SD: What a tough question. Seven years after the fact and there’s still so much I’d want to say.

The gestalt of it, maybe – the sense that you’d entered an oblique, sidelong splinter of the universe where you could make or be anything at all. The unspoken, effortless way we all clicked, not just that year but every year I’ve been back, as student or staff.

If I had to pick out specifics – Frisbee. Critique circles. Cramming writing and conversations about writing into every moment of everything we did. The long nights and the creeping sleep deprivation, and the laughter that caused. Above all, the people, both students and staff.

SB: What was it like to spend ten days with so many others who shared your interest in writing? Had you ever had that experience before?

SD: I want to put this remark in context: I’ve had a pretty awesome (and deeply privileged) life. Alpha was the best thing in it.

SB: What was the biggest change in your writing post-Alpha?

SD: Like a lot of people who go through intense workshops, it took me a while to assimilate everything I’d learned. For a long time I felt like I’d actively gotten worse – I was so much more aware of my faults, and what I had to do to fix them, that writing became actively more difficult. But in the long run I was able to assimilate at least a fraction of it, and it helped me so much.

I think the biggest change probably came in my approach to prose style. Before Alpha I was a very naturalistic, concept-driven, plot-oriented writer. After Alpha I learned to value the craft of each individual sentence. I think I came to respect the role of poetry in prose.

SB: How did your experiences at Alpha impact what you’re doing now, in writing or in life?

SD: I’ve now sold enough science fiction and fantasy short stories to qualify for SFWA, the professional organization for science fiction and fantasy writers. Alpha made that happen. Alpha will make you a better writer, and it will teach you how to turn those words on your screen into a professional sale.

Almost more importantly, though, Alpha introduced me to so many incredible friends. More than high school or college or anything after, I’ve stayed in touch with the people I met at Alpha. I’ve gone on trips with them, found apartments through them, supported and been supported by them in times of need. The Alpha alumni community is sprawling, self-organized, and inexorably set on making your life better.

SB: What’s the number-one reason that people not directly related to Alphans should support the workshop?

SD: I am trained as a statistician and so I can assign significant confidence to this statement: for many of the people who go it will be the greatest thing that ever happened to them.

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Thanks, Seth!

Everyone else: workshop application form if you’re between the ages of 14 and 19, fundraiser donation page if you have a few dollars to support the scholarship fund. Thanks for reading!

The Alpha interviews continue! Yesterday, Sarah Hollowell interviewed Malina Suity on her blog, so don’t miss that.

Today, it is my very great pleasure to interview Rachel Halpern! Rachel is an MFA student at the University of Southern Maine. Her story “The Taste of Salt” was published in Daily Science Fiction in August 2012, and she’s placed the last three years in the Dell Awards, a contest for undergraduate sci-fi and fantasy writers. She likes dark chocolate, bright socks, and strange stories.

SB: What is your most vivid memory of Alpha?

RH: On the campus where we have Alpha every year, just out of sight behind some trees, there’s an academic building of some kind that looks exactly like a castle. If I’d found it with almost anyone else I know, it would have been a cool building we’d run across. But I was there with Alphans. We realized pretty quickly that what we’d found was a fairy castle, and not necessarily the nice kind of fairies – something powerful and potentially dangerous. The small creek running alongside it was the water barrier between our two worlds, and we crossed the bridges in wary, respectful silence. We invented stories about the magic of that place, and when I went back a couple of years later I mailed one of my friends a flower I picked while I was there.

That’s just how Alpha is – everyone there is a storyteller, and everyone there is willing to take an idea and run with it. And that’s what I love about Alpha: even the mundane things become magic because of the people you’re with.

SB: What is the coolest and/or most useful thing you learned at Alpha, and how did you learn it?

RH: There are so many answers to this question – I learned, fundamentally, how stories work, and that’s something that I hadn’t even realized I didn’t know. I learned about plot, and characters, and writing good dialogue, and how to market my work. The most fundamental game-changer for me, though, wasn’t really a skill. It was when I learned that I was allowed to take my writing seriously, and I was allowed to try to become a real writer. If someone asks you “What do you want to be?” you’re not allowed to say “I want to be a writer.” It’s not feasible. But Alpha told me that whether or not it’s enough to make a living at, and whether or not you feel good enough, you should always be writing and editing and working toward publication. Your writing, you, are worth it.

SB: What would you say to teenagers deciding whether to apply to Alpha 2013?

RH: Do it. No, really, go for it. You have so much to look forward to.

You’ll meet some unbelievably cool people. You’ll play Ultimate Frisbee in the dark. You’ll visit mysterious graveyards and explore fairy castles and learn from some of the greatest authors around. And then you’ll go to lunch and chat with those authors about anything you want, along with a bunch of other brilliant, engaged, fascinating writers your age.

And when you leave, you’ll have all the support and encouragement you could want from a whole community of writers who believe in you and want you to succeed.

SB: What’s the number-one reason that people not directly related to Alphans should support the workshop?

RH: Alpha works so hard to keep their prices low, between an all-volunteer staff and intense alumni support. But without your help, they can’t afford scholarships for all the students who want to go.

Why should you help out?

You can do it because this is almost the only workshop of its kind, directed at young fantasy and science fiction writers.

You can do it because there are a lot of young people out there, all over the world, dreaming of an opportunity like this, and money should never be the reason they can’t.

Most of all, though, I think you should do it because these teenagers are brilliant, up-and-coming writers with incredible things to say. And I think we could all use some more powerful, world-changing stories in our lives.

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Thanks, Rachel!

I don’t have much to add. Here is where you can apply to the workshop, and here is where you can donate to Alpha’s scholarship fund, should you feel so inclined. Thanks for reading!

In my last post, I talked about why the Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers is awesome, and why you should consider supporting the workshop. (Or, if you’re between the ages of 14 and 19 and you love writing speculative fiction, apply!)

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Over the next two weeks, I’ll be interviewing five fellow alumni about their experiences at Alpha and beyond. The wonderful Sarah Hollowell is also interviewing alumni on her blog, and if you missed her interview yesterday with MG author Rachel Grinti, you should check it out.

Today, I am interviewing Jill Hardy! Jill attended Alpha from 2004 to 2005, and served as staff in 2006. She works as an instructional designer when she isn’t busy crafting or exploring the world.

SB: How did you hear about Alpha, and what made you decide to apply?

JH: I heard about Alpha through a very good friend of mine, who found out about it via Tamora Pierce’s website. My parents put the brakes on my application that year because they thought I was too young to travel across the country by myself. After hearing about my friend’s experiences, I knew I had to go the next year!

That friend worked to get the Alphans from her first year to sign a petition asking my parents to let me attend; it described how amazing and safe the workshop is to a T. It worked! I still have that petition tucked away somewhere, nine years later.

SB: What was it like to spend ten days with so many others who shared your interest in writing? Had you ever had that experience before?

JH: It was like discovering my home. Never before had I experienced an environment so welcoming and nurturing. And indeed, never since have I felt so instantly and completely connected to a group of total strangers.

It’s difficult to accurately capture the overflow of creativity that energizes the workshop, or the validation of being unconditionally accepted by one’s peers for the first time. Alpha will always rank among the best experiences I’ve ever had.

SB: What was the biggest change in your writing post-Alpha?

JH: I became more methodical and thoughtful about my writing. Before the workshop, when a story started knocking on my brain, I cracked that door open, let the story trickle onto the page, and called it finished. The workshop taught me an explicit understanding of the many elements that make up a good story, and how to apply them to my own writing. It’s the place to hone the “story intuition” you already have from reading so much.

SB: What’s the number-one reason that people not directly related to Alphans should support the workshop?

JH: Dr. Howard Thurman once said, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” By supporting Alpha, you give that many more young people a better chance of realizing the dream we all chase: to be passionate about and fulfilled by what we do in life and in work. You might just be doing the whole world a favor in the process.

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Thanks, Jill!

Everyone else: here is where you can apply to the workshop, and here is where you can donate, should you feel so inclined. Thanks for reading!