Second, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, and almost everyone reading this is too old, but MUST PIMP ALPHA! And even if you're too much of an old fart to go, maybe your little brother's boyfriend's mom's cat's masseuse's second cousin's granddaughter's friend is a budding genre writer. What's with that word "budding," anyway? Does anyone actually "bud?" Wait, don't answer that. Anyway. ALPHA! HOORAY! And if you happen to be a sad panda because you're a genre writer (or fan) over the ripe old age of 19, do not despair! There's always Confluence!
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The ALPHA SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers (ages 14-19) will be held
at the University of Pittsburgh's Greensburg Campus July 16-25, 2008
in conjunction with Pittsburgh's science fiction convention,
Confluence, July 25-27th. Twenty talented young writers will be
selected to attend the workshop on the strength of their submission
stories. Four guest authors and ten staff members will be present
during the ten-day residency workshop to teach genre writing. Mike
Arnzen, Timothy Zahn, Chris McKitterick, and Tamora Pierce are our
guest authors for 2008 (our seventh year). Workshop fee: $950.00 For
more information, see:
http://alpha.spellcaster.org/
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Seventh year? Holy crapmonkeys, now I really feel old. Why, I remember the very first year, back on the RMU campus with the sink room and the mysterious animal corpse outside the dorms. It was that year that I bought the panda ears after the reading at the science center, and the whole "panda porn star" thing came about from that "Weekly World News" article. Ah, those were the days. Nostalgia, nostalgia, nostalgia.