Turkey City Writer's Workshop is a peer-to-peer, professional science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 writer's workshop in Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

. Founded in 1973 and still ongoing today, it was consciously modeled after the east coast Milford Writer's Workshop

Milford Writer's Workshop

The Milford Writer's Workshop or more properly Milford Writers' Conference is an influential science fiction writer's event founded by Damon Knight among others in the mid-1950s in Milford, Pennsylvania...

. The workshop "was a cradle of cyberpunk" where many of the practitioners of what would become cyberpunk first met.

Founding members of the group included Lisa Tuttle

Lisa Tuttle

Lisa Tuttle is an American-born science fiction, fantasy, and horror author. She has published over a dozen novels, five short story collections, and several non-fiction titles, including a reference book on feminism. She has also edited several anthologies and reviewed books for various...

, Howard Waldrop

Howard Waldrop

Howard Waldrop is a science fiction author who works primarily in short fiction.Waldrop's stories combine elements such as alternate history, American popular culture, the American South, old movies , classical mythology, and rock 'n' roll music. His style is sometimes obscure or elliptical...

, Steven Utley

Steven Utley

Steven Utley is an American writer. He has written poems, humorous essays and other non-fiction, and worked on comic books and cartoons, but is best known for his science fiction stories.-Biography:...

, and Tom Reamy

Tom Reamy

Tom Reamy was an American science fiction and fantasy author and a key figure in 1960s and 1970s science fiction fandom. He died prior to the publication of his first novel; his work is primarily dark fantasy....

. The workshop was first held in Grand Prairie, Texas

Grand Prairie, Texas

Grand Prairie is a city in Dallas, Ellis, and Tarrant counties in the U.S. state of Texas and is a part of the Mid-Cities region in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. Grand Prairie is a suburb of both Dallas and Fort Worth and had a population of 175,396 at the 2010 census.- History :The city of...

, but soon shifted to Austin

Austin

Austin is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas.Austin may also refer to:-In the United States:*Austin, Arkansas*Austin, Colorado*Austin, Chicago, Illinois*Austin, Indiana*Austin, Minnesota*Austin, Nevada*Austin, Oregon...

 when most of the writers involved moved there during the mid-1970s. Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling

Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.-Writings:...

 was one of the youngest members of the workshop when he joined it in 1974. Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison

Harlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction.His published works include over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media...

 "discovered" Sterling at Turkey City and arranged for the publication of his first novel. Other writers who have attended Turkey City include Ted Chiang

Ted Chiang

Ted Chiang is an American speculative fiction writer. His Chinese name is Chiang Feng-nan.He was born in Port Jefferson, New York and graduated from Brown University with a Computer Science degree. He currently works as a technical writer in the software industry and resides in Bellevue, near...

, Paul Di Filippo

Paul Di Filippo

Paul Di Filippo is an American science fiction writer. He has been published in Postscripts...

, Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow

Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books...

, Andy Duncan

Andy Duncan (writer)

Andy Duncan is an award-winning American science fiction and fantasy writer whose work frequently deals with Southern U.S. themes. He was born in Batesburg, South Carolina in 1964. He graduated from high school from W. W...

, George Alec Effinger

George Alec Effinger

George Alec Effinger was an American science fiction author, born in 1947 in Cleveland, Ohio.-Writing career:...

, Mark Finn

Mark Finn

Mark Finn is the pseudonym of Mark Farr-Nash, a science fiction and fantasy writer, essayist, and playwright...

, Steven Gould

Steven Gould

Steven Charles Gould is an American science fiction author and teacher. He has written eight novels and is best known for his 1992 novel Jumper, which was made into a film and released in 2008. He is married to science fiction writer Laura J...

, Eileen Gunn

Eileen Gunn

Eileen Gunn is a science fiction author and editor based in Seattle, Washington, who began publishing in 1978....

, Leigh Kennedy

Leigh Kennedy

Leigh Kennedy is an American science fiction writer who has lived in the United Kingdom since 1985.Kennedy's story "Her Furry Face" was a nominee for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story....

, John Kessel

John Kessel

John Kessel is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. He is a prolific short story writer and the author of two solo novels, Good News From Outer Space and Corrupting Dr...

, Rick Klaw

Rick Klaw

Richard Ira "Rick" Klaw , is an American editor, essayist, and bookseller.-Biography:Rick Klaw is the paternal grandson of Irving Klaw, the photographer and film maker most noted for his bondage photos of Bettie Page. In 1979, the family relocated to Houston, Texas...

, Raph Koster

Raph Koster

Raphael "Raph" Koster is an American entrepreneur, game designer, and author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Koster is widely recognized for his work as the lead designer of Ultima Online and the creative director behind Star Wars Galaxies...

, George R. R. Martin

George R. R. Martin

George Raymond Richard Martin , sometimes referred to as GRRM, is an American author and screenwriter of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He is best known for A Song of Ice and Fire, his bestselling series of epic fantasy novels that HBO adapted for their dramatic pay-cable series Game of...

, Maureen McHugh, Paul O. Miles

Paul O. Miles

Paul O. Miles is a short story writer of slipstream fiction, noted for his pastiches. Miles is perhaps best known for the pulp adventures of the Communist action hero Red Poppy. His writings have appeared in Plot, RevolutionSF, The Big Bigfoot Book, Polyphony 5, and Cross Plains Universe...

, Chris Nakashima-Brown

Chris Nakashima-Brown

Chris Nakashima-Brown is an American science fiction author.His work includes short fiction and criticism published in a variety of anthologies and online markets, including "The Sun Also Explodes", a short story from the 2008 Philip K...

, Chad Oliver

Chad Oliver

Symmes Chadwick Oliver was an American science fiction and Western writer and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin...

, Lawrence Person, Jessica Reisman, Chris Roberson

Chris Roberson (author)

Chris Roberson is a science fiction author, tromboner, and publisher based in Austin, Texas, best known for alternate history novels and short stories.-Biography:Chris Roberson grew up near Dallas, Texas, and attended the University of Texas, Austin...

, Lewis Shiner

Lewis Shiner

Lewis Shiner is an American writer.Shiner began his career as a science fiction writer, identified early on with cyberpunk, and later wrote more mainstream novels, albeit often with magical realism and fantasy elements...

, Lou Antonelli

Lou Antonelli

Louis Sergio Antonelli is an American science fiction and fantasy writer who resides in Mount Pleasant, Texas...

, John Shirley

John Shirley

John Shirley is an American fantasist, author of noir fiction, and science-fiction writer. Shirley is a prolific writer of novels and short stories, TV scripts and screenplays who has published over 30 books and 10 collections...

, Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer

Jeffrey Scott VanderMeer is an American writer, editor and publisher.He is best known for his contributions to the New Weird and his stories about the city of Ambergris, in books like City of Saints and Madmen.-Biography:...

, Don Webb, Martha Wells

Martha Wells

-Biography:Martha Wells was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1964 and has a B.A. in Anthropology from Texas A&M University. She has published eight fantasy novels, two Stargate Atlantis tie-in novels, and several short stories...

, and Connie Willis

Connie Willis

Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis is an American science fiction writer. She has won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards. Willis most recently won a Hugo Award for Blackout/All Clear...

.

The workshop also compiled the "The Turkey City Lexicon," a collection of terms used when discussing recurring SF writing tropes. This guide for writers has been used and adapted by other writers workshops, both within and outside the science fiction genre. Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer

Robert James Sawyer is a Canadian science fiction writer. He has had 20 novels published, and his short fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Amazing Stories, On Spec, Nature, and many anthologies. Sawyer has won over forty awards for his fiction, including the Nebula Award ,...

has described the document as the "mother of all workshopping vocabularies."

External links

• The Turkey City Writer's Workshop Homepage