Wordos

Founded in 1987, "The Wordos" was originally called "The Eugene Professional Writers Workshops, Inc." The name was changed in 1995, to make it "shorter and friendlier." The name was suggested by someone and it stuck. The term infers people who work with words and in the writing world, has come to mean, "someone to keep an eye on". They kept the original name for business purposes, however.^[2] The group meets weekly in a local bookstore.^[1]

The membership over time has included, young adult and fantasy novelist Nina Kiriki Hoffman, surrealist short story writer and novelist Ray Vukcevich, science fiction writers Kathy Oltion and Jerry Oltion, Bruce Holland Rogers, Patricia Briggs, fiction and non-fiction writer Leslie What, Jay Lake, Eric M. Witchey, Devon Monk and many others. Deborah Layne, a long-time member, is also the founder of Wheatland Press, the award-winning^[3] publisher of the Polyphony anthology.

The Wordos follow the Clarion Workshop model of critiquing. A member reads a submitted story, writes comments on it, and then, on the evening of the workshop, speaks for one to three minutes offering those and other comments aloud. At the end of the evening, the critiqued story is given back to the author.^[2]

Members also report on news over the previous week, including accepted stories, rejections, and re-write requests from publishers.