Almost none of our financial assistance was 100%, and we did ask people pretty directly to pay what they can if they can’t pay the full amount. My guess is we did a pretty good job at reasonable price discrimination here, though it’s of course very hard to tell.
The tuition for the 2026 Six-Week Workshop is $3,600. We’re committed to helping our accepted students get to the workshop, and we do our best to meet the financial needs of everyone who requests tuition assistance. In recent years, up to 94% of our class has received scholarship aid.
My process for financial aid was essentially to accept everyone who we clearly wanted to accept based on their writing, and then figure out what they could afford (to be clear I was unwilling to offer anyone a full scholarship, all had to pay something, and I believe I understood their financial situations well enough to believe they were genuinely paying what they could afford—I understand the financial situation of students, of people in certain industries, of people between jobs, etc). Then we looked at the marginal cases, and selected in favor of those who were able to pay full or near-full. Looking through my initial votes on people now, I don’t see anyone who I thought was marginal who didn’t pay full or at least >50% of the price. And to be clear, marginal costs of such Inkhaven Residents aren’t that high, as long as their contributions to the program are net positive.
My point being, I think there was little to be gained by being stricter on the margin—and much value to miss out on in terms of interesting and valuable writing from those who wouldn’t have joined the cohort.
Almost none of our financial assistance was 100%, and we did ask people pretty directly to pay what they can if they can’t pay the full amount. My guess is we did a pretty good job at reasonable price discrimination here, though it’s of course very hard to tell.
I guess it’s a difficult problem but I would probably side with being a little more strict.
I also just sent $400 bucks for the fundraiser.
FWIW the prestigious Clarion West writers’ workshop gives out a lot of scholarships, I think this is pretty normal for writers’ events:
My process for financial aid was essentially to accept everyone who we clearly wanted to accept based on their writing, and then figure out what they could afford (to be clear I was unwilling to offer anyone a full scholarship, all had to pay something, and I believe I understood their financial situations well enough to believe they were genuinely paying what they could afford—I understand the financial situation of students, of people in certain industries, of people between jobs, etc). Then we looked at the marginal cases, and selected in favor of those who were able to pay full or near-full. Looking through my initial votes on people now, I don’t see anyone who I thought was marginal who didn’t pay full or at least >50% of the price. And to be clear, marginal costs of such Inkhaven Residents aren’t that high, as long as their contributions to the program are net positive.
My point being, I think there was little to be gained by being stricter on the margin—and much value to miss out on in terms of interesting and valuable writing from those who wouldn’t have joined the cohort.