Thank you to everyone who donated generously to fund our scholarships this year. Our fundraising for our 2017 scholarships is complete, but if you’d like to donate to Sirens itself, please visit our donation page to see the types of support we can most use.

In 2017, because of the generosity of the Sirens community, we are pleased to offer nine scholarships across three categories: people of color, those submitting exemplary programming proposals, and those with financial hardships. Please see our scholarships page for more information and how to apply.

As part of that mission, we specifically craft Sirens to include and amplify all of the brilliant voices creating those discussions. Our greatest hope is that those voices will represent both a wide array of perspectives and experiences—reader, scholar, educator, librarian, author—and individuals of different genders, sexualities, races, religions, and abilities. As we approach our ninth year of Sirens, we find that topics related to women in fantasy literature are as limitless as ever, and that our opportunity to learn from our community’s discussion, analysis, and debate of those topics is equally limitless.

For several years now, we have invited the Sirens community, as part of that mission, to help make attendance at Sirens possible for three groups: people of color, those submitting exemplary programming proposals, and those with financial hardships. These individuals are critical to our conversations, and they sometimes find it difficult to attend without additional support.

So in 2017, we are again asking for your help! We want to provide nine Sirens scholarships this year: three for people of color, three for those submitting exemplary programming proposals, and three for those with financial hardships. To do so, we need to raise nearly $2,800, and we know that, just like in previous years, our community can make Sirens possible for others.

To learn more, please keep reading. If you’ve already decided to donate, though, please just scroll down to our donation fields—and thank you for your support!

Sirens endeavors to keep the cost of Sirens as low as possible for everyone. Each year, we raise thousands of dollars in donations and other fundraising to cover the cost of presenting Sirens—costs that include not only overhead items like audiovisual equipment and insurance, but also a portion of individual attendee costs like food and registration t-shirts.

We could raise our registration prices to cover the incremental costs that we incur each time someone registers. But instead, we suppress our registration prices—and then ask those who can pay more to donate, to purchase auction items, to buy books, and to fund scholarships. We hope that, if you can, you’ll help us raise these funds!

Scholarships will cover both a Sirens registration and a Sirens Shuttle ticket for each recipient. We’re hoping to receive enough funds to cover the following proposed scholarships, designed to serve a multitude of potential attendees. But in the event that we don’t, we will fund scholarships in the following order:

• Con or Bust
  Con or Bust helps people of color/non-white people attend science fiction and fantasy conventions. This year, Sirens would like to provide Con or Bust with three Sirens registrations and Sirens Shuttle tickets in order to help people of color/non-white people attend Sirens. Con or Bust will allocate these registrations according to its rules.
   
• Programming Presenters
  Every voice at Sirens is vital to the vibrancy and diversity of our conversations, but we always appreciate the skill, talent, and expertise that our accepted programming presenters have volunteered to share with our community. This year, we’d again like to recognize three exemplary programming proposals with a Sirens registration and Shuttle ticket. (Selected presentations with co-presenters who have opted in for scholarship eligibility may share the funds across applicable presenters, where the proposal is made jointly.) These are merit-based scholarships, and will be selected by a committee.
   
• Financial Hardship
  People sometimes say that money makes the world go round; we’d like to counter with the idea that generosity makes the world go round. Not all individuals who wish to attend Sirens can afford to do so, and you can help make Sirens a possibility for those who can’t. Sirens would like to award three selected recipients with a Sirens registration and Sirens Shuttle ticket, in the hopes that this will enable them to attend Sirens in the fall. Recipients will be chosen randomly from those who seek assistance.

Please help our scholarship campaign by sharing news of your support!