Our previous installment explored the ups and downs of a writing life; this time, we'll discuss the mentors who can make sure you don't have to face those ups and downs alone. Mentors can impart wisdom and offer encouragement as you navigate the next steps in your writing career. In this issue, we'll offer some advice on how and why to find a mentor, and on how to give back as a mentor yourself.

Writer to Writer

One of the benefits of AWP membership is the eligibility to participate in the AWP Writer to Writer Mentorship Program, a twice-yearly program that pairs emerging writers with published authors for a three-month series on topics such as craft, revision, publishing, and the writing life. Keep an eye on our website and social media pages for our application dates, usually opening around March and July for our two sessions.

Want the inside scoop on the Writer to Writer experience? Head over to our YouTube page to watch videos from our Writer to Writer Conversations & Readings series, featuring discussions with past mentors and mentees. Find some quick thoughts on participants’ experiences on our W2W at the Conference playlist, or read more in-depth accounts on our Program Reflections page.

Finding the Right Mentor for You

A common thread in several of the Writer to Writer Program Reflections shows us that mentorship can be strengthened by shared, lived experience. In “Letter to an Emerging Indigenous Writer” over at Lit Hub, Daniel Heath Justice offers mentorship to other Indigenous writers from afar, imparting wisdom he’s gained as a writer and member of the Cherokee Nation, as well as Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture in First Nations and Indigenous Studies and English at the University of British Columbia:

Too often we’ve been told that our words don’t matter. Too often we’ve been told that Indigenous people are unworthy of consideration as writers. We quite literally have centuries of colonizers telling us, our families, and our ancestors these things. Do not believe them. Your work is the inscribed embodiment of the survival and struggle of generations, the realization of possibility that’s so different from what so many of our ancestors had to face.

In “How to Get Accepted by a Mentorship Program” on Jane Friedman’s blog, she offers some advice on selecting the right mentorship program for you, and on polishing your application for the program you choose. She also provides a list of mentorship programs to consider that serve a variety of writers and their goals.

Giving Back by Becoming a Mentor Yourself

While you might be on the search for mentorship that can take your career to the next level, remember the wisdom you already possess and how useful your experience in an MFA program might be to writers just beginning to put pen to paper. Consider entering programs like the Summer Mentorship Program run by The Adroit Journal to impart that knowledge on high school and gap year students. Or check out the Bridge, a program run by the nonprofit organization Brooklyn Poets. Over at Poets & Writers, Marwa Helal writes about the Bridge’s success in uniting new writers looking for guidance and MFA grads looking for work in “Bridging the Student-Mentor Gap."

We close this installment with thoughts from novelist Rick Moody on the differences between mentorship and teaching, which ultimately made him a better writer, and how Angela Carter unknowingly mentored him (from his article “Writers and Mentors,” published in The Atlantic):

Angela Carter's class was important to me because it relied on a completely alien tradition of writing instruction—alien, that is, to what we more often experience here in the United States. Were I compelled to name this alternative style, I think I would call it mentorship. I don't think that Carter, if she were still alive, would admit to having mentored me—to having explained to me how to live a little bit, and how to act like a writer, instead of merely dreaming of being one. But she did all these things, regardless of how much or how little work I turned in or how bad the work was.

Join us for our final installment in the series, where we discuss literary citizenship.

Warm Wishes,

Your Membership Team