SFWA Mentorship Program Open

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) Mentorship Committee has announced that the SFWA Career Mentorship Program is now taking applications for mentors and mentees for three-month-long mentorships, set to run June 10 – September 10, 2023.

This all-volunteer service is provided free of charge. We aim to connect emerging writers with each other and established professionals for community, knowledge sharing, and networking opportunities. This endeavor is focused on professional development rather than artistic development.

Conferences, panels, and other events are useful tools for building relationships in the speculative fiction genre community, but they aren’t the best opportunities to ask someone how they got to where they are in their career, or how they negotiated their agent’s retirement, or how they handle parenthood and deadlines. This mentorship program gives participants the opportunity to have those conversations.

For mentors, this is a great chance to pass on knowledge in a structured, supported, and finite setting. They will be able to set parameters for preferred topics and communication methods. They may help mentees understand the agent process, offer tips and tricks to get a project moving again, or poke a toe into a new subgenre or publication path. We should note that providing critique is not an expectation….

For mentees, this is a chance to pick the brains of someone who is a couple of rungs ahead on the ladder, or at a similar career point but with a different expertise. Career, not craft, is the focus here.

Both roles of the mentorship program are open to members and non-members. All applicants must be 21 or older to participate. If you have previously been a mentee in the program, you may not apply again this round.

Applications will be accepted until 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, May 10, 2023, with participants to be chosen by lottery and assigned to matches in May.

Mentors apply here; mentees apply here. For queries, contact mentor@sfwa.org.

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