Mentorship Program: Gemini Ink Mentorship Program

TAKE THE NEXT STEP IN YOUR WRITING LIFE
Apply for the Gemini Ink Mentorship Program.
Work one-on-one with a nationally recognized author on a manuscript project. 

Attention all poets and writers of prose (both fiction and nonfiction). 

Take the next step in your writing life. Apply to the Gemini Ink 2016 Mentorship Program and be one of four writers chosen to work one-on-one with a nationally recognized author, free of charge.

Designed for individuals with busy lives, the Gemini Ink 2016 Mentorship Program offers you the flexibility to create a work environment specifically tailored to your creative needs. Over a period of six months, you will work through three drafts of your project and receive detailed, attentive feedback from your mentor, closing out your project with a public reading of your work (please note that travel is not covered by Gemini Ink).

The Mentorship Program is open to writers from Texas and from all 50 States.
Here’s what recent mentees have said about their experience with the Gemini Ink Mentorship Program:

"As a medical student with hopes of being a writer one day, my resources for developing my writing skills were often quite limited. Gemini Ink's writing mentorship program was exactly what I needed to help me start taking my work to the next level. My mentor was absolutely wonderful to work with—the review of my work gave me a degree of insight to my own voice, technique, and tendencies that I struggled to find on my own."
—Chris Yan

"The mentorship program was truly life-changing. My mentor had the uncanny ability to zero in on what the manuscript was missing and asked me to write what I had been avoiding for a long time, but what was definitely necessary for the growth of the book and also for myself personally. I have struggled with this book for 5 years, and now it is something of which I can be proud. I've begun sending it out, and it is already a semi-finalist in a nationally renowned poetry contest. Fingers crossed!"
—Danielle Sellers

WHAT TO EXPECT
Work with your mentor to:
• Establish a timeline and goals for your manuscript project.
• Exchange three (3) project packets and receive detailed feedback at regular intervals.
• Close out your project with a public reading of your work, introduced by your mentor.

THE MENTORS

Amanda Ward was born in New York City and received her MFA from the University of Montana in 1998. The following year, she published her first novel, Sleep Toward Heaven, which won the Violet Crown Book Award and was optioned for a film by Sandra Bullock. Her subsequent novels, How to be Lost, Forgive Me, Close Your Eyes and The Same Sky have gained her national readership. Close Your Eyes was named a Kirkus Best Book of 2011 and won the Elle Magazine Fiction Book of the Year. The Same Sky was a People Magazine Book of the Week, and the Dallas Morning News wrote: “Ward has written a novel that brilliantly attaches us to broader perspectives.” Ward is currently at work on her 6th novel.

Connie Voisine grew up in Maine, earned a BA in American studies from Yale University, an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and a PhD from the University of Utah. Her first collection, Cathedral of the North (2001), won the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Award Series in Poetry, and her second, Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream (2008), was a Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, the New Yorker, and elsewhere. Her third book, Calle Florista, was just released from University of Chicago Press. Voisine is an associate professor of English at New Mexico State University and teaches at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Dates
8/15/16 Deadline to Apply
9/15/16 Mentees Accepted
Mar–April 2017 Final Celebratory Reading

Fees
$25 application fee (just to offset administrative costs) 

HOW TO APPLY
CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT

You will be asked to provide the following:
• $25 application fee acceptable via submittable or by check (paid to Gemini Ink) and sent to: 

Att: Alexandra van de Kamp, 
Gemini Ink, 
1111 Navarro Street, 
San Antonio, TX 78212

• A single PDF or WORD file containing the following:
o Short letter of intent (max one page).
o A 10-page manuscript of your work.
o A short CV or resumé, listing two references.
o Please state which mentor you are applying to work with in this mentorship. Your application will not be complete without this information.

Further Information
Gemini Ink (210) 734-9673
Email Alexandra van de Kamp at:

avandekampATgeminiinkDOTorg (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )