Online group mentoring from published authors

Working with a children’s author, receive ongoing developmental editing, writing advice, publishing insights, and direct feedback on your manuscript?to help you elevate your writing craft to the next level, in addition to working with a serious group of like-minded authors

Receive three months of tutor and peer feedback on your writing via WriteMentor’s Group Mentoring sessions. Our two experienced and award-winning mentors lead the sessions, initially lasting three months (but with a first refusal on rolling over), where writers can benefit from a mixture of 1-2-1 mentoring combined with the benefits of group tutorials and a critiques from like-minded authors committed to their craft and publication.

Key dates

Starts:  Monday 9th September 2024
Ends: Sunday 1st December 2024
First submission of your writing for critique: Monday 9th September
Second submission of your writing for critique: Monday 14th October
Third submission of your writing for critique: Monday 11th November

Why Group Mentoring?

More affordable form than all the individual components combined

Learn from both mentor and peers

Be part of a community of like-minded people

Connect with writers who can support one another beyond the mentoring programme

Cultivate connections with fellow writers

We want our mentoring sessions to be interactive and collaborative, where everyone gets the opportunity to take part, share their thoughts, and receive feedback. Therefore, we keep our groups small, with only eight writers. This creates a close-knit and supportive community that tends to continue beyond the sessions.

What is involved?

• Monthly feedback on 5000 words of your work in progress from your mentor and one email consultation to ask any questions.

• A monthly group tutorial via Zoom (three in total), where you can discuss any aspect of writing, from craft to publishing insights to brainstorming to problem solving.

• A one-off group Zoom call with a top literary agent where you can ask anything you ever wanted to ask an agent.

• Swap work with other writers in a peer critique group, where you know everyone involved is serious about improving and will help push your writing to a new level. As we know, critiquing others work is one of the most valuable ways to help improve your own craft and editing.

• A dedicated Slack channel where you and your fellow writers can cultivate new relationships and share experiences, as well as work.

Meet the Mentors

Young Adult mentor: Melinda Salisbury

Melinda Salisbury is a four-time Carnegie nominated author, whose first novel The Sin Eater’s Daughter was the bestselling UKYA debut of 2015. Her other books include the sequels to The Sin Eater’s Daughter: The Sleeping Prince, and The Scarecrow Queen, the State of Sorrow duology, Scottish folk-horror novel Hold Back The Tide, Persephone origin story, Her Dark Wings, and in non-fiction, The Way Back Almanac. Melinda has been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the YA Book Prize, and the Branford Boase Award. Hold Back the Tide was a YALSA 2022 pick and a Guardian Best Book of 2022. Her books havebeen published in 15 countries to date. 

Chapter Books and Middle Grade mentor: Vashti Hardy

Vashti Hardy is a writer of children’s books living near Brighton in Sussex with her husband and three teens. She was a primary school teacher for several years, and has a special interest in children’s writing, especially free-writing and the use of journals and creating fantasy worlds. She has a first-class honours teaching degree with English specialism and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Chichester. Vashti’s breathtaking middle grade fantasies are published across the world in many languages. Wildspark won the Blue Peter Book Award ‘Best Story’ in 2020 and the FCBG Children’s Book Awards and bestseller Brightstorm was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and Books are My Bag Awards among others. Brightstorm was also selected for Independent Booksellers Book of the Season and both Brightstorm and Wildspark were selected as Primary School Book Club Reads.