Mentorship appointments are now available from May to June 2025. Scroll down for the schedule and Mentor-instructor profiles.
To view availability and sign up for an appointment, please click here. All appointments are in Eastern time. Remember to sign up for only ONE slot so that we can make this program available to as many people as possible.
More appointments will be available in July and August – check back in June for details.
Questions? Please contact [email protected].
Zyanya Avila Louis has an MFA in Fiction from Emerson College, where she also taught. She is now a freelance writer, editor and instructor in San Diego. At Emerson, she developed a passion for working with international students, multilingual students and other diverse student populations, which is born from being bilingual and growing up on the US side of the El Paso/Juarez border. Her work has appeared in the Acentos Review and Gival Press.
Interests and expertise: Short or flash fiction, Book-length Memoir, Personal Essay, Long-form fiction and novels, Publishing, Children's Literature, Young Adult Literature; Magical realism
Appointments:
- Friday, May 16, 4:30-6:00 PM ET (Zoom)
- Monday, June 2, 1:00-2:30 PM ET (Zoom)
Sam Cha was born in Korea. He earned his MFA at UMass Boston. A Pushcart Prize winner, he's the author of American Carnage (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs: 2018), The Yellow Book ([PANK]: 2020), and a mini-chapbook, Theses for the Second Person (antiphony, 2025). He lives in Brooklyn with his family.
Interests and expertise:Poetry, Personal Essay; Immigrant writing, Asian American poetics, long poems, multi-genre/cross-genre/hybrid; lyric essay, prose poems, sonnets, experimental writing, performance.
Appointments:
- Wednesday, May 21, 11:30 AM-1:00 PM ET (Zoom)
- Wednesday, June 4, 4:30-6:00 PM ET (Zoom)
Leora Fridman is the author of Bound Up: On Kink, Power & Belonging, Static Palace, essays about illness, art and politics, and other books of prose, poetry and translation. She is currently faculty at Lang College at The New School and Director of the New Jewish Culture Fellowship. More at leorafridman.com.
Interests and expertise: Personal Essay, Book-length Memoir, Literary Journalism; Autotheory, creative nonfiction, autofiction, writing of pain, illness & trauma, lyric essay, creative inquiry: research & creative writing, life writing, art writing, writing sex and the body, fragment as form, writing and/as resistance -- the politics of writing the self, writing politicized subject matter, collaborative writing, epistolary writing: correspondence as form, poetry, prose poems, hybrid forms
Appointments:
- Thursday, May 29, 4:30-6:00 PM ET (Zoom)
- Friday, June 6, 1:00-2:30 PM ET (Zoom)
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. His work appears in the New York Times, Washington Post, Esquire, Wired, O the Oprah Magazine, Huffington Post, Brevity, Electric Literature, Poetry, and The Southern Review, and is named "Notable" in Best American Essays. He teaches at GrubStreet, leading the Essay Incubator program; LitArts RI; and the Solstice MFA Program at Lasell University. ethangilsdorf.com.
Interests and expertise: Personal Essay, Book-length Memoir, Literary Journalism, Publishing; personal essay, creative nonfiction, memoir, experimental forms, op-ed and commentary writing.
Appointments:
- Wednesday, May 28, 11:30 AM-1:00 PM ET (in-person OR Zoom)
- Tuesday, June 10, 3:30-5:00 PM ET (in-person OR Zoom)
Shalene Gupta is the author of The Cycle: Confronting the Pain of Periods and PMDD, and co-author of The Power of Trust. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, ESPN, Fortune, Harvard Business Review and TIME, among other places. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School and Johns Hopkins. She is an editor at Fast Company.
Interests and expertise: Long-form fiction and novels, Book-length Memoir, Literary Journalism, Publishing; I wrote a book on business and trust, and a memoir on a menstrual mood disorder. I'm also a staff editor at Fast Company, and a graduate of the Novel Incubator so I can speak to publishing nonfiction books and memoirs, writing and crafting novels, and journalism.
Appointments:
- Saturday, May 31, 10:30 AM-12:00 PM ET (Zoom)
- Thursday, June 12, 6:30-8:00 PM ET (Zoom)
Anna Hogeland is the author of The Long Answer (Riverhead Books). She is a psychotherapist in private practice, with an MSW from Smith College School for Social Work and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. Her essays have appeared in Literary Hub, Big Issue, iNews, Gloss Magazine, Romper and elsewhere. The Long Answer has been translated into seven languages. She lives in western Massachusetts.
Interests and expertise: Long-form fiction and novels; literary fiction, autofiction, historical fiction, literary mystery
Appointments:
- Wednesday, May 14, 10:30 AM-12:00 PM ET (Zoom)
- Tuesday, May, 20, 10:30 AM-12:00 PM ET (Zoom)
Vanessa Mártir, a multi-genre writer, editor, and educator, is the founder of the Writing Our Lives Workshop and the Writing the Mother Wound Movement. She is a 2021 Letras Boricuas fellow, and her work has been widely published, including in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Longreads, The Rumpus, and the anthologies Not That Bad, edited by Roxane Gay, and So We Can Know, edited by Aracelis Girmay. vanessamartir.com.
Interests and expertise: Personal Essay, Book-length Memoir, Long-form fiction and novels, Publishing, Promotion/Marketing; Lyric essay, experimental memoir, lyric memoir
Appointments:
- Saturday, June 14, 10:30 AM-12:00 PM ET (Zoom)
- Monday, June 23, 5:00-6:30 PM ET (Zoom)
Elizabeth Santiago earned a BFA from Emerson College, a master’s from Harvard University and a PhD from Lesley University. Her young adult novel, The Moonlit Vine, has starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist. It was named one of Kirkus’s Best Teen & YA Novels of 2023 and longlisted for a 2024 Massachusetts Book Award. She is currently seeking representation for an adult contemporary novel and writing another young adult novel.
Interests and expertise: Long-form fiction and novels, Publishing, Young Adult Literature; historical fiction, Latine fiction, young adult, romance
Appointments:
- Monday, June 16, 4:30-6:00 PM ET (in-person OR Zoom)
- Tuesday, June 24, 12:00-1:30 PM ET (in-person OR Zoom)
Katherine Yeh is a Taiwanese-American writer of literary and speculative fiction. She has taught advanced fiction and novel courses and the Novel Generator at GrubStreet. Her writing has been published in GASHER Journal, Flora Fiction and elsewhere.
Interests and expertise: Long-form fiction and novels, Publishing
Appointments:
- Saturday, June 21, 1:30-3:00 PM ET (in-person OR Zoom)
- Friday, June 27, 2:00-3:30 PM ET (Zoom)
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost for a Mentorship appointment?
Thanks to our generous donors, Mentorship appointments are free to students. We also hope to grow this program in the future. As we are compensating mentors for their time, it’s important that students turn up for their appointments. If you can’t make it for an appointment after signing up, please email [email protected] so that we can release the appointment and someone else can use the time.
Where will Mentorship appointments be held?
Mentorship appointments take place either in person at the Seaport or remotely on Zoom. You will receive a reminder email 3 to 5 days before your appointment with details about the classroom location or Zoom link.
What’s the best way to use these appointments?
We suggest that students prepare a list of questions in advance. It’s best to keep your questions focused and specific, like: “I am having X challenge with my plot/protagonist and have tried these things without breaking through. Do you have suggestions for how I can try to resolve this?”
Students must submit their questions in advance to help their mentor prepare. This will make the meeting more productive.
Please note that the 30-minute appointments are actually 25 minutes; the last 5 minutes are to allow time to transition from one appointment to another.
Can I use my appointment time to get on-the-spot feedback on manuscript pages?
If you choose to use your time for this, sure! However, given that the appointment is for 25 minutes, it may be challenging to get meaningful feedback within this structure. The mentor is not being compensated for any outside work before or after these appointments, and we don’t expect or require them to complete any projects outside of the appointment times.
You might want to consider another program that might be better suited for manuscript reviews. Consider a Muse & the Marketplace Manuscript Mart appointment where you submit work ahead of time for feedback on several pages. Scholarships are available! There are other manuscript consultation programs available at GrubStreet as well.
How many appointments can I sign up for?
Please sign up for only ONE appointment per quarter. If you would like a second appointment in the same quarter, please contact [email protected] with your request.
What if I miss my appointment or arrive late?
If you know you can’t make your appointment, please email [email protected] and let us know. We will release the appointment and another person can use the time. Last-minute cancellations or no-shows cannot be rescheduled. If an unexpected emergency arises, we’ll do our best to reschedule, though we can’t make guarantees.
If unfortunately, you miss your appointment, remember that more Mentorship appointments will be offered later this year, and you can sign up again.
What if I have a suggestion or feedback about my appointment or the Mentorship program?
Everyone will receive a survey within a week of their appointment. If you would like to submit feedback outside of a survey, please write to [email protected].