Booking Your Appointment
A new scheduling process for the 2026 Mentorship Program will make booking sessions easier. Instead of pre-set appointment slots, mentees can now select their preferred mentor and directly schedule a mutually convenient time.
How to Book Your Appointment:
- Browse the list of mentors: consider picking a few backups in case they fill up.
- Complete the appointment request form. If your chosen mentor offers both in-person and remote options, please be sure to make the proper selection.
- Wait for a few days for the Mentor to email you with suggested appointment windows. Please respond promptly to secure your appointment time.
- After your meeting, please complete the survey. The aggregated information helps us report back to our generous funders who make this program possible, while also fueling our future fundraising efforts to maintain and expand the program in the future.
The full outline of the scheduling process can be found via this link.
Questions? Please contact [email protected].
Mentorship appointments are now available from May to July 2026. Scroll down to view Mentor-instructor profiles.
Please sign up for only ONE appointment so that we can make this program available to as many people as possible.
Questions? Please contact [email protected].
Heather Nelson is a writer based in Cambridge Massachusetts. Her first book of poetry, Motherland, was released by Kelsay Books in May 2025. She currently leads a local free-write group, runs workshops at GrubStreet, and plans community writing events. Heather is already working on her next book of poetry.
Interests and expertise: Essay, literary journalism, poetry, short fiction
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning memoir 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, where he leads the Essay Incubator program; at LitArts RI; is on the faculty of Solstice MFA Program at Lasell University; and teaches how to play Dungeons & Dragons. More info: ethangilsdorf.com; instagram.com/ethan.gilsdorf; youtube.com/ethangilsdorf
Interests and expertise: Essay, literary journalism, memoir, non-fiction, publishing & promotion
Shalene Gupta is a staff editor at Fast Company, the author of The Cycle: Confronting the Pain of Periods and PMDD, and co-author of The Power of Trust. The Power of Trust was nominated for a Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea award. In 2022, Shalene was identified as a thinker to watch out for and made the Thinkers50 Radar list. In the past she’s been a financial specialist for the Department of Treasury, a reporter for Fortune, a researcher at Harvard Business School, and taught English in Malaysia on a Fulbright scholarship. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, ESPN, Fast Company, Fortune and Harvard Business Review, and TIME among other places. She is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School and Johns Hopkins, and GrubStreet's Novel Incubator program. She has also taught a variety of classes at GrubStreet including the Memoir Incubator.
Interests and expertise: Novel, personal essay/op-ed, publishing
Sarah Chaves is a Portuguese-American writer, editor, and educator based in Boston, MA. She has received support from PEN America, Bread Loaf, Fulbright, and more. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among others. You can find her on Instagram @sarita_chaves.
Interests and expertise: Memoir, non-fiction, personal essay, death & grief, education, motherhood
Dariel Suarez is the author of the novel The Playwright's House, finalist for the Rudolfo Anaya Fiction Award and the Massachusetts Book Award, and the story collection A Kind of Solitude, winner of the Spokane Prize and the International Latino Book Award for Best Collection of Short Stories. An inaugural City of Boston Artist Fellow, Dariel has been awarded the First Lady Cecile de Jongh Literary Prize, and his prose has appeared in Best American Essays, The Threepenny Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review, LitHub, The Gettysburg Review, among others. He's the former Artistic Director at GrubStreet and resides in the Boston area with his wife and daughter.
Interests and expertise: Cultural consulting, essay, novel, MFA preparation, publishing & promotion, short fiction
Elizabeth Santiago, PhD, is the founder of The Untold Narratives – a free website dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. As a fiction writer and writing teacher living in Boston, she seeks to elevate underrepresented and under-heard voices. Her debut novel published by Lee & Low, The Moonlit Vine is available in English and Spanish (Claro de luna) and tells the little known narrative of the Taíno people, the native people of Puerto Rico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba and Jamaica who are still here and a huge part of Caribbean culture and history. She currently teaches creative writing and literature as an adjunct professor at Emerson College. She also teaches at Boston’s creative writing center, GrubStreet, where she has taught workshops like Novel Generator, Retelling the Classics, Magical Realism and Writing Inclusive Young Adult and Middle Grade Novels. She obtained her PhD in Educational Studies from Lesley University, Master of Education from Harvard University, and Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Emerson College.
Interests and expertise: Magical realism, surrealism, fantasy, horror, folklore & fairytale retellings, dark humor, novel
Vanessa Lewis is a writer, communications professional, and workshop facilitator whose work centers storytelling as a tool for reflection, creativity, and social change.
Interests and expertise: Reflective writing, diverse audiences
Jenna Blum is a founding member/instructor at GrubStreet and has taught writing, novel, and marketing workshops for Grub and other institutions for 29 years. She's the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of four novels and a memoir, one of Oprah's Top 30 Women Writers, and CEO/Co-Founder of online author interview platform A Mighty Blaze, on which she has also interviewed 150+ authors since 2020. Jenna has an MA from Boston University, has interviewed Holocaust survivors for the Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Project, and travels nationally and internationally to talk about her work. Jenna loves to connect with readers–she visited over 800 book clubs in person for her first novel alone–and to help writers. Please visit Jenna at www.jennablum.com and join her literary adventures on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter/X, and Substack.
Interests and expertise: Novel, query letter, structure, social media presence/marketing, life/work/creative balance
As Poet Laureate Emerita of Arlington MA, Cathie Desjardins has led many lively community events and workshops. She has taught at GrubStreet since 2016 as well as at Boston, Cambridge, Arlington and Lexington Centers for Adult Education in highly rated writing courses. A former faculty member at Lesley University and UMass/Boston, she has taught poetry writing in graduate programs and to all ages from kindergartners to senior citizens. As essayist, journalist, and book reviewer, her work has been published in many periodicals and journals including Cognoscenti (WBUR’s online magazine), the Christian Science Monitor, and The Boston Globe Magazine and in many poetry journals. For the last seven years she has taught independent online poetry workshops on an evolving variety of themes and forms. An obsessive gardener (Desjardins!) she toils like any peasant to keep all things (including language) blooming.
Interests and expertise: Poetry, essay, book reviews
Christine Pride is a writer, editor and long-time publishing veteran where she held editorial posts at various Big Five imprints and published many bestselling and critically acclaimed novels and memoirs over her twenty-year career. She is also the author of three novels: two with Jo Piazza: We Are Not Like Them (a Good Morning America Book Club Pick) and You Were Always Mine, as well as her solo debut, All The Men I’ve Loved Again which was an instant USA Today bestseller. In addition to writing, she does select editorial work, proposal/content development, and teaching and coaching. You can learn more at her website: www.christinepride.com, or on Instagram, @cpride. Or check out her book reccs on her Substack newsletter: Book Forward.
Interests and expertise: Publishing, editing, novel writing
Yu-Mei Balasingamchow’s debut novel, Names Have Been Changed, will be published on June 23, 2026 by Tiny Reparations Books. Her stories have received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, won the Mississippi Review Fiction Prize, and been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She is originally from Singapore and lives in Boston. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University. Her writing has been supported by the Ucross Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Elizabeth George Foundation, Sewanee Writers Conference, Ragdale Foundation and Vermont Studio Center, and in Singapore by the National Arts Council and Nanyang Technological University. She teaches at GrubStreet and is editor at Gaudy Boy, an NYC-based independent press that publishes Asian voices.
Interests and expertise: Novel, short story, manuscript preparation, submitting to literary journals, agents, publishers, query letters, building writing community, BIPOC and/or immigrant writers
Born and raised on Chicago’s southside, Angie Chatman is a writer and storyteller. Her short stories and essays can be found in Iron Horse Literary Review, Taint,Taint,Taint Magazine, Brevity, Literary Landscapes, The Rumpus, Pangyrus, Hippocampus Magazine, Blood Orange Review, fwriction:review, and elsewhere. She has told on The Moth Radio Hour’s episode “Help Me” and won a WEBBY award for telling on GBH/World Channel's Stories from the Stage episode, “Growing Up Black.” Chatman was welcomed as a Fellow of the Kimbilio Center for Black Fiction in 2013. She has also received funding support from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and Ragdale. An electrical engineer by degree, Chatman also earned an MBA from MIT-Sloan, and an MFA in fiction and creative nonfiction from Queens University in Charlotte. In addition to teaching at GrubStreet, Chatman is an adjunct instructor at Bunker Hill Community College.
Interests and expertise: Essay, short story, editing, storytelling
Quentin Lucas is a seasoned writer, storyteller, and creative writing teacher with more than a decade of experience across journalism, copywriting, and narrative craft. With an MFA in Creative Writing and a career spanning healthcare, technology, and media, he brings both artistic depth and real-world strategy to his work and guidance around writing.
Interests and expertise: Essay, non-fiction, copywriting, fiction
Clara Silverstein is the author of the poetry collection Above The Fall Line, the memoir White Girl: A Story of School Desegregation, and the historical novel Secrets in a House Divided. She has also published three cookbooks. Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, Runner’s World, and in literary publications including 100 Word Story, The Naugatuck River Review, and Blackbird. She teaches at GrubStreet and has worked as a journalist, an historian, and a presenter of educational programs at libraries and senior centers. Raised in Richmond, Virginia, she now lives in Boston.
Interests and expertise: Hybrid forms, mosaics, book research, memoir, non-fiction, poetry, writing coach
Jonathan Escoffery is the author of If I Survive You, a New York Times and Booklist Editor’s Choice, an IndieNext Pick, and an International Bestseller. If I Survive You was nominated for more than a dozen prizes and awards internationally, including the National Book Award, and was a finalist for the Booker Prize, the Dublin Literary Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and the Southern Book Prize. Jonathan is a 2026 MacDowell Fellow and was a 2021-2023 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. In 2023, he was named among the 36 Forces Shaping the Cultural Conversation by Harper’s Bazaar. Jonathan’s short fiction has received prizes and honors from Prairie Schooner, Passages North, and the Best American Short Stories series, and, in 2020, he received The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for Fiction, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Observer, The Paris Review, Oprah Daily, Electric Literature, Zyzzyva, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere.
Interests and expertise: Novel, short fiction, awards and fellowships, proofreading, writing coach
Judah Leblang is a writer, teacher, and storyteller, focusing on both book-length memoir and short essays/flash memoir pieces. He is the author of two memoirs: Finding My Place (Lake Effect Press, 2012) and Echoes of Jerry (Red Giant Books, 2019). His essays and commentaries have been broadcast on 200 ABC-radio and NPR stations around the US, and featured on WBUR's Cognoscenti. He also has performed his one-man shows at Fringe Festivals in the Northeast and Midwest, and in Calgary, Winnipeg, and Edmonton, Canada. He is a regular columnist for Bay Windows, Boston's LGBT newspaper.
Interests and expertise: Essay, memoir, non-fiction
Angela Siew is a multilingual poet with a BA from Brown University and an MFA from Emerson College. She was most recently an Administrative Staff Scholar for the 2023- 2025 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and has received fellowships from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and the City of Boston. Her chapbook, Coming Home, was awarded a 2025 Connecticut Artist Fellowship Grant and is available from Cut Bank (University of Montana). Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Salamander, Meridian, and LEON Literary Review, among others. She is a Kundiman Northeast Co-Chair. A former private tutor and English language teacher, she has also taught overseas in Chile and Italy.
Interests and expertise: Poetry, publishing, love, family and Asian American poetry, literary journals, chapbooks
Kayla Degala-Paraíso (she/they) is an NYC-based, Filipinx-American experimental writer with a B.A. in Creative Writing. Although a professional cross-genre dabbler, she has a special affection for fabulism, hybrid forms (especially prose poetry), and strange creative nonfiction (especially memoir). She prioritizes voice and feeling in her work. She is currently working on a collection of haunted stories. Kayla publishes under "K. Degala-Paraíso". You can read her work in PANK, Okay Donkey, ANMLY, and elsewhere. Her work has received the Bea Matas Hollfelder Award, a Pushcart Prize nomination, a Best Small Fictions nomination, and three Best of the Net nominations.
Kayla is the instructor for GrubStreet' Memoir Incubator intensive program 2026-7. Over the past three years, she has consulted a diverse set of writers on book-length manuscripts, ranging from YA romance to poetry collections to memoir (both traditional and experimental) to short story collections to personal essay collections to sci-fi/fantasy.
Interests and expertise: Novel, poetry, essay, memoir, cultural consulting, copyediting, book research, author website/social media, publishing and promotion, short fiction
Fin Leary (they/he) is a transgender and autistic author, a program manager at We Need Diverse Books, and a faculty member at Emerson College and GrubStreet. Fin is the 2026 Young Adult Writer-in-Residence at Porter Square Books. Fin was a 2024 Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ+ Voices Fellow for Young Adult Fiction. Fin is the editor of the science fiction anthology Future States of Stars (OwlCrate Press, 2026). They are a contributor to the young adult horror anthology These Bodies Ain’t Broken edited by Madeline Dyer (Page Street Publishing, 2025). Their fiction has been supported by Tin House, Sundress Academy for the Arts, Narrative Initiative, and Martha's Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing. Fin lives with their orange literary cat and a rainbow bookshelf outside of Boston, Massachusetts.
Interests and expertise: Novel, essay, memoir, fellowships and awards, author website/social media, literary journalism, publishing and promotion, short fiction, young adult and children’s literature, sci-fi/fantasy, genre fiction
Tim Weed is the author of four books of fiction including The Afterlife Project, named a best book of 2025 by Library Journal and the Toronto Star. His work has won or been shortlisted for the Foreword INDIES Best Book of the Year Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, the Writer’s Digest Annual Fiction Awards, the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, the Prism Prize in Climate Literature, the New Rivers Many Voices Project, and many others. Tim is the co-founder of the Cuba Writers Program and teaches in the Newport MFA at Salve Regina University. He lives in rural Vermont. His latest novel, The Gatepost, comes out in May.
Interests and expertise: Speculative fiction, literary fiction, historical fiction, sci-fi/fantasy, short fiction
Theresa Okokon is an award-winning writer, storyteller, and teacher. A Wisconsinite living in New England, she is the co-host of Stories From The Stage who—in addition to writing and performing her own stories—also teaches storytelling and writing, coaches other tellers, hosts storytelling events, collaborates with nonprofits on narrative-driven special projects and events. An alum of both the Memoir Incubator and Essay Incubator programs at GrubStreet, Theresa's memoir of essays about memory, family stories, and the death of her father – titled Who I Always Was – was published by Atria Books at Simon & Schuster in 2025. In a starred review of Theresa's book, Booklist described Theresa writing in this way: "Imagine the wit of Nora Ephron colliding with the raw honesty of Roxane Gay, and you’ll get a sense of Okokon’s brilliant storytelling."
Interests and expertise: Memoir, essay, storytelling
Katherine Yeh is a Taiwanese American writer of speculative fiction ranging from flash to novel length. Katherine's stories have been published in GASHER Journal, Flora Fiction, and others. She has taught the Novel Generator, Novel Draft Builder, and other fiction courses for GrubStreet. She has an MFA from Emerson College.
Interests and expertise: Novel, flash fiction, short stories, human experience and the natural world, climate change, advancing technology
Yasmine Ameli is a queer biracial Iranian American writer, fiber artist, and arts educator based in Philadelphia. Both her teaching and coaching practice are grounded in her formal education in creative writing and psychology, her background as a published writer and trauma-informed teaching artist, and her own journey navigating the writing life while living with chronic illness. She is passionate about helping writers cultivate sustainable writing practices that center the body as well as increasing access to arts business education (which includes skills like writing artist statements, securing literary funding, and navigating publishing).
These days her writing focuses on queer pleasure, mixed race narratives, the military-industrial complex, and navigating the medical system. And, when she is not writing or teaching, she is often crocheting, embroidering, foraging, flower-pressing, beading, collaging, papermaking, junk journaling, and jewelry making.
Interests and expertise: Cultivating a sustainable life as a writer, chronic illness and/or trauma, writing across genre, navigating writers block, long-term project planning, publishing support, MFA application, residency/grant applications, Artist statements/bio/website/newsletter
Sam Cha was born in Korea. He received his MFA from UMass Boston. A Pushcart Prize winner, he's been published and anthologized widely. He's the author of The Yellow Book (PANK, 2020). His most recent chapbook is Theses for the Second Person (antiphony, 2025). Long a resident of Cambridge, MA, he now lives in Brooklyn with his family, along with two cats.
Interests and expertise: Essay, literary journalism, memoir, non-fiction, poetry, MFA application, proofreading, publishing and promotion, translation
Victor Yang’s writing has been published in the Southern Review, Longreads, The Rumpus, the Boston Globe, and the Chicago Tribune, among others. His work also earned notable mention in 2025’s Best American Short Stories. He was a writer-in-residence for the City of Boston and earned an MFA from Boston University.
Interests and expertise: Labor and community organizing, handling rejection, writing community, queer immigrant/child of immigrant stories
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].