Tags
illustrators, Jennifer Fitzgerald, mentoring, mentorships, Monica Mancillas, SCBWI community, SCBWI members, volunteering, volunteers
By Karol Ruth Silverstein, SCBWI-L.A. Contest Coordinator
SCBWI-L.A. PAL member Bethany Barton is the 2019 Mentor! This year’s mentorship contest is for illustrators and author/illustrators and we’ll be accepting applications from February 15 through March 22.
To encourage applicants, we thought we’d check in with last year’s mentees, Monica Mancillas and Jennifer Fitzgerald, to see how their mentorship experience went.
KAROL RUTH SILVERSTEIN: What did you hope to get out of the mentorship when you first applied?
JENNIFER FITZGERALD: I am just starting out writing for children, so initially I was looking for guidance in getting started. My biggest issue is time management. I’m a business owner and a parent, which means time to sit and think can be at a minimum. I needed someone to be accountable to, someone who I could trust to send me an email out of nowhere saying, “How’s it going? What are you working on right now? Send me something.” It made making time to write more real to me and I really needed that. Continue reading
SCBWI-L.A. is thrilled to announce the winners of the 2018 Mentorship Contest. These two lucky writers will each enjoy a six-month mentorship with their respective PAL member mentors. To all those who applied but were not selected, please know that our mentors considered the competition very steep. Your applications definitely made it difficult for them to choose their mentees.
Our 2018 Middle-Grade Mentor is Mary Hershey.
It’s common knowledge that having a mentor can impact your writing career in wonderful ways. Sometimes the impact is immediately apparent; other times it takes a while for the coaching a mentee receives to translate into career success.
Having a published mentor who helps you improve your work could be the greatest gift you receive on your path to publication. Through its Mentor Program, SCBWI-L.A. has offered this gift to three members in the past two years, and is now running a contest for a 2017 illustration mentorship. (
Winning the 2015 mentorship changed illustrator Matthew Rivera’s goals. “Writing my own stories to illustrate wasn’t something I considered before the mentorship,” Rivera says. But mentor 
Long-time SCBWI member 
One year ago authors E. Katherine Kottaras and Catherine Linka answered our call for published members interested in mentoring. Since May, they have been working with their chosen mentees. As we now 
Kite Tales 