WGA: Mentorships Program

The Writers Guild of Alberta is pleased to announce its newest program—the WGA Mentorship program. Modeled off similar programs, the WGA program will endeavor to meet the needs of emerging Alberta writers for guidance, collaboration and encouragement while established writers will receive short-term employment and an opportunity to sharpen their mentoring/teaching skills. The program will host five mentors matched to five participants. There is no cost to the apprentices besides arranging travel and accommodation for your first meeting with your mentor in person.

Submissions for the 2011/12 Mentorship Program are now closed.  Stay tuned in the fall of 2012 for next year's call for applications.

2011/2012 Submission Guidelines

To qualify as an apprentice you will be expected to:

-Be an unpublished or published writer

-Have been consistently writing within, at least, the past year

-Be a current member of the Writers Guild of Alberta (Join Now!)

-Be a current Alberta resident and 18 years or older

-Regularly send materials to your mentor prior to each meeting, and to write a program assessment at the end of the mentorship

-Not be currently enrolled in a full-time writing/ post-secondary program

-Read a piece of your work, completed during the mentorship program, at a Guild event

-Carefully consider time constraints before applying. Your mentor has committed to 40-50 hours over a four-month period to devote their time to your work and development. You will be expected to dedicate a minimum of 20-25 hours per month to program work. This includes some combination of reading, writing, preparing for meetings and time spent at the meetings.

To apply, please submit the following:

1. An author resume outlining your recent writing activities and any creative writing courses or workshops you’ve taken. If you are a published writer, provide a list of publications.

2. A cover letter stating:

-Your name and contact information

-Which literary genre you are currently working on

-A brief description of your current work and an explanation of why you think this program/mentor would benefit you at this stage of your career

-Discuss what you intend to work on during the program and what you would like to achieve (be specific in your goals)

3. A 10-page writing sample.

4. Confirmation that you are an Alberta resident and 18 years or older (e.g. photocopy of a drivers license, bills with current address, and/or birth certificate).

Application deadlines are: September 30, 2011 (postmarked, late applications will not be accepted)

Applicants will be notified: at the beginning of November

Please mail your application to the following address:

Mentorship Program Application

Writers Guild of Alberta

11759 Groat Rd. NW

Edmonton, AB T5M 3K6

For more information, please contact our office at (780) 422-8174 or at mail@writersguild.ab.ca.

Information on our Mentors

Betty Jane Hegerat

Betty Jane Hegerat is the author of two novels, a collection of short stories and a recent book, The Boy, that crosses genres to braid fiction, memoir, and investigative journalism and tie them together with metafiction. A social worker in an earlier life, she has spent the past fifteen year honing the craft of fiction, and in 2008 completed an MFA Creative Writing through UBC’s low residency program. Delivery, the novel that was her UBC thesis, was shortlisted for the Georges Bugnet fiction award in the Alberta Book Awards in 2010.  Her short stories have been widely published in Canadian literary magazines and broadcast on CBC’s Alberta Anthology.

In 2004, Betty Jane shared the position of Writer in Residence at the Alexandra Writers Centre with Catherine Moss.  For the past six years she has taught Introductory Creative Writing for Continuing Education at the U of Calgary, and various workshops for the Alexandra Writers.  In 2009 she was the Writer in Residence for the Calgary Public Library at Memorial Park Library, and in the summers of 2010 and 2011 taught a fiction workshop at the Fernie Writers Conference.

She has a firm belief in “community” and mentorship as essential to a healthy arts culture. For more information: http://bettyjanehegerat.com

Kath MacLean  

Since the publication of her award-winning first book, For a Cappuccino on Bloor, Kath MacLean’s poetry, nonfiction and creative nonfiction have been generating critical acclaim in the United States, and in Europe. A professor of English and creative writing much of the time, MacLean was writer-in-residence for the Canadian Author’s Association (2009/2010) and was the only prairie poet to compete this spring at Toronto’s Battle of the Bard at Harbourfront.

Recent works include: Seed Bone & Hammer, a CD of performance poetry with Lane Arndt (2009), There Was A Young Man (2009/10), a videopoem with Oops Design, Kat Among the Tigers (U of A Press 2011), poetry based on the journals and correspondence of modernist Katherine Mansfield, and Doo-Da-Doo-Da, a poetryvideo from Kat based on Mansfield’s experience during the 1915 bombing of France. She is currently working on a long awaited collection of essays, a longer creative nonfiction manuscript, a new book of poetry & videopoem.

Conni Massing

Conni works in a variety of genres including theatre, film, radio, and television, and has just published her first book, Roadtripping: On the Move with the Buffalo Gals. She wrote several episodes of Mentors, a locally produced television series, and has worked as a story editor on The Beat, North of 60, The Adventures of Shirley Holmes, Taking it Off, and Family Restaurant. Recent stage credits include her commissioned adaptation of W.O. Mitchell’s Jake and the Kid, premiered by Theatre Calgary in September, 2009, and Ooga-Booga, a play for young audiences. Conni’s hit comedy The Myth of Summer (premiered by Alberta Theatre Projects), and the award-winning Homesick (premiered by Workshop West Theatre), were recently published by Playwrights Canada Press.

Pierrette Requier

Pierrette Requier is a bilingual Alberta writer.  Her book of prose poems details from the edge of the village (Frontenac House, Calgary, Quartet 2009) was nominated for four awards and short-listed for the Edmonton Book Prize.  Her most recent publication Storm/orage (from The Works, 2010, a collaboration) has appeared with Ian Sheldon’s paintings in Storm Chaser Canadian Prairie Skyscapes (August2011).  She has been published in a number of anthologies, websites and magazines.

Pierrette serves as literary representative on the board of RAFA, an Alberta organization supporting French artists.  She participates in the French writing and performance group 4 voix/4voies and has been featured on Radio Canada.

Pierrette hosts monthly Wind Eye Writing Seminars.  She has facilitated writing workshops across Alberta with writers from 6 to 86 years old and has been invited to do presentations and readings for a number of organizations and institutions including, among others, the Canadian Authors Association and the University of Alberta. (St. Jerome’s Day:  A Celebration of Translation)

Pierrette enjoys collaborating with artists from other disciplines and aspires to join others in performances across Canada, as well as to spend time in Jersey and France immersed in her ancestors’ stories and culture. She is presently working on a series of monologues.

J.Jill Robinson

J.Jill Robinson is the author of four collections of stories, the most recent of which is Residual Desire. Her work, which has appeared in many Canadian literary journals, has won the Prism International fiction contest, Event’s creative nonfiction contest (twice), 2 Western Magazine Awards, 2 Saskatchewan Book Awards, and the Howard O Hagan Prize for short fiction. Born in Langley B.C., Jill became a writer while living in Calgary (1979 – 1993), before moving to Saskatoon (1993 – 2009). She returned to Alberta in 2009, and now lives in Banff. She has served as a Writer In Residence at the Saskatoon Public Library, Red Deer College, the Alexandra Writing Centre, the inaugural Virtual Ink!, Southern Alberta Libraries video-link program, and currently as one of two writers in residence for the CAA (Alberta branch).  She has led many weekend and daylong writing workshops throughout Saskatchewan. She was the Editor of Grain magazine from 1995 – 1999, and a teacher of English Literature, Composition, and Creative Writing at the University of Calgary; University of Saskatchewan; St. Peter's College; SUNTEP; and First Nations University of Canada. Jill’s first novel, More In Anger, will be published by Thomas Allen in Spring 2012. For more information: http://www.writersunion.ca/ww_profile.asp?mem=391&L=R&N=J. Jill Robinson