NEW: THE GIGANTIC SEQUINS MENTORSHIP PROGRAM! (and you!)

To close out the week of our Teen Sequins feature,  we’d like to open the doors to a new opportunity: Gigantic Sequins Mentorship Program! 

You may have already heard our story, but we’ll offer it here again, as it bears repeating: in 2009, disconnected from any academic or literary program, a young poet took it upon himself to reach out to an older poet, who reached back. We, the curators of the Teen Sequins feature, have held a literary relationship for six years now, and over time have realized that our type of relationship is too rare in the literary world. More of you deserve something like it.

Perhaps you younger poets want someone other than a classmate or English teacher to read your poems–a fresh perspective.

Perhaps you older poets are still within your MFA programs, or have been writing outside of Academia for awhile now — perhaps you haven’t read the poetry of anyone under 19 for years, and have almost forgotten how it feels to be just beginning.

We’re hoping that the Gigantic Sequins Mentorship Program will help facilitate and support relationships like ours, where younger poets can connect with older poets outside the boundaries and obligations of Academia. The idea of “program” is a loose one, only a program in that we’ll provide a path to connection. During this week of our Teen Sequins feature, we’ve become aware of The Adriot Journal’s amazing summer mentorship program, and we’re delighted to see that they too feel passionately about supporting young writers. We share their views: mentorship, at its core, is simply a desire to connect.

Perhaps there will be critique, perhaps encouragement. Perhaps a young writer has questions about what to read, what sort of creative risks to take. The conditions of your relationship will be your own, established by each pair of writers who are interested in a new kind of learning experience, something unique and personal. While we have had a long mentorship connection, it is possible too that just a few correspondences of willingness and insight could bring the same kind of inspiration into your separate writing lives — the choice will be all your own.

This mentorship opportunity is open to all writers ages 23 – 99 who would like to be connected to a young poet, and is currently open exclusively to the teenage writers who submitted to the Teen Sequins feature. The point is to reach towards one another, and see what happens.

If you are interested in getting connected, and expanding your literary community, please email us at teen.sequins@gmail.com — we already have teens eager to share their work with you!  

Onwards, with love, 

Sophie Klahr and Robby Auld