#wellesley writes

An Open Letter from Wellesley Writes to Wellesley Alumnae

We all know that writing is hard. To many students, becoming a writer, making a living out of a hobby we love feels like an elusive dream that might never come true. Wellesley Writes is Wellesley’s one-semester-old student-run creative writing club that encourages students not to give up on that dream. Throughout the past semester, we have hosted two panels on publishing and monthly writing workshops for students to review each other's work. Through our events, we seek to connect student writers to each other and to resources they need to become better writers. For the upcoming academic year, we are interested in launching a pilot mentorship program, to connect student writers with alumnae working in creative writing-related fields.

Through this mentorship program, we hope to increase the accessibility of information for aspiring writers, be it on what it takes to get published in specific genres of writing, what it’s like writing while having another job, or what to do to get an agent. We wish to inspire, by putting students in touch with alumnae who have achieved what might seem like the impossible, to prove that it is possible to dream big. And of course, we want to provide a platform for friendships to form, for Wellesley alums and students across the years to come together and celebrate the beauty of language and creation.

The success of this program is contingent upon your support. If you are willing to volunteer as a mentor, please fill out this form here. If you know any other Wellesley alumnae who might also be interested in participating, please pass this along to them! We have over a hundred interested student writers, and we would like to cater to as many of them as possible.  

Through the number of responses we receive from this form, we will be able to better gauge the capacity of our program. Before students are paired with mentors, they will be expected to go through a series of writing review workshops or enroll in creative writing classes throughout fall semester. Mentorship pairings will be made in late December 2019, and the degree of commitment expected will be determined by individual mentors and mentees. Each mentor-mentee relationship will be self-directed, self-monitored, and self-guided.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Samantha Lai (President of Wellesley Writes) at [email protected] or Eleanor Mallett (Alumnae Chair of Wellesley Writes) at [email protected]. If you have any suggestions for events we should host or thoughts on creative writing-related experiences you wish you had when you were in Wellesley, please feel free to reach out and tell us more about it! We thank you in advance for your time and assistance!

Best regards,