Our mentors are published authors who are also great teachers and have experience mentoring other writers. We will have agents/editors as additional faculty to participate during the program to provide feedback on mentees’ work. You are asked to choose your mentors in the application or indicate no preference. (The program may add one more mentor.)
2021 MENTORS
(In alphabetical order)
Terri Farley
Terri Farley is the best-selling author of the Phantom Stallion series for young readers and Seven Tears into the Sea, a contemporary Celtic fantasy. Terri’s fiction has sold over two million copies worldwide. Her Wild at Heart: Mustangs and the Young People Fighting to Save Them has won a number of honors for science and excellence in non-fiction.
Ellen Hopkins
Ellen Hopkins is a poet, freelance writer, and the award-winning author of twenty nonfiction titles, three novels for adults, and thirteen NY Times Bestselling novels-in-verse. She has published hundreds of articles on subjects ranging from aviation to child abuse to winegrowing. Ellen is a regular speaker at schools, book festivals and writers conferences across the US, and now throughout the world. Accepting YA.
Jenny MacKay
Jenny MacKay has written 33 nonfiction books for middle-grade and teen readers on topics ranging from murder scenes and roller coasters to mythology and haunted houses. She has a master’s degree in creative writing and currently teaches college courses in English composition and communications. She has been a member of SCBWI since about 2007 (but who’s counting?) and has been a mentor for two of Nevada SCBWI’s Mentor Programs. She is a teacher at heart, and helping writers unearth and polish up the diamonds in their rough drafts is undoubtedly her favorite thing to do. She also preaches that a good story is a good story, whether it is true or make-believe, so she is equally happy working with writers to shape stupendous tales of both the fictional and the nonfictional kind. Accepting Nonfiction, MG, and YA
Heather Petty
“Re-read your favorite books with the eyes of a writer and study how they crafted those scenes you loved the best.”
Heather Petty has been obsessed with mysteries since she was twelve, which is when she decided that stories about murders in London drawing rooms and English seaside villages were far superior to all other stories. Lock & Mori is her first novel. She lives in Reno, Nevada with her husband, daughter, and four hopelessly devious cats. Accepting MG & YA
Suzanne Morgan Williams
“You can be well into your WIP before you find the heart of your book. Then everything is measured by that and revision makes more sense.”
Suzanne Morgan Williams is one of the founders of the NV Mentorship Program. She is the author of the middle grade novel Bull Rider and eleven nonfiction books for children. Bull Rider is a Junior Library Guild Selection, is on several state award lists and won a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City. Suzanne’s work is research based (both fiction and nonfiction) and her research and presentations have taken her from Mexico to the Arctic, from China to Cape Cod. Suzanne has not only been an administrator and mentor for SCBWI Nevada program, but she was a mentor for the first SCBWI Emerging Voices award. She was SCBWI Member of the Year in 2012. A writer for more than twenty years, she has found working with and developing connections with other book people to be pivotal in both her professional and personal life. She is currently working on a historical novel. Accepting MG and YA.