Mentor Leslie Contreras Schwartz is a multi-genre writer, a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, the 2019-2021 Houston Poet Laureate, and the author of the 2022 C&R Press Nonfiction Prize Winner From the Womb of Sky and Earth, a lyrical memoir. She is the author of five collections of poetry: Black Dove/Paloma Negra (FlowerSong Press, 2020), a finalist for the 2021 Best Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters; and Nightbloom; Cenote (St. Julian Press, 2018), a semi-finalist for the 2017 Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, judged by Ilya Kaminsky. Leslie's work has appeared in Paris Review, AGNI, EPOCH, Missouri Review, Iowa Review, [PANK], Verse Daily, Pleiades, Gulf Coast, and Houston Noir (Akashic Books, 2019), and in the 2019 Best Small Fiction anthology, among others. Recent work has been featured with the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day. She has collaborated or been commissioned for poetic projects with the City of Houston, the Houston Grand Opera, and The Moody Center of the Arts at Rice University. Contreras Schwartz is currently a poetry and nonfiction faculty member at Alma College's MFA low-residency program.

Have you started a memoir or personal essay draft but feel stuck and unsure how to move forward? Or do you have a personal experience that you want to capture on the page, but are facing writer’s block or need professional feedback and guidance? 

This three-month mentorship will provide guidance and support for writers of all experience levels to complete a polished, emotionally resonant section of memoir or personal essay.

The course will focus on the craft of nonfiction and essay writing, in which students will close-read excerpts of successful nonfiction to study writing techniques used to bring a story to life. In the span of the course, students will develop and edit a piece of writing using mentor feedback and the example texts as a guide.

Leslie is an experienced mentor who will:

• Take your work as seriously as her own, giving careful attention to your writing by providing thorough, in-line feedback and supportive guidance
  
• Be respectful of your experiences and the importance of your story
  
• Teach or review craft terminology and its application in your work
  
• Adhere to deadlines for feedback
  
• Show up prepared and ready to dive into your work for weekly Zoom meetings
  
• Be readily available by email (response within 24 hours) or by a scheduled phone call

This mentorship is a good fit for students who are:

• Eager to learn and grow as writers and as a reader of nonfiction
  
• Receptive to feedback and open to editing their work and writing new work
  
• Excited to talk about nonfiction in a wide range of styles
  
• Ready to be challenged 

Throughout the class, the mentee will submit writing in increments of up to 2,500 words before each one-on-one session to develop a 5,000-word final draft. Leslie will send in-line feedback and discuss editorial comments at the meetings, and will be available for questions about craft and development in between meetings.

The student will begin sending in revisions in weeks eight and nine. At each meeting, the mentor and student will also discuss the assigned readings, writing prompts, the writing process, and tips on cultivating creativity.

This 3-month mentorship consists of the following:

• Weekly one-on-one Zoom meetings to discuss feedback and development of writing, as well as craft techniques used in the assigned reading
  
• Receipt of in-line editorial feedback each week
  
• Availability to mentor during the weekdays for questions

By the end of this mentorship, you will:

• Have a revised essay of up to 5,000 words
  
• Be ready to continue an active writing process
  
• Understand craft terminology and how to apply techniques
  
• Have a list of resources and exercises to take with you on your writing journey

Praise for Leslie Contreras Schwartz:

“As Contreras Schwartz’s stunning sentences wend their ways around personal trauma and motherhood, structural racism and misogyny, bodies ill and bodies sexualized … we as readers can’t look away—it’s that magnetic, electric, incantatory.” – Matthew Gavin Frank, author of Flight of the Diamond Smugglers and Submersed: Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Ameteur Submarines

“From the Womb of Sky and Earth is a tremendous memoir … with gorgeous, evocative prose, Leslie Contreras Schwartz shows how joy and darkness reside side by side. This is extraordinary, necessary work about pain and the complexity of survival, a work of exploration and witness.” – Karen E. Bender, author of Refund, 2015 National Book Award finalist, and The Words of Dr. L: & Other Stories

"From the Womb of Sky and Earth is haunting and visceral. Through swells of memory, the prose reveals ways to do more than survive. From the Womb of Sky and Earth is about learning how not to be crushed by waves of indignity; how to preserve and exalt oneself.” – Donald Quist, author of Harbors 

“When she began researching sex trafficking several years ago, Houston Poet Laureate Schwartz (I) suddenly came face to face with the long-suppressed anguish of an abusive high school relationship. What resulted is this arresting study of individuals, from the sex trafficked to the mentally ill, who dissociate from their selves to avoid trauma. The first poem lands with a wallop, as nightmarish, bunkered horses embody her past pain ("These are my animals. If I destroy them, I destroy myself"), while the following poems, real and raw, detail the experience of splintering ("sacred self fractured self part times part to choir self// …loud architecture// …uproar, racket, orchestra harmonic// …golden trapped space of your own body … Appropriately, syntax sometimes fractures here along with the self, intensifying an experience Schwartz captures in vervy writing.”—LIBRARY JOURNAL