Monday, May 14, 2012

NZSA Youth Mentorship Winners Announced



Three lucky secondary school students are to work with three of New Zealand’s best professional authors in order to hone their writing skills and develop their craft.

The  2012 recipients are Ashlee-Ann Sneller of KaitaiaIndiana Rose of Gore, Verity Johnson of  West Auckland.  Indiana is developing a novel, Ashlee-Ann’s focus is a poetry collection while Verity’s focus is non-fiction writing which she hopes will one day lead to a series of radio programmes.

The NZSA Youth Mentoring Programme is offered to three secondary school students (15-18) every year nationally and the mentorships are hotly contested. 

Selection panel convenor, author Tina Shaw, said the selection process was very difficult this year because the quality of applications was so high.

“The panel really struggled to choose the winners and runners up as there were so many outstanding applications.  We really were impressed and would encourage many of the applicants to apply again next year.”

The Youth Mentorships are offered by the NZSA every year with the intent of fostering and developing emerging writing talent with the support of established authors. The NZSA has run a highly successful mentoring programme for writers since 1999 and it is sponsored by Creative New Zealand.

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