Applicants will apply to their genre and must have a finished manuscript.

Applications require a query letter (350-450 words), a 1-2 page synopsis (not more than 1000 words), and the first thirty pages of a manuscript. Mentors strongly considering an application will request a full if desired (though might not necessarily).

The application will ask direct questions about racial bias, ableism, and other discriminatory beliefs.

Mentees will be placed by roundtable decision, similar to “The Match” in medicine. Mentors will rank their choices, and mentees will be placed according to overall fit.

Those who do not find their place in the program will be given access to peer Discord servers to maintain community. Halfway through the year, those who were not initially chosen as mentees may reapply for a half-year term for light revision and query work only.

Across the year-long term of the program, mentors pledge to meet with mentees over their chosen communication preference at least one time per quarter.

Together, the mentor-mentee teams will work rigorously to revise their manuscripts, with the goal to make a manuscript ready for querying or self-publishing.

Mentees will meet in their genre cohorts with their mentors four times (once each quarter) to exchange ideas and learn from each other. We hope this will foster beta reading and critique partner groups for the future, beyond the term of the mentorship.

At the end of the year, a “no strings attached,” no industry professional pitch party will take place on Twitter and Instagram, showcasing mentee work across the program.

It is our hope mentees leave Round Table Mentor with a sense of community and purpose, strengthening their writing and developing their own trailblazing careers.

Please note: we will not consider any submissions for which any content has been created and/or modified by AI learning or natural language processing system, such as Chat-GPT.