Mentorship From Afar

While studying at the HillHouse Writer’s Series, you will have the opportunity to enter into a close, orchestrated-to-your-personal-needs Mentorship with one (or more) of our MFA-certified advisors. Upon registration, based on your own self-designated strengths, weaknesses, and goals, we will match you with the Mentor most able to meet your needs. Over the course of the Movable Feast, through group meetings (each advisor will have seven students), intimate one-on-one sessions, and workshop discussions, you will work with your Mentor to compose the Study Plan that will help organize and define your artistic life for the 12 weeks following the retreat and beyond.

But this relationship—the dialogue, the mentorship—extends well beyond simple planning.

Upon returning home, for the next three months, you will evolve and explore the discourse you began with your Mentor while attending the Movable Feast. By means of epistolary correspondence, you will discuss your investigations—those writerly intuitions, discoveries, occasional setbacks, burning questions, and myriad epiphanies that occur while digging into your Study Plan. Every four weeks, you will send your advisor a Creative Bundle, to include, but not necessarily be limited to, Creative Work, Craft Responses, and a 3 – 5 page Progress Letter, wherein you basically talk about whatever you want, picking your advisor’s brain, putting his or her experience, expertise, and energies to work however you see fit.