The application period for the Kid Lit Mentorship Project closed one week ago today. We received over 100 applications from kids all across the country, every one of them passionate about writing and eager to improve their craft with the guidance of an author-mentor. It is now up to Jenny, Jenn, Brooks, and me to review all of these applications and each choose a mentee to work with — and believe me, it is not going to be an easy task. These kids are beyond impressive. A few months ago, when I first launched this project, I said that I thought it’d be us, the mentors, who would learn the most from our mentees during the course of our work together. Looking over these applications, I’m more convinced than ever that this will turn out to be true.
If a child or student of yours applied to the Kid Lit Mentorship Project, please ask them to hang tight while Jenny, Jenn, Brooks, and I make this difficult decision. Once our mentees have been selected, ALL applicants will receive a note from us, and those young writers who did not get chosen will have an opportunity to either: (1) ask us a specific writing-related question or for some more general advice about writing, or (2) have a short sample of their writing critiqued by one of the four of us.
Thank you to all of you who encouraged the young writers in your life to apply to the project. I look forward to sharing more news and updates with you soon.
Jarrett Lerner 
It was so generous of each of you to offer! We will all “patiently” await the final decisions.
This is awesome! We have our fingers crossed and double crossed! 🙂
Any updates on this? Thanks!!
Hi Jen — letters were sent back to all applicants. A handful of the email addresses we were given didn’t work. The emails bounced back. If you or one of your students applied and never received a response, please reach out via my Contact form and let me know. If you were looking for more general updates as to the project’s progress, I hope to get some info about all that up soon. Thank!