The 2009 Australian Horror Writers' Mentor Program will be open to applications from the 1st to the 28th of February, 2009. The program aims to further develop the depth and quality of Australian horror and dark fantasy.
Sonia Helbig, mentoree in 2007: "My dark science fiction short story 'Crown of Thorns' won 2nd place in the Writers of the Future 2007 4th Quarter competition! I couldn't have done it without Stephen Dedman's feedback and editorial advice and his awesome encouragement. I'd recommend the mentorship program to anyone, and especially Stephen. I've not only learned a lot but now have got something great to show for it. My story will be printed next year and I'll be off to the US for workshops! I'm over the moon."
Note: The Program is only open to AHWA Members.The AHWA seeks to match emerging writers with experienced Mentors who will provide valuable advice, assistance and analysis of the Mentoree's work and writing goals over a three month period. Communication will be primarily done via email or other online forums as arranged between the Mentor and Mentoree. The basis of the Mentorship will be the initial body of writing submitted by the Mentoree at the commencement of the Program. (See "Submission Structure" below).
The AHWA would like to stress that the Mentor Program is not simply an assessment service. Mentors will not only provide a critical analysis of the submitted text, but will also seek to advise the Mentoree on their strengths and weaknesses as a writer, and to actively assist in the development of their work. By the same token, Mentorees are expected to actively participate in this process by carrying out suggested revisions, completing any writing exercises the Mentor might suggest, communicating in a timely fashion and, very importantly, not making excessive demands on their Mentor. In short, the more you put into this Program, the greater the benefit.
Cost:
Application is free. Successful applicants will be required to pay a fee to participate in the AHWA Mentor Program, the majority of which be passed onto the Mentors as compensation for their time and services.
Unfortunately, as places in the Mentor Program are limited, not all applicants will be chosen to participate. Acceptance into the Program will be determined not only by the quality of an applicant's writing, but by the ability to match them with an appropriate Mentor.
Important Dates for 2009:
1/2/09 : Application period opens
28/2/09 : Application period closes (strict)
20/3/09 (approximate) : Applicants advised of AHWA decisions
1/4/09 : Mentor Program commences
Submission Structure for 2009:
Novels, novellas, short stories, flash fiction, scripts, and non-fiction will be considered for the 2009 Program. Works submitted for the 2009 Program must not exceed a total upper limit of 15,000 words. Within this limit, the submission may comprise of:
Novel (eg, drafting the specific chapters, discussing the general direction of the novel - ideas, plot, characters, etc - refining the synopsis/outline, discussions about which publishers/agents may best suit the story); or
One novella; or
One script (45 minutes); or
Three short stories; or
Five pieces of fiction of any length (including flash fiction); or
Three non-fiction articles.
2009 MENTORS
Lee Battersby
Lee Battersby has published more than 70 stories since 2001, in Australia, Europe, and the United States. His work has appeared in a wide variety of markets, including Writers of The Future Volume 18; All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories; Tales of the Unanticipated; Aurealis; Shadowed Realms; Borderlands; Znak Sagite; Australian Woman's Day, and World's Best Fantasy & Horror Volume 20 (Pick the odd one out...). A collection of his work, entitled Through Soft Air, was published by US publisher Prime Books in 2006. He was the first Western Australian winner in the Writers Of The Future competition, and his awards include the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short Story, multiple KSP SF/F Competitions, and the Ditmar award for Best New Talent. He was the inaugural winner of the AHWA's Australian Shadows Award for Outstanding Achievement in Horror. He has tutored for Clarion South, the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writer's Centre, and Fantastic Queensland.
Lee would prefer to work with scripts, short stories or flash fiction, rather than one long piece or novel excerpt, and as long as the subject matter is speculative he has no preference as to 'darkness'.
Lyn Battersby
Lyn Battersby is a Clarion South 2007 graduate. Her works have appeared in many magazines including Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine#7, 17 and 34, Borderlands #6 and 10, Shadow Box, Black Box, Studies in Australian Weird Fiction, Shadowed Realms #9, Daikaiju #2 and Canterbury 2100. Her story "The Memory of Breathing" was nominated for several awards both in Australia and overseas and won the Western Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy Best Short Story Award. She has work upcoming in Electric Velocipede.
She has also acted as an editor and slush reader for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (editing the award-winning issue 11) and was a co-editor on several issues of TiconderogaOnline Magazine.
While Lyn has no personal preferences as far as length goes, she does prefer her horror to err more on the side of intellectual/emotional rather than gore.
Stephen Dedman
Stephen Dedman is the author of the novels The Art of the Arrow Cutting, Shadows Bite, For a Fistful of Data, Foreign Bodies, and more than 100 short stories published in an eclectic collection of magazines and anthologies. He is also the fiction editor of Borderlands magazine, a creative writing tutor at UWA, co-owner and book buyer of Fantastic Planet science fiction and fantasy bookshop, and a member of the Bram Stoker Award jury. He has won Aurealis Awards for Fantasy and Horror short stories, and a Ditmar for long science fiction, and been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Sidewise Award, the Seiun Award, and the Spectrum Award.
Of his preferences, Stephen says: "I've read and written most sub-genres of horror, but am best known for erotic horror and dark/urban fantasy, and prefer suspense and psychological horror to splatter or torture. I also prefer prose pieces of 2000 words to novella length, rather than flash fiction or poetry (though again, I've written these as well)."
Robert Hood
Robert Hood is an experienced writer of speculative fiction (in particular horror-fantasy) and crime. He is a recognised, award-winning professional in the field, with an extensive track record and a history of publication, in Australia and overseas, at all levels. A full member of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), his works include short stories (collected in Day-dreaming on Company Time, Immaterial: Ghost Stories, and the recent Creeping in Reptile Flesh), novels (Backstreets and the Shades series) and playscripts. He has a science-fiction novella coming out in Twelfth Planet Press' chapbook series in 2009. He is experienced in writing for adults, young adults and children. He is also an award-winning editor and non-fiction writer, and has taught at secondary and tertiary level, as well as being a Clarion South tutor. Robert has been involved in publishing and writing within speculative fiction genres in one capacity or another for over three decades. His website is located at www.roberthood.net -- but see also www.roberthood.net/blog/. He secretly believes that creatively inserting a zombie or a giant monster in a story immediately elevates several levels -- though you have no obligation to take him seriously on this matter.
Says Rob: "Having had more short stories published than anything else, that is clearly an area of greatest expertise. But I'll do short stories, novellas, novels, non-fiction and raising the dead. Though I've written for the theatre in the past, I'm a tad out of practice with plays. No poetry, however."
Martin Livings
Perth-based author Martin Livings has been writing short stories for a variety of publications since 1990. Along the way he has picked up nominations for both the Ditmar and Aurealis awards. Martin reluctantly works in IT during the day to pay the bills, and at night dreams of fame and fortune. And monsters. Livings' short fiction has appeared in the award-winning anthology Daikaiju!, as well as Borderlands, Agog! Terrific Tales, and Eidolon, among many others. He has been listed in the Year's Best Horror and Fantasy Recommended Reading, and has recently appeared in Year's Best Australian SF and Fantasy Volume 2 and Australian Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2006 Edition. His first novel, Carnies, was published in 2006 by Lothian Books.
Martin is looking forward to working on anything you've got, from haiku to a 15000 word novella, and in pretty much any style you can think up. So do your worst... in the best possible way!
Brett McBean
Brett McBean is the author of the novels The Last Motel; the Aurealis and Ditmar award nominated The Mother (published by Lothian Books); the novelette The Familiar Stranger; and the novella Sins of the Father (from the Delirium Books anthology New Dark Voices II). His stories have appeared or will appear in anthologies such as Asylum Volume 3: The Quiet Ward; In Delirium II; and the long awaited Cemetery Dance anthology In Laymon's Terms, and in magazines such as Dark Discoveries.
Brett would prefer to mentor novels and novellas.
Cat Sparks
Cat Sparks managed Agog! Press from 2002-2008, an Australian independent press that produced ten anthologies of new speculative fiction. She's known for her award-winning editing, writing, graphic design and photography.
She was a graduate of the inaugural Clarion South Writers' Workshop and a Writers of the Future prizewinner in 2004. She has edited four anthologies of speculative fiction and forty five+ of her stories have been published since the turn of the Millennium. Cat has received eight Australian SF awards for writing, editing and art including the Peter McNamara Aurealis Conveners Award in 2004 for services to Australia's speculative fiction industry. She was the convenor of the Aurealis Awards horror division in 2006.
She is currently working on two novels, a novella and a handful of complicated short stories.
Cat would prefer to mentor short stories in the 2-7k range.
Kaaron Warren
Of herself, Kaaron says: "I've been writing stories since I was about seven. I was always a voracious reader, and loved Grimm's Fairy Tales from the age of five. I read horror comics early on, too, loving the blood and guts nature of them. I sold my first story at 28, and have sold over sixty stories since then. My short story collection, "The Grinding House" was nominated for four Ditmar awards and won two. The US Edition, "The Glass Woman", came out in 2007. I had a story in Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. I'm thrilled about that, because it's been a career goal for about fifteen years. I'm living in Fiji at the moment, so not actually a local writer, but will be back in Australia in 2010.
These days I tend to write what people call ‘literary horror', which means I don't have a lot of visceral descriptions or violence. I do have disturbing images, evil characters and unredeemed souls though.
I'd like to work with short stories (although novels and novellas would be considered), with someone with a similar style of fiction. I like weird stories, ones which take risks with form and content. The important thing in my own fiction is that characters are believable, if not likeable, and that the plot works in a logical way, regardless of the setting. Even a weird story needs to make sense in a weird kind of way. It's up to the writer to make it work."
Benjamin Szumskyj
Benjamin J. Szumskyj is a qualified high school teacher (Bachelor of Arts in Education / Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences, minor in English) and currently teaches at a private Christian high school. He has also achieved a graduate diploma in Christian Studies from Tabor Bible College, Perth and a Diploma in Library and Information Studies from Perth Central TAFE. Editor-in-chief of Studies in Fantasy Literature and Studies in Australian Weird Fiction, he has also written dozens of essays and articles on literary criticism for several magazines and journals such as Notes in Contemporary Literature, Wormwood: Writings about Fantasy, Supernatural and Decadent Literature and Star*Line: Journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association as well as editing books on critical studies such as Two-Gun Bob: A Centennial Study of Robert E. Howard (2006), Fritz Leiber: Critical Essays (2008) and Dissecting Hannibal Lecter: Essays on the Novels of Thomas Harris (2008).
Benjamin would prefer to mentor short and long articles, editing and interviews.
Robert N Stephenson
Robert N Stephenson is an author (4 books in print), a writer of short stories (78 published), a publisher, editor and tutor of writing for two colleges. His work has appeared in magazine such as Aurealis, Interzone, Talebones and Orb with his novel Life Light, published in Poland doing well on the newstands. His writing is in the areas of Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror and mainstream Literature. He has tutored over 1100 students in writing across all genres with one student, Greta Van der Roll a name to look out for in the future.
Robert is comfortable in all genres and in most styles.
Please Note: The program is only open to AHWA Members. Please do not submit outside the submission period, as the AHWA will regrettably be forced to delete all applications received before or after the submission period.Source: Marty Young, president AHWA
From February 25th the Australian Horror Writers' Association will be accepting expressions of interest from AHWA members wishing to take part in facilitating critiquing groups.
