Mentoring Tutors

Esther Chilton

Since joining The Writers Bureau as a student many years ago, Esther hasn’t looked back and now writes and tutors full-time. She regularly has articles and short stories published in a variety of newspapers and magazines in the UK and abroad, ranging from The Guardian, to The People’s Friend, to Writing Magazine. As well as winning writing competitions herself, Esther has judged many, including Writers’ Forum magazine’s monthly short story competition. She is currently working with a publisher on a range of non-fiction books on writing.

Mandy Pannett

Mandy Pannett lives in West Sussex. She taught children with special needs for many years but now works freelance as a creative writing tutor for adults.

Her poetry pamphlet ‘The Daedalus Files’ was published by SPM Publications in 2021. Five poetry collections have been previously published: ‘Bee Purple’ and ‘Frost Hollow’ (Oversteps Books), ‘Allotments in the Orbital’ (Searle Publishing), ‘All the Invisibles’ (SPM Publications), ‘Jongleur in the Courtyard’ (Indigo Dreams Publishing). A selection of her poems, ‘Ladders of Glass’, was issued by Integral Contemporary Literature Press with English and Romanian parallel texts.

She enjoys writing short fiction as well and two years ago won a national competition for Vignette writing. She has also judged competitions for Flash Fiction. Two novellas have been published by Independent Presses: ‘The Onion Stone’ (Pewter Rose Press) and ‘The Wulf Enigma’ (Circaidy Gregory Press).

Mandy was also poetry editor for five years for Sentinel Literary Quarterly and has edited anthologies and poetry collections for them and for Earlyworks Press. She has acted as an adjudicator for national competitions and won prizes and been placed herself in several others.

For the last eighteen months she has been collaborating with artist Polly Dutton and musicians Terry Pack and The Full Circle Quartet on ‘The South Downs Suite’, a poetry/music/art project inspired by the South Downs. The Suite is currently being performed at several venues in the area and a book of all the art work and poetry is on sale at events and in galleries and museums.

Rob Keeley

Rob Keeley is an award-winning author of children's novels, short stories and picture books, including the Spirits series. Other credits include the award-listed stage play Mr. Everyone, the murder mystery Death At Friar's Inn, and Chain Gang and Newsjack for BBC Radio. He holds author workshops in schools and libraries, and teaches Creative Writing to children and adults.

For more information on Rob, visit www.robkeeley.co.uk or follow him on Twitter/X @RobKeeleyAuthor.

Mentoring for Ongoing Projects

With Esther Chilton

Once your fee has been paid please send your work to: [email protected] and they will forward it on to Esther.

Usually with mentoring you must book a fixed block of sessions which can be very expensive and demanding on your time. With our ongoing mentoring programme you are in control of the timing, cost and process.

1st meeting: you submit an outline and a selection of prose from your project, up to 5000 words in total. Your mentor reads through this submission, then meets you for a one-hour Zoom session to discuss the project and plan your next steps.

Subsequent meetings: You send in 5000 words which your mentor comments on and returns to you. You then have a one-hour Zoom session going through those comments and planning the next stage.

Mini-Mentoring

The mini-mentoring service we offer is an extended form of review and appraisal on short pieces of prose and poetry. Here's how it works:

 

  1. You send us your work by email and we send it to the tutor.

  2. Our tutor sends you their feedback.

  3. You reflect on their comments and make amendments to your work as you see fit. You then send it back to the tutor.

  4. The tutor goes through your work again and returns it to you.

  5. You then arrange a half hour one-to-one Zoom session together to discuss your work and for you to ask any questions.

 

This service is £75 for up to 2000 words of prose (short story or article) or 60 lines of poetry.

 

Tutors

Esther Chilton is the tutor for prose, Mandy Pannett is the tutor for poetry and Rob Keeley is the tutor for prose written for children. 


How To Book

To book a mini-mentoring session please click the relevant link below.

Once your fee has been paid please send your work to: [email protected] and they will forward it on to the relevant tutor.