Mentor or Mentee and Mentoring

I believe in mentoring. Not just young people but big people, too.

One of my favorite mentees is Dallas Woodburn. She is a junior at my alma mater, USC(University of Southern California). Trouble is, I don't know which one of us is mentor and which is mentee. Which, as it happens--is nearly always the case.


Dallas is majoring in Creative Writing. She has published two books of short stories (her latest, 3 a.m., is available at Amazon.com). She has also published nearly 60 feature stories in magazines including Writer's Digest, The Writer, Family Circle, Justine, Cicada, Listen, and CO-ED. She has been published in four "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books including Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul IV and was recently honored as one of seven national Jim Murray Scholars for her biweekly column for the USC student newspaper The Daily Trojan.

Dallas launched a nonprofit foundation “Write On!” in 2000 to encourage kids to find joy, confidence, and a means of self-expression through writing and reading. Today, Write On's writing contests receive entries from all over the US and Canada. Dallas awards scholarships each year for young writers to attend the Santa Barbara Writers Conference Young Writers Program and the USC Summer Seminars Program. Her Write On Holiday Book Drive has collected and distributed 9,142 new books to underprivileged youth in just six years. Check out Dallas’s website at www.zest.net/writeon and her blog at http://dallaswoodburn.blogspot.com.

Dallas is my idea of what Sharing with Writers is all about. Won't you visit her site, donate to her causes, or simply leave a note of encouragement on her blog. Think of what we can all do together.

By the way, this picture of Dallas is great but she is most proud that the typewriter is Jim Murray's. I like that little yellow band she's wearing on her left wrist, too, don't you? (-:

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author THIS IS THE PLACE; HARKENING: A COLLECTION OF STORIES REMEMBERED; TRACINGS, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T; and THE FRUGAL EDITOR: PUT YOUR BEST BOOK FORWARD TO AVOID HUMILIATION AND ENSURE SUCCESS.
Her other blogs include TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com and AuthorsCoalition.blogspot.com, a blog that helps writers and publishers turn a ho-hum book fair booth into a sizzler.