Originators, a new mentorship program nurtures fresh literary voices.
At the end of September Chanel announced a new arts initiative, joining the brand’s existing projects in the worlds of literature, dance, and film. Called Originators, it’s a program from The Women’s Prize that nurtures fresh literary voices across the U.S. Supporting authors is not new — Literary Rendezvous at Rue Cambon, a talk series, and the Nouvel Obs Literary Prize, which celebrates creativity and emerging talent, have set the foundation for this work. But unlike these European-focused undertakings, Originators is here to uplift American authors with mentorship, funding, and access to the publishing industry. And last night, in honor of the occasion, there was an intimate cocktail reception held at the Twenty Two in New York. The evening brought together figures from the worlds of literature, art, and culture to raise a glass to the initiative. Guests included A.M. Homes, V.V. Ganeshananthan, Nicole Krauss, Coco Mellors, Athena Calderone, Faran Krentcil, Leandra Medine Cohen, Naomi Fry, and Laura Reilly, among many others.
We sat down with members of the inaugural selection panel, including chair A.M. Homes (author of The End of Alice), V.V. Ganeshananthan (author of Brotherless Night), and Nicole Krauss (author of Man Walks into a Room), to discuss mentorship, the current state of the literary world, and the advice they plan to offer their mentees.
from left: V. V. Ganeshananthan, A. M. Homes and Nicole Krauss; Faran Krentcil and Sarah Harrelson; Athena Calderone; Naomi Fry; Rajni Jacques
10 USA: What advice will you pass on to your mentees?
V.V. Ganesthananthan: I’d say you can’t win if you don’t try – what do you have to lose? I am looking forward to reading fresh new voices and hopefully fearless work.
Nicole Krauss: Remembering to pursue that sense of freedom above all else.
A.M. Homes: To resist self-censorship. To risk telling the story that you want to tell and to risk failing. Especially for women writers, to not be silenced, but go to what is of interest and what is compelling.
10 USA: What are you looking for in writers, and how do you recognize talent?
Krauss: A sense of wrestling on the page and trying to work something out. You can tell a writer who is driven by that strong internal engine, as opposed to someone who just wants to tell a story.
Ganesthananthan: Another way to put that would be a strong voice – something you see but is hard to describe. An energy, a forcefulness and drive is always very appealing. Someone who one way or another makes you want to turn the page.
Homes: Having an idea that is not just self-referential or internal, but an idea that is about the larger exploration of their relationship to culture, society and the human condition. I don’t need it to be perfect or even good, I need it to have these other qualities because you can’t teach somebody the drive or the energy or the voice to write something different.
Nicole Krauss: Ironically,early on there’s this odd stubbornness in really good writers – they are who they are. As a mentor, you want to give it space and support that. You can sense a person’s originality because they have no choice – they are who they are.
10 USA: Did you have mentors when you started writing?
Homes: I’ve been very lucky and had incredible mentors. Having a mentor is having a vote of confidence – it’s not someone from your family or a friend, it’s somebody who sees something in you that you might not even see in yourself – in that way it’s powerful.
Krauss: I didn’t have that many, as I didn’t know where to find them. But I had some people saying against all odds, you have that something. Some recognition allows for this possibility of continuing.
Ganesthananthan: I’ve been very lucky to have many different mentors, many of them women. Because every path to becoming a writer is a little bit different, and I think that’s often invisible when we are earlier in our careers, to have that made clear in the varieties of ways the mentors pursue their ideas set a really helpful example for me.
Homes: I also think of this idea of invisible mentors, those who have come before us whose work made it possible for us to do what we do. The people we read, the people we admire.
10 USA: How do you feel the industry has changed since you started your career?
Krauss: When I wrote my first novel, women’s literature was often still referred to as “chick-lit”, at major series publications. It felt like I had to work very hard to be taken seriously as a woman. Women writers did not get the same review coverage, they were not attended to the same seriousness as men. The question of how to be taken seriously was large scale on my mind in those years.
Ganesthananthan: I think American readers are more engaged with the rest of the world than they were when my first novel came out. They are interested in becoming better readers in things that they don’t know. Writers now are also dealing with shifts in technology, questions about ways we create and what is authentic. I for one am grateful for the wide variety of human voices I read on the page and I hope that continues to happen. I am glad that this program is pushing that.
Homes: It used to be that publishing on the internet was not considered a legitimate publication, that is no longer true. Part of that shift has also meant more opportunity for all kinds of writers.
10 USA: What are you looking forward to in this experience of mentoring?
Homes: Spending time with the other mentors! [Laughs].
Ganesthananthan: Reading with other people is always a lot of fun and you always learn so much while doing it.
Krauss: Writing is incredibly solitary work, there’s no way around that. Having some sense of community and fellowship, whether it’s across generations, with people who have been working for a while or people who are starting out, is really important and healthy. At the end of the day it’s why we’re writing to begin with: We have this strong desire to connect, even though we’re alone in our rooms most of the time.
Homes: “We’re trying to write our way out of the room!”
