Nurturing undiscovered talent
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Nurturing undiscovered talent *
Black Girl Writers is a mentorship programme offering free 1:1 sessions for unagented writers who identify as Black women and/or nonbinary.
Black Girl Writers was founded in 2020 by an (at the time) unpublished and unagented author who wanted to level the playing field for Black writers struggling to break into the industry.
Six years later, we have helped writers to receive agent representation and secure traditional publishing deals, and have hosted novel writing masterclasses with Big Five publishers.
About
Our mentors are a mixture of published authors, literary agents, and editorial staff at various traditional publishing houses. To receive a mentorship, please carefully read through our mentor list to select the best mentor for your chosen project and complete our mentor matching form.
You do not have to have a completed manuscript to mentor with us and we are happy to help writers at all stages.
Our 1:1 sessions typically last for 1 hour but can go for longer depending on mentor capacity.
Due to limited resources, we will close our mentorship form once all mentors have been matched with a mentee, and will reopen when slots are available. We typically have a break at the end of autumn and reopen for Spring, after March’s London Book Fair.
If you are unable to get matched the first time, please check out our events area for the details of our upcoming group sessions, which are free and hosted online.
Meet the Founder
Jackson P Brown is the author of The Reaper (Del Rey UK), an urban fantasy set in London and first book in the Gethsemane series. When not writing, she's usually reading, drinking matcha, or ranting about anime and manga online.
She founded Black Girl Writers in 2020 after a workshop with a literary agent left her disillusioned and she wanted to create a way to help other Black writers break into traditional publishing.
BGW x Hachette: Pitch Workshop!
The publishers of Ali Hazelwood, VL Bovalino, and Rachel Gillig will be hosting a workshop on how to pitch your novel. They will also be providing personalised feedback to workshop participants.
Due to the team’s commitment to provide meaningful feedback and support, spaces will be limited to 10. Once we reach that number, this form will close.
If you don’t get a chance to attend this workshop then please don’t worry! We have two more events with publishers later this year.
22nd September 2026 @ 18:30 GMT/BST
