The Program
VMI is a global and local literary mentoring service based in Vancouver, Canada. We work with writers in all genres and writers with all levels of experience — writers who are published authors, writers who have had training in creative writing programs, and writers who have been working mostly on their own. You may have a complete draft, partial draft of a manuscript, or a body of work that may be the basis of a manuscript. Your manuscript might be a collection of personal essays or short stories, a cycle or group of poems, or chapters from a fiction or nonfiction manuscript.
All VMI mentoring options are structured to ensure a personal and highly supportive one-to-one mentorship that will help you further develop your manuscript. We match each of our participants with a talented (often award-winning) professional author who has substantive editing skills in their genre. We keep participant numbers intentionally small. Typically a mentor works with just one to two writers at a time. This ensures that you have productive, focused time dedicated to your manuscript.
The Results
By the end of the six-month VMI program, few VMI writers’ manuscripts will be ready to submit immediately to a publisher. The arduous process of creating the new writing needed, and revising your previous writing, takes longer than we imagine it will — whether it is your first or fourteenth book! By the end of VMI, you will know what steps are yet to be taken to create a publishable manuscript.
At the completion of the six-month program in June, we hold a celebratory public reading for VMI writers on Zoom.
The results speak for themselves: VMI graduates have secured book deals with publishers throughout Canada and a number of VMI writers’ books have been nominated for, or won literary awards.
If you are looking for a caring and thorough read of your work with a view to bringing out your best, the VMI one-on-one mentor program gives you this. My mentor saw things I didn’t and other things in ways I hadn’t. My manuscript and I are both grateful!
—Heidi Castle
Betsy Warland is knowledgeable, flexible, encouraging, and personable: all the traits I was hoping for in a mentor. She helped me identify the habits in my writing that were weighing it down and getting in my way. Addressing these tendencies made my manuscript sing and I am now aware of them when I am drafting new work. I have a solid draft manuscript and I’m a better writer after participating in VMI.
—Petra Chambers, 2024 Yosef Wosk VMI Fellow.
My experience at VMI was invaluable. My mentor, Mark Winston, helped me to bring my rambling first draft into focus. He encouraged me to expand and deepen my themes and develop my voice with pointed exercises. Throughout the mentorship I appreciated Mark’s careful reading and astute suggestions. With his help, I feel I was able to make the changes necessary to tighten and strengthen my draft.
As well, Elee and Rachel are unfailingly encouraging. The monthly drop-ins with the cohort provided supportive forums to share our progress and our writing woes. I would strongly recommend VMI to a writer with a developing manuscript and a desire to improve their craft.—Pam North
VMI offers a safe and supportive container through which writers can be reflected honestly, included in community, challenged and held to stay committed through the many hills and valleys of bringing a manuscript into being.
—Penny Allport
Endlessly grateful to Betsy for divining what was missing from my work, for steering my narrative in directions that I hadn’t realized I needed to explore, for reshaping my work into something alive.
—Catherine Lewis
VMI has been a fabulous experience, helping me create lasting relationships with professional writers I very much admire. The skills I learned in our one-on-one sessions would be very hard to find in a regular classroom. VMI will certainly be the cornerstone of my professional development plans for the future!
—Japhy Ryder
My VMI mentor Mark Winston’s non-judgmental feedback of my memoir gave me the confidence to make strong choices in all aspects of my editing process to reach manuscript completion.
—Joanne Betzler
Betsy Warland identified themes, strengths, & weaknesses in my manuscript that had evaded me. This program helped me realize a new architecture for the entire project, as well as specific improvement to individual pieces. Suggestions were explained, & I learned specific techniques that I can apply to my work moving forward, so my confidence in my ability to revise has increased. Thank you Vancouver Manuscript Intensive!
—KJ Munro