Last year I was lucky enough to be selected to participate in the Diaspora Dialogues mentorship program, which teams emerging writers with established ones to improve their work. Basically, you get the same kind of attention and quality feedback you'd expect from a creative writing class, except it's more individualized, and it's free!

Working with this collective that aims "to create a literature of this city that is as culturally diverse as the city itself" has both helped my writing and opened my eyes to the amazing writing community we have in Toronto. If you're an aspiring author of short fiction, drama, or poetry, I can think of few groups as exciting as this one, and they've just issued a call for submissions for their 2007 program.

The finer details of the submission guidelines are available on the group's website, but there are a few important things to bear in mind before you send in your writing:

* The greater Toronto region must exist in the story, poem or play in some way. This can mean using the city as a physical setting. It can mean exploring what the city means to you in a psychological or metaphorical way. It can mean writing about a person, issue or geographic location that is Toronto-specific. The definition is broad, but Toronto must be somehow present in the work.

* Writers/poets must not have been previously published in a full-length manuscript of their own (although appearance in magazines and/or anthologies are acceptable). Playwrights must have not had a full-length play (greater than 75 minutes) professionally produced.

* Those submitting must live in the greater Toronto region.

Since there are no electronic submissions, you'll have to mail it or deliver it in person to:

Diaspora Dialogues Charitable Organization
170 Bloor Street West, Suite 804
Toronto, ON M5S 1T9

The deadline is May 11, so there's still a month left to tweak that bit of writing you've been saving up for the right moment. Having gone through the program I can definitely say it's worth the effort. Good luck!

Image by moonw|re from the blogTO Flickr pool.