Winners have been announced for the NZSA Youth Mentorship Programme 2015. Three talented secondary school students will spend the next few months honing their skills and developing their craft under the mentorship of three of New Zealand’s finest professional authors.

The 2015 recipients are Madeline Dew from Opotiki College, Amelia Kendall from St Cuthbert's College in Auckland and Taylor Whitehead from Lawrence Area School in Otago. Amelia will be using her mentorship to work on a group of poems forming a mihi, while Madeline and Taylor will both be developing novels they have been working on. NZSA’s Youth Mentorship Programme is offered to three students (15-18yrs) every year nationally and the mentorships are hotly contested.

Selection panel convenor, author Melinda Szymanik, commented that “the selection panel were really pleased to see so many students applying for these mentorships. We all felt that we would like to have been able to support more than just the three successful students’.

Mentors this year are James George, Tina Shaw and James Norcliffe.

The intent of the Youth Mentorship Programme is to foster and develop emerging writing talent with the support of established authors. The Youth Mentorship programme is part of NZSA's successful mentoring programme for writers and is supported by Creative New Zealand.