NATALIE MOJICA

YEARS AS MENTEE: 2

GRADE: Junior

HIGH SCHOOL: Central Park East High School

BORN: New York, NY

LIVES: Bronx, NY

PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Scholastic Art & Writing Awards: Gold Key

MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: I think the first time I met Gabriella outside of the Girls Write Now office was the most important. I was terrified that she would be someone I would never be able to talk to or want to share my writing with. However, from the first moment we started speaking I quickly realized the opposite would be true. She is someone who cultivates my creativity and inspires me to work on writing more. She doesn’t dismiss my opinions or input, and supports me in more ways than one. I owe much of the writing projects I’m working on to her.

GABRIELLA DOOB

YEARS AS MENTOR: 2

OCCUPATION: Editor, Ecco/HarperCollins

BORN: New Haven, CT

LIVES: New York, NY

MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Natalie has led me to think differently about my writing by being willing to try new things herself. She is constantly pushing herself to broaden the scope of her work, and I’m inspired by her example. She reads widely and finds her material in so many different places. I feel pretty confident we could sit down and write about almost anything together . . . and that’s often what we do.