To expand and renew our capacity to serve emerging writers, Next Echo Foundation has initiated the Next Echo Foundation Mentor/Mentee Program. The purpose of this program is to provide a publication platform for excellent, diverse, emerging writers and poets on Cultural Daily and excellent, diverse, emerging journalists and reporters on DCReport. This program formalizes and extends Next Echo Foundation’s long history of providing a publication platform for new voices and new perspectives, often from communities not well-served by more mainstream publications. Through intentional mentor-mentee relationship-building, in which people with more experience coach and provide a public platform for emerging creatives and journalists, Next Echo seeks to support work that shapes our culture moving forward, and work that reflects society, so we may understand ourselves more clearly and design powerful, positive narratives for our collective futures.

If you are published and experienced, and at a place in your career where you would be interested in becoming a Next Echo Mentor for investigative reporters, journalists, or creative writers or poets, please contact us at connect@nextecho.org

On Cultural Weekly, we will begin with what has become our favorite genre: poetry.

The first two mentors will be Minnesota based poet Micah Ruelle, and our very own Chiwan Choi.