MENTORSHIP RECIPIENT

Mentorship Recipient
Collage

Recipient Reflection: 
Zenas Ubere

On "Collage" by Zenas Ubere

by Nardine Taleb

Working with Zenas has been so enjoyable and insightful. With every revision, the work gets even stronger and illuminates the power of Zenas' story. I was first drawn to this story by the way that the COVID experience and Zenas' experiences of violence are paralleled. He comes out of these experiences with incredible, small insights--the kinds of insights that made me reflect and pause while reading because of their energy.

Zenas and I made rounds of revisions to tighten up the wording and ensure that his powerful experiences shine brighter. He has great control over his voice and writing and as a mentor, I didn't want to tweak that. He did an incredible job making corrections and still maintaining his voice. I am very excited for his story, "Collage," to be shared, as it is a reflection of the minds of a young generation around the world coping with a shared experience (COVID) and their own, unique experiences in life.
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Nardine Taleb

Nardine Taleb is an Egyptian-American writer and speech therapist. She has performed her prose and poetry at Philadelphia’s Writers’ Conference, has received multiple writerships, has work forthcoming in Emerge Literary Journal, and is a current Brooklyn Poets fellow. Her passion is mentoring others in writing and helping them share their work with the world. She is a Cleveland native and doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon: the people and the coffee are too great.
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