Vittles Mentorship
A new restaurant writing initiative from Vittles
Good morning and welcome back to Vittles Restaurants, this time on a Wednesday rather than a Friday.
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Introducing the Vittles Restaurants mentorship programme
Since it started more than four years ago, Vittles has run almost entirely on reader subscriptions. This has ensured that we have been able to publish the newsletter regularly, pay fair rates for writing and forward-plan. Recently, we received an unexpected donation from one of our favourite recipe writers, Anna Jones, which got us thinking about what we could do outside the constraints of our usual publishing schedule. After a full year of running Six of One, we are proud to have published so many first-time writers from different backgrounds who have written about restaurants that are unaccustomed to media coverage. But food writing – and restaurant writing in particular – remains largely white and middle-class, despite the high proportion of people of colour and working-class cooks, chefs and waiters who work in the restaurant sector. There is still a glaring disparity between those who get to write about restaurants and the people they write about.
Vittles has always tried to do something towards remedying this by publishing writers to write about food from their own communities and de-centring European palates as the principal makers of taste. But we want to do more. We think that writers from under-served and under-represented backgrounds need tangible routes into the industry and sustained support over a period of time. That is why we are going to use this donation to fund a free six-month mentorship for two new restaurant writers from global majority and/or working-class backgrounds. This mentorship is open to all unpublished and early-career restaurant writers: it will aim to help develop their practice, publish their work and give them the chance to write both short- and long-form pieces about topics they feel aren’t currently being adequately covered in food media.
To apply, please email us at vittlesrestaurants@gmail.com introducing yourself, telling us what you would like to write about and why you want to write about it. Most importantly, please do actually apply – so often, new writers are put off from pitching due to an opaqueness about the process and the feeling that writing experience and bylines are needed. We are not looking for that – we just want a unique voice and point of view. Even if you are unsuccessful, the least we will offer is some advice and possibly a commission. We will aim to get back to everyone within a month and will announce the two writers in July.
What the six-month Vittles mentorship will look like:
A kick-off meal to discuss goals with Vittles editors Jonathan Nunn and Adam Coghlan at a restaurant of your choice – somewhere in the spirit of the Six of One column.
An hour-long Q&A with the full Vittles team of editors to discuss different forms of writing generally and food writing specifically.
Bi-monthly meetings with Vittles editors to develop a writing practice.
One-on-one workshopping a paid Six of One entry for Vittles Restaurants’s Friday column, with the overall goal being to write one Six of One entry per month – and hopefully become a regular contributor to the column and the publication more widely.
Structured edit sessions, which are organised to work towards a longer-form piece of restaurant writing for Vittles.
This first Vittles mentorship is for London-based candidates only.
The deadline for applications is 19 July 2024.
Vittles Restaurants is a publication from Vittles dedicated to restaurant guides, reviews, and recommendations, edited by Adam Coghlan and Jonathan Nunn, photographed by Michaël Protin and sub-edited by Liz Tray.
Many thanks to Anna Jones for the donation that made this mentorship programme possible.
This is amazing! Hoping one day this will be available for international writers.
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