I’d thought of Bonnie because she was the first woman I’d ever known who ran her own business and worked hard doing what she loved. The truth was, I felt the same way about not having a mentor as I did about not having friends from high school: that it revealed a deficiency at my core somehow related to my disinclination to join clubs and teams. I hadn’t spoken to Bonnie (or almost anyone else I could have written on that name tag) in years. The woman told me that her mentor was the woman who first hired her at another magazine, but, she added kindly, “it could have been Lisa,” her high school basketball coach. “Oh! She was my coach in high school,” I explained, just stopping myself from adding that maybe I didn’t understand the assignment. I looked down at my name tag, having already forgotten what I’d written. “Who’s Bonnie?” a woman, who I later learned worked for a glossy women’s magazine, asked me. At the bar, I ordered an “I Get to Decide” cocktail and surveyed the room, hoping to spot someone I knew. On other women’s lapels I spotted the names of publishing executives and famous writers. I hastily scribbled something in Sharpie before heading into the private room already packed with writers and media professionals. The arriving guests began to bottleneck behind me as I stood, second guessing. Taylor and Gertrude Chandler Warner probably did more to make me a writer, during those important elementary school years, than Flannery O’Connor did in college, when I was already committed. Carson McCullers had inspired me, but so had many others. “It can be anyone.” I ran through some of my favorite writers in my head. “Or a woman who has inspired you,” said the woman behind the table, perhaps sensing I was drawing a blank. At the door, the guests, mostly women, were asked to write their name as well as the name of their female mentor on their name tags. I n October of last year, I attended a press event for Meg Wolitzer’s new novel The Female Persuasion. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.

The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer