7 Steps to Submitting

Our 7th Annual Submission Blitz is coming Saturday, September 12th. This online event is our annual drive to submit to tier one journals as an action for gender parity in publishing.

In the summer of 2011 a group of women met together in a kitchen to share food, literary journals, and submission goals to encourage each other to submit work for publication. The idea for this first submission party came from WWS cofounder, Alyss Dixson as a response to the Vida Count. We began the Submission Blitz in the summer of 2014 to honor our beginnings and continue to push for gender parity in top tier publishing.

We’ve come to understand that submitting to tier one journals is no easy ask, so to help, check out the 7 Steps to Submitting below. And consider joining us on September 12th. It’s as easy as marking yourself going to the event, submitting to a journal, notifying us know on FB, Twitter, or IG, and letting us shower you in claps and cheers.

7 Steps to Submitting:

by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

1. Select a Manuscript – When selecting a piece (for poetry this may be 5-7 poems) to submit, be sure sure to choose a story, essay, or poems you absolutely love or need to see in the world. These are top tier magazines, so if you don’t love the work and need to see it published, why would you expect the editors to?

2. Research & Pick a Journal – Begin by looking through this list of tier one journals with links to guidelines curated by Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera. Some things to look into: Who’s on the editorial team? Who’s been published? What’s their mission statement? Do you like what’s been published? Does your work fit within their guidelines?

3. Read & Follow the Guidelines – the fastest way to get your work rejected is to not follow guidelines. Don’t make it easy for an editor to say no to you. 

4. Prepare your Manuscript – be sure to adjust your manuscript according to the guidelines, give it to a friend read through for any last minute notes, and read through it out loud before sending to catch any typos. 

5. Write a cover letter – be sure to personalize a cover letter with the name of the editor and a sentence about why you’ve chosen to send your work to them. Though it’s up for debate if cover letters are even read, this is a good practice for keeping open communications with editors you hope to create a working relationship with. See more about cover letters here.

6. Submit – once you’re ready, HIT SEND! And then be sure to let us know on our social media accounts so we can clap and cheer for you!

7. Record your Submission – a submission tracker is a spreadsheet and a great tool for keeping your submissions in order. What you put on the tracker is up to you, but the name of journal, name of submission, and date it was submitted is a good place to start. This is helpful for checking back on submissions that have been out for three, six, or more months, as well as keeping up communications when practicing simultaneous submissions (see the link in point 5 for more information on this). 

This is image represents the first six months of my personal 2019 submission tracker.

Women Who Submit at AWP Portland

a crowd of people at the AWP conference bookfair

AWP is next week, and Women Who Submit will be representing in full force! Our headquarters leaders, chapter leads, and members from around the country will be showing up in Portland for this annual conference. We are reading our poetry. We are signing our books. We are hosting dance parties. We are hosting a happy hour. We are launching our books and speaking out against the current President. We are on panels that talk about starting a literary series, submitting our work for publication, being an adopted person of color, mothering, mental illness, epistolary writing, and forbidden narratives. Just try to go one day at AWP without attending a WWS panel, reading, or reception. It’s impossible. We’re everywhere!

And if it’s your first time at AWP and you want some tips, check out our blog post from three years ago, How To Do AWP.

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Reportback from the 5th Annual Submission Blitz

On Saturday, September 15th, WWS held our 5th Annual Submission Blitz!

The Blitz is a nationwide virtual celebration of Women Who Submit’s work. It’s a day when we invite women and non-binary writers to submit to at least one Tier 1 journal. The idea is to have a coordinated effort on one day in which the slush piles of Tier 1 journals get flooded with submission by underrepresented writers. Anyone can join from anywhere!

We also host a local Blitz meetup in Los Angeles, because what would Women Who Submit be without a party? Our first WWS Submission Blitz was in September 2014 at Hermosillo Bar in Highland Park. This year, we gathered at The Faculty Bar in East Hollywood at 12:30, with plenty of food and drinks to fuel our furious fingers as we typed away! (There was even a beer on tap called Submission.)Screen Shot 2018-09-18 at 9.35.30 PM

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2017 in Review for Women Who Submit

With only three days left in 2017, it’s time to look back over the past year and take stock of how far we’ve come. It’s been a banner year for Women Who Submit, and we are excited about the year ahead. If 2017 is any indicator, 2018 is going to be a productive, shimmering year.

This year, Women Who Submit added chapters in three cities. Welcome, Westside Los Angeles, San Antonio and Women & Non-Binary Writers Who Submit- Houston!

We also were awarded our first grant! WWS will use funding from the Center for Cultural Innovation for accessible public programming and submission parties during 2018 to conclude with the publication of a WWS anthology celebrating a year of submissions and acceptances to be released in early 2019 in partnership with Jamii Publishing, an Inland Empire indie press focused on fostering community and celebrating women writers of color.

Many WWS members and organizers participated in Writ Large Press’s 90×90, a groundbreaking cultural and literary festival of 90 events in 90 days, aiming to “celebrate, investigate and activate” with readings, music, performances, and conversations. WWS hosted our August Submission Party and Orientation at Cielo Galleries as part of 90×90, and presented our Submission Strategies workshop.

For the third year in a row, WWS participated in Lit Crawl.  Following up on our previous year’s Lit Crawl events of Hitting Send and The Rejection Game, we presented Accepted, which celebrated the work that WWS members had submitted during submission parties and for which they got publication acceptance.

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo wrote Ten Kind Suggestions for Being a Literary Citizen, which Entropy chose as one of their favorite nonfiction pieces of 2017.

Ramona Pilar wrote The Power of No, reminding all of us writers to listen to our inner voices and draw the boundaries that protect our work and our hearts.

Just like in previous years, WWS was out in full force at AWP in Washington, D.C. Our members presented on 12 panels, 11 readings, and 4 book signings!

Many of our members and organizers attended the Latino Arts Network first Gathering of Latina Writers at Plaza de la Raza.

We were also active on panels and readings at the L.A. Times Festival of Books in April.

We hosted our annual Submission Blitz both online and locally in Los Angeles.

Individually, we each had a memorable year. Here, some of our members and organizers share what they are proud of from 2017:

Tisha Reichle: I FINALLY submitted my novel to the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. And I started a PhD program. Two dreams in progress!

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo: I think I’m most proud of being able to travel with my book and present at universities and talk to young poets and writers, especially writers of color, and encourage them to celebrate where they come from, their homes, their languages, their families. That’s been HUGE.

Second to that, I’m proud of being selected as the first Poet in the Parks by Poetry Foundation and National Parks Arts Foundation, hanging in Gettysburg and starting a new poetry project on what makes an American hero.

Mahin Ibrahim: I would say getting published after my 40+ rejections, thx to the women I met through WWS! I joined WWS this year.

Anita Gill: For me it’s two things: being nominated for an AWP Intro Award through my MFA program and getting into a writing residency at Vermont Studio Center come next year.

Lisa Cheby: Publication of a 2nd poem in Tabula Poetica: Poetry at Chapman University and of my essay about the Women’s March in Entropy, and a poem in Lady Liberty Lit!

Noriko Nakada: Being short-listed for the 2040 prize with Through Eyes Like Mine was a big one for me. Oh, and the milestone of 100 passes! Woo hoo!

Lisbeth Coiman: I’m very proud of my self-published debut memoir, I Asked the Blue Heron. It took all I had financially and emotionally to put out, but I did. After so many years, I finally let my story go into the world.

Carla Sameth: Very proud of getting a story out in the magazine, Brain, Teen and two others in anthologies, getting two poetry scholarship/fellowships and just pushing ahead in my writing, in spite of rejections and life’s challenges.

Danielle Moody: In the past year (thanks in large part to WWS submission meetings) I’ve submitted more work than in the previous 15 years of my writing life.

Melissa Chadburn: This is so great, seems like every year in review I could only see what I have not yet accomplished but this year I have some things to be proud of. I got my first big contract with a print magazine doing an investigative piece on a topic that is very close to my heart and mind, it’s the type of journalism I’ve always wanted to pursue and with a few false starts I finally got both a grant and a magazine to agree to publish.

Also, I spent a lot of time digging through LMU’s archives while researching for an article. One day I called my Beloved and said, “this campus is beautiful and one day I’m going to teach here.” Sure enough just before this year ended I got a contract to teach two classes at LMU.

Elline Lipkin: I’d say a handful of poems published, but most proud of making it up through the slush pile and into Calyx this year — a journal I’ve always admired. Plus, did a one-month poetry Daily Grind and submitted my manuscript to two contests this fall. I know it’s not ready, but committing to send it out got me closer to getting it into shape at long last. And getting/doing the CA Writing Residency through Yefe Nof!

LiYun Alvarado: I planned and executed a book party for my chapbook collection “Words or Water” – which felt huge for this first time mom whose little one was born 10 days after the book arrived and who was almost 9 months old for the book party

Kate Maruyama: I’m proud I got through the roughest year of my life, but still managed to finish a rewrite on a novel which is now out to editors. I’m also proud I was able to help Writ Large Press’s 90x90LA in small ways with a number of events, (and grateful as it kept me moving forward and because it was a beautiful thing to witness.)

Arielle Silver: What I’m most proud of is keeping my nose to the grindstone since 2014, and then giving myself complete permission to rest all sense of ambition and drive when, around Halloween, the grindstone let up. I haven’t run from the exhaustion. I haven’t chastised myself. I’ve missed emails. I may have disappointed some. I have flipped aimlessly through books, sat and watched movies with the kids, and gotten enough sleep every night. Right now, that is what I am most proud of.

JE Lee: 1) submitted my first manuscript of poems “Not My White Savior” (pub. date March 2018); 2) accepted to Las Dos Brujas Writer’s Workshops which i learned about through Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo (thank you SO much!!!!!); 3) hosted a poetry reading of adopted POC during #90X90LA which has launched into a writing workshop

Deborah Edler Brown: This has been a hard year with a lot of losses. But one of the things I am proud of is finally joining WWS. Even though I’ve only come to two meetings, they reminded me that I am so much more than someone’s teacher and put the words “writing career” back into my vocabulary in a way they have not been since I left journalism. I am also proud of the quiet way my pieces are calling to one another, asking to be books. Thank you all for holding this space and writing new horizons. I hope to have more to share next year.

Barbara Berg: Proud to have two poems in Gayle Brandeis‘s lady/liberty/lit and to have finally met her! Also glad to be part of WWS LA and WWS West LA and two other writing groups that keep me writing and submitting.

Désirée Zamorano: Proud of being invited this year to so many venues, including the Pomegranate reading series [hosted by WWS organizer Lauren Eggert-Crowe]. Also happy about an essay in Catapult, a short story in Taste, and a short story out in a collection that’s gotten national attention. Really happy to be part of a writing group that’s inspiring and motivating.

Rachael Warecki: Getting into Ragdale, winning the Tiferet Prize for Fiction, and querying my novel — all submitted while at WWS parties!

Lauren Eggert-Crowe: I published two essays that had been in my head for years. I hosted a release party for my fourth chapbook, Bitches of the Drought, and I was proud to feature WWS members and friends Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Ramona Pilar, Kate Durbin and Siel Ju alongside me. The chapbook sales raised $450 for Planned Parenthood, SisterSong, and the Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights. I also applied to Hedgebrook!

Ramona Pilar: Proud of? Not giving up. Continually finding ways to find a new way. Getting closer to a sense of voice.

Jamie Moore: I’m most proud of taking the risks of getting my work out there, even when the larger project is still in progress. I’m proud of taking advice, and submitting to Hedgebrook and the Nervous Breakdown. I’m proud of helping support a group of women writers in Fresno! I’m proud of my friends for leading the way!

Congratulations, writers! Looking forward to rocking 2018 with all of you.

Women Who Submit about Town!

A woman stands at a microphone in front of a small audience seated in individual chairs.

If you’re in L.A., don’t miss Lit Crawl tonight in North Hollywood! Three rounds of raucous literary goodness all over the neighborhood. You’ll find many events starring Women Who Submit!

Round 1

From 7 to 7:45 you have many choices to see Women Who Submit in action, including:

The Rumpus: Heartache and Whores: How We Write Sexuality, featuring WWS organizer Ashley Perez

Roots and Wings Project: Matriarch, featuring WWS organizer Ramona Pilar

The Dimes: Death and Other Funny Stories, featuring WWS member Marnie Goodfriend

Melrose Poetry Bureau featuring WWS member Linda Ravenswood

Round 2

From 8 to 8:45, the word party continues, with:

The Santa Monica Review, featuring Women Who Submit member Sandy Yang

Red Hen Press: Fowl Language featuring WWS member Siel Ju

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Claps and Cheers: Latinxs in Media Res

by Ramona Pilar

Claps and Cheers is a column dedicated to honoring pioneers and visionary storytellers who have forged their own path in their creative careers. This month we focus on honoring one’s own reality as seen through the work of Soraya Membreno, Vickie Vértiz, and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal.

I gotta be honest. At the risk of sounding snarky, I don’t like a lot of stuff right now. I mentioned this to a friend of mine the other day and he said, “But… you don’t like most things.” And yeah, it’s true. There isn’t a lot of stuff out there that I can say that I like, much less love and feel passionate about. The older I’ve gotten, the less connected I feel to the culture in which I live because I still don’t see myself reflected in it.

I used to be inspired by the concept of “paint[ing] my own reality,” this idea that if I don’t see myself reflected in the art and culture around me, it’s my job to produce it, to fill that niche. Keeping inspired, keeping focused, keeping in touch with what I now see as an idealistic philosophy has proven to be challenging, to say the least.  There’s the reality I want to create, and the one in which I have to live and work and try to earn money and sustain myself. More often than not, I find they are at odds with each other which makes it difficult to have faith in my ability to communicate a reality that I know exists, even if I don’t see it in the world around me.

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Annoucement: WWS Selected for CCI Grant

Women Who Submit is excited to announce that our WWS Los Angeles headquarters was selected out of 106 applicants to receive one of 14 Investing in Tomorrow Organizational Grants from Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI), a nonprofit organization awarding grants to individuals, organizations, and projects throughout California for the arts.

From the CCI press release:

The 2017 Investing in Tomorrow Organizational Grants program granted $105,000 to fourteen projects taking place throughout California. Each grant of $7,500 supports catalytic individual and institutional leadership at this time of tremendous social, economic, generational, demographic, and technological change. Continue reading “Annoucement: WWS Selected for CCI Grant”

Claps & Cheers: ¡Viva la Hustle!

by Ramona Pilar

Claps and Cheers is a column dedicated to honoring pioneers and visionary storytellers who have forged their own path in their creative careers.

Leaving a solid, creative job, with fantastic health care and retirement plans to found your own creative business with no template is frightening. Not having a creative precursor on either side of one’s family, pursuing low-paying, artistic gigs with no long-term health or retirement benefits can be a hard sell both to family, friends, and especially to one’s self. I find myself in the throes of this conundrum and I know I’m not alone.

I have been fortunate enough and hashtag blessed to have found myself in the company of a community of creative hustlers who are eking out their own path in service of creating a life that serves both personal and professional needs.

I met Michelle Zamora when she was an undergrad at Cal State Los Angeles. She moved from Brownsville Texas in 2000 to study acting. We were both working on a theatre project with my roommate at the time (Selene Santiago), who was in graduate school at CSULA.

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Claps and Cheers: DIY Artista Gabriela López de Dennis

by Ramona Pilar

Claps and Cheers is a column dedicated to honoring pioneers and visionary storytellers who have forged their own path in their creative careers.

This month we focus on Gabriela López de Dennis, a writer, producer, artist, and Los Angeles native. A graduate of Otis College of Art and Design, López de Dennis has orchestrated a life that balances her creative career, artistic pursuits, family, and faith.

Headshot of Creative Gabriela Lopez with the 110 Freeway and Downtown Los Angeles in the background
Photo by: Keila López

López de Dennis has recently adapted her 2008 stage play Hoop Girls into a web series through Lone Stars Entertainment, a production studio of which she is Co-Founder, CEO, and Co-Creative Director. Below is an interview I conducted with her regarding Hoop Girls and other projects in which she is currently involved. 

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Claps and Cheers: The Power of No

by Ramona Pilar, Editor Claps & Cheers

This past January, writer and cultural critic Roxane Gay made the decision to pull her upcoming book How to be Heard from publishing with TED Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

Headshot of writer Roxane Gay in front of a black background
Noted author and “bad feminist,” Roxane Gay

The reason: not wanting to be published by the same publisher that would give Milo Yiannopolous, noted far-right writer and cultural instigator, a platform.

From a statement she gave to BuzzFeed News:

“I was supposed to turn the book in this month and I kept thinking about how egregious it is to give someone like Milo a platform for his blunt, inelegant hate and provocation. I just couldn’t bring myself to turn the book in. My editor emailed me last week and I kept staring at that email in my inbox and finally over the weekend I asked my agent to pull the book… I can’t in good conscience let them publish it while they also publish Milo.”

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