The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during June of 2025.Three of our committed members heard about an opportunity through WWS programming and/or another member.
Iโve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety. Thank you and happy submitting!
Congratulations to Michelle Y Smith who had poems “Click & Strike,” “The April of My Life,” and “The Act of Selfies” published in Four Feathers Press Online Edition: Stone Worlds, as well as the poems “He’s Not My President,” “Time Magazine April 30,” and “World Flux” published in Poetry for the People. Except for the latter is available below:
Let’s give a shoutout to Anais Godard whose fiction piece “The Clay of It” appeared in fractured lit.
When he walked into her studio, Elodie was sculpting her seventh ceramic penis of the week. This one had antlers.
She didnโt look up. โCustom or classic?โ
The man hesitated. He was tall, with nervous shoulders and a brown paper envelope clutched like it contained his last will and testament. โCustom,โ he said.
She glanced at him, a quick, assessing look. No sleazy grin, no too-wide eyes pretending not to scan her overalls. His posture said apology. Sheโd learned to read them, over the years: the oglers, the moaners, the โaccidentalโ touchers. Men who claimed it was about art but watched her work like they were waiting for a lap dance. This one wasnโt like that. This one was here for something else. Something he almost didnโt want to ask for.
Congratulations to Romaine Washington whose poem “Cannibals and Treatises” was featured in The Coachella Review.
how we can slice a human mind in two while the skull is intact. lying in the most conspicuous places,
white crime usually dresses in business suits and we mistake them for flesh and blood men. as though words create new realities,
Zelenskyy, I have my popcorn ready to hear you wax eloquent.
i witness you running with adrenaline chiseling a new rib in your chest. you think you see a porch light on, hear a tv commercial cooing
Kudos to Mahru Elahi who published a hybrid piece entitled “The Fuel of Nations: a Cold War Girlhood in Iranian America” in Issue 10.1 of Foglifter.They also had a creative nonfiction piece entitled “American Breakfast | ุตุจุญุง” featured in Lambda Literary’s 2024 EmergeAnthology.
Shoutout to Heather Pegas whose poem “And Then It Died” appeared in Heavy Feather Review and her fiction piece “A Study of Sophie-Claude Clement (1841-1914)” was published in the Thieving Magpie’s thirtieth issue. Excerpt of the latter is available below:
โBut why would I wash only my legs?โ I asked the artist. โAm I a shepherdess, a barefoot shepherdess? So that my feet got dirty, and I splashed mud up and down my calves, with some dung as well? And as we live in Paris, how am I meant to have come across this sheep dung, and am I to bathe my legs in a street puddle, or in the Seine? I mean to say is this not a ridiculous pose to be striking? To be concentrating so intently on cleaning my legs and only my legs?โ
Most of us never learned about los desaparecidos from Central America in school, how throughout the 1980s in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador, American supported militaries disappeared priests, nuns, whole villages who opposed them. Now, four decades later, as vibrant jacarandas bloom purple across the Southland, our cities have become vulnerable to these same United States Federal forces.
As communities resiliently recover from this winterโs devastating fires, as students wrap up the accomplishments of another school year and walk across stages, our friends, neighbors, and family are being pulled from our streets and classrooms, from car washes and fields. As the ongoing genocide in Gaza continues to unfold, our screens have become overwhelmed with images of violence in our streets, schools, and workplaces.
Women Who Submit stands in unwavering support of our vulnerable Latinx communities and all those being racially profiled by these illegal deportation actions. We stand shoulder to shoulder with these Black and Brown communities and all those being treated inhumanely. We call for the immediate release of those callously disappeared from our neighborhoods and families. Women Who Submit opposes the existence of ICE and the presence of the National Guard and military troops in our city. The presence of these forces legitimizes the illegal and cruel efforts of ICE and escalates violence against those engaged in civil disobedience and other forms of protest.
It is Trump, ICE, Border Patrol and the US military bringing violence and chaos to the people of Los Angeles and of the Americas.
We urge our community to take action. We acknowledge the unique and varied ways people are able to push back and urge you to connect to local efforts in your area. If you have the wherewithal to push back financially, here are some funds and resources to pass along.
Vecinos Unidos Whittier: Whittier advocates for how to support our immigrant communities
Centro CSO: Grassroots organization based in Boyle Heights
JailSupportLA raises funds to support jailed protestors (Venmo: JailSupportLA)
There are growing opportunities for direct action as well. As we head into this summer, we urge you to lean into the community and resist fascism as it rears its head in all of our communities.
Finally, for those in our community personally affected by these raids and acts of terror, know that Women Who Submit supports you, your families, and your loved ones. We see your struggle, and we fight with you.ย
The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during May of 2025. Eight of our committed members heard about an opportunity through WWS programming and/or another member.
Iโve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety. We have so many wonderful members featured in this month’s publication roundup, so please take a moment to extend gratitude to one another! Thank you and happy submitting!
Los Angeles felt more like home than my suburban Maryland hometown. Every corner of the city on the edge of the Pacific was interconnectedโdots on a map linking people and places that brought joy and grace into my life. There was the drab, crowded newsroom where I filed my first stories as a newly minted city hall reporter, anxious about whether I had gotten the facts right. There was the noisy restaurant where my future husband Tom and I had our first date and were thrilled we both looked like the photos in our dating profiles. It also had sites where my heart was brokenโthe workplace with the angry boss, and the second-floor apartment where my lovely neighbor and I swapped cat-care duties when we traveled, at least until my lush, long-haired Calico passed away.
Kudos to Mona Alvarado Frazier whose two poems “Sunrise” and “Good Girls Donโt Wear Red Panties” was featured in Santa Barbara Independent Magazine. Excerpt of the latter is available below:
Voices ebb and flow Hello? Mom? Nurse?
Sweat puddles into a damp swamp of twisted sheets
Harnessed by machines Fluids drip, drop, bloody crook of arm
Dear Mr. RFK Jr., (The โdearโ is tradition. Donโt mistake it for affection.)
You said autistic children are a burden. That they ruin families. That theyโll never pay taxes or write poems. That they are, in essence, collateral damage.
Iโd like to introduce you to my daughter.
She is five. She does not speak in sentences yet, but she knows how to answer a joke with a smirk. She organizes her markers by color, then chaos, then color again. She plays baseball without rules, which is probably the right way to play it. She hums when sheโs thinking. She hums a lot.
When another childโs upsetโbefore the adults notice, before the child even criesโshe takes their hand. She leans her forehead against theirs, gently, like sheโs checking for a fever only she can feel.
Shoutout to Jesenia Chavez who published creative nonfiction essay “My Favorite Mother’s Day” with Mobile Data Mag.
It was a hot day in LA, we arrived and then we got a wheelchair for my grandmother. We walked around the gardens. I remember I wore the wrong shoes because they had a small heel that kept digging into the grass. We took turns pushing my grandmotherโs wheelchair. When it was my turn, I was terrified of rolling my grandma down a hill and accidentally letting go. It was funny because the gardens are not too wheelchair friendly, but we managed. I was sweating a lot while it was my turn to push. We all took turns. My older sister Erika pushed the most because she is the toughest and complains the least.
Congratulations to Heather Pegas whose fiction piece entitled “Gem of My Eye” appeared in Issue 9 of Heimat Review.
A man lurched out at me on the street. I had been making my way down the busy sidewalk between the gym and the post office, almost late for a doctorโs appointment. In my haste and in that crowd, the man should not have stood out to me, but he did, even before he stepped into my path.
The man was skinny. He had a Roman nose, a head of black curly hair, and heโd been scanning passersby with an agitated air, as if he might jump out of his skin. He seemed young to me, perhaps thirty, not much more.
Naturally, I recoiled to find him right in front of me, but quickly recovered. In my city, in broad daylight, no one ever stopped you but for two reasonsโcash or directions. I felt unwell, my money was for my doctor, and I didnโt have time for any lost soul. But I noticed the man had pressed trousers, a good dress shirt. He probably didnโt need my money, so I put his agitation down to being lost.
I Love Lucy fantasies planted from the TV and into her mind on sick days home from school. So far back buried the seed of a husband she was to reach for with twinkles in her eyes before saying, โRicky, Darling.โ
She believed in what would grow between them and the culture theyโd carefully collect like items for a nestโ drums and poetry, dance and gratitude.
But no husband sprouted.
Shoutout to Jasmine Vallejo-Love who published six poems “Existential Crisis,” “A Gentle Push to Persevere,” “Butterfly Cinquain for a Burning LA,” “Sole Breadwinner,” “Cerulean Heart,” and “For the Puerto Rican Serviceman Who Lost Their Lives in the Aftermath of 9/11” in Cholla Needles: Soft Power Edition.
Congratulations to .CHISARAOKWU. whose poems “Sleep-Wake Cycle” and “Fancy” were featured in Anomaly. See excerpt of the former below:
In sleep, I hold catastrophe at bay; awake, the fat arm of an aunt and an uncleโs mustard breath press against my softest partsโ This wreck: persistent, recurring brain on loop, glitch in the algorithm,
Kudos to Flint whose poem “The Trouble with Double Vision” was picked up by Quartet Journal.
When I was matched in the Writer to Writer program in 2022, Iโd been trying to compile a poetry collection for a few years. “Compileโ is really the right word. The manuscript I brought to my mentor, Claire Wahmanholm, was more of a portfolio, in which I tried to faithfully represent the last twenty years of my poetic development. Intellectually, I understood that other poetry collections werenโt comprehensive or documentary. But emotionally, it was difficult for me to chart a middle path between the comprehensive and the tightly themed (books like Brittney Corriganโs Daughters or Terrance Hayesโs American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin). I knew the latter model wouldnโt work for what I had, and at almost forty, I wanted to work with what I had.
And lastly, kudos to Sakae Manning for their hybrid piece “My Grandmother’s Affair with the San Andreas Fault” being featured in Driftwood‘s 2025 Anthology.
The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during April 2025. Five our committed members heard about an opportunity through WWS programming and/or another member.
Iโve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety. Please take a moment to extend congratulations to our members who had their work published this month. Thank you and happy submitting!
Let’s begin by congratulating Amy Raasch who placed two poems โWhy I Am Not a Gravediggerโ and โAshesโ in the anthology Angel City Review: Ten Years of Poetry in L.A. Excerpt of the the former is available below:
I like to go to the diner, drink coffee, and listen to Barbara talk shit. Barbara doesnโt work the graveyard shift. I tell her, church basement flooded so we held the reception at the house. I tell her nobody will sit in my motherโs kitchen chair; the air is too thick with her unanswered questions.
Kudos to Romaine Washington who published a poem in Cholla Needles 100 produced by Cholla Needles Publishing.
Shoutout to Ronna Magy who published a poem entitled “Ode to the Female Body” with Sinister Wisdom 136: Icons.
Congratulations to Natalie Warther whose flash fiction pieces “Four Dads” and “Even the Horses” were featured in Had Journal. She also published fiction piece “Outside Husband” in Xray Literary Magazine (see excerpt of the latter below).
The survivalist stuff started as a hobby for my husband. An attempt to disconnect from the tech-dependent modern world. But quickly, our renovated backyard started looking more like a trash dump than a place to entertain the neighbors. He just kept making โtools.โ Dental floss snares. Crayon candles. Pantyhose fishing nets. Dryer lint tinder. Maple syrup mouse traps. He used every single trash bag in the house for the water collection system.
Huge shoutout to Elizabeth Galoozis whose book Law of the Letter has been published with Inlandia Institute.
Please join me in congratulating Jacqueline Lyons whose hybrid creative nonfiction piece “Dialogic: Except the Rain” appeared in Eastern Iowa Review.
Dear John, ย A new year, and time to dialogueโthe opposite of breaking upโwith the elements. Especially water. The elements speak with such singularity and purpose, ferrying blue glyphs as the crow flies, while human nerve bundles shoulder a mix of fear and longing, more list than image. All of us, most of the time, of at least two minds. Giant Sequoia, Sparrows, and Sharks too. ย Except for the taco truck near the intersection of Los Angeles Avenue and Somis Road that concentrates its powers inward and births an illuminated island,ย anย horchataย oasis, a candle in the window radiant after 9 pm. Committed, they do not offerย combinaciรณnย plates.
But my story differs from others you may have read regarding African American homeowners in Altadena, who were devastated by the Eaton Fire.
Twenty-five years ago, the arms wrapped around mine, which were wrapped around my own shivering frame, belonged to my soon-to-be husband, Phillip. โWhere are we?โ I asked. I hadnโt seen my breath hang in the air since my last camping trip to the Angeles National Forest.
I, too, have known the dark chocolate thrill of a kiss against the wall of a mausoleum. Our hunger pangs caused us
trouble โ the semiotics of leather jackets, animal prints. Night smudges the lines, sexual and otherwise. I know how lonely it is
to grow beside a lover who remains dead inside the narrative he chose. You think I donโt watch
Kudos to Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo whose poem “Motherless Mothers and the Daughters They Bear” was also featured in in Mayday Magazine.
I mother myself gentle because my motherโs hands were rough, cracked, and ruby ringed.
When her mother died, she kept all the jewelry and left me nothing. Maybe when your mother never mothers you,
it makes you a hoarder. Motherโs Day commemorative plates from the 70s to the 90s collect dust on the family piano
that never feels fingers along its keys. A behemoth stand for porcelain plates mocking images of mothering
she never saw.
Congratulations to Michelle Y. Smith who published poems “Windows of My Soul” and “Peace” with Four Feathers Press. Her poem “There is a Sunflower” was also featured in LA Art News’ April Poets Place (excerpt of the latter available below).
His brown coffee Countenance Of disk florets Is framed with maize petals Cheery and happy-go-lucky Spirit pollinates Where he goes He laughter contagious
From behind the blue C-section curtain, the medical staff whispered: โUnusual,โ โMermaid birth.โ
โAn intact amniotic sac!โ my doctor exclaimed.
A transparent bubble with a baby floating in murky water was gently placed on my chest. She was curled in the fetal position, her head covered by a mop of black hair. When I tried to hold onto her, she slipped away from me. The doctor caught her and tried to pry her out of the amniotic sac.
My baby slid out of the hands that wanted to break her out of her shell. One of the nurses grabbed her and passed her around so the team could see what an en caul birth looked like. She eventually made her way back to me.
I knew I was dreaming.
My first good nightโs sleep since the miscarriage.
I wanted to see what she looked like, but the amniotic fluid was cloudy and one of her hands covered part of her face. Everyone in the room crowded around us; she needed to be removed from the caul.
Panic and fear tried to take over. I vowed to protect my baby.
She moved her hand;we made eye contact.
My dream baby Houdinied herself out of her casing.
A warriorโs cry echoed through the operating room.
The deflated caul looked like crumpled parchment paper with the words โAre you, my mother?โ inscribed in lavender ink.
As a lucid dreamer, I was in control of my nocturnal escapade. I believe this was also my daughterโs dream. My girl and I were on equal footing. She was there to check me out, would I suffocate her or give her space to be who she needed to be? I had nothing to ask of her, only that she please, choose me.
Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley is a creative nonfiction writer, award winning filmmaker and mother of two. She is the Chapters Director of Women Who Submit and leads the Long Beach, CA chapter. Her website lucyrodriguezhanley.com
Diosa Xochiquetzalcรณatl is a multilingual and multidimensional spoken word poetiza and seasoned language arts educator with a B.A. in English and M.Ed. in Cross-Cultural Teaching who has been published online and in print on both sides of the US-Mexico border and Brazil. Diosa X is the author of six poetry collections, with more still to come. Learn more about her at www.diosax.net
Happy spring and post-AWP festivities! I greatly enjoyed building community and connecting with so many of you at AWP. It is my honor and pleasure to present this publication roundup featuring so many wonderful writers. The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during March 2025. One member heard about an opportunity through WWS programming and/or another member. Thank you and happy submitting!
Iโve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety. Please take a moment to extend congratulations to our members who had their work published this month.
Let’s begin by congratulating Danielle Lauren for her fiction piece “Mya Ditches School” being published in Funny Pearls.
โMr. Sinclair, get to class.โ
I still remember Mr. Andersonโs voice that day. High-pitched and dripping with impatience. Uptown rolled his eyes so hard I thought they might stick. I nudged Uptown and he fixed his face before turning around.
โMy bad, Mr. Anderson, we was just trying to find my math book.โ
โAnd what does your math book have to do with Ms. Monroe?โ Mr. Anderson said.
Big kudos to Donna Spruijt-Metz who published her book entitled To Phrase a Prayer for Peace with Wildhouse Publishing.
Congratulations to Sara Ellen Fowler whose poem “Good Mare” appeared in Poetry Daily.
That I was
your simple bit
a bride of pressure and prayer you ground
grinding down
The one who taps your teeth to get you to open
โto be led be led
Shoutout to Anais Godard who published a creative nonfiction piece “How to Cremate your Pet Squirrel” with The Letter Review, which won their prize for nonfiction.
Albert was no ordinary squirrel; he was more like a surrogate child to me, a hairy one who didnโt require a college fund. I had found him at a particularly dark time, right after my first miscarriage and long before the twins came along, at the foot of a giant sequoia. A tiny, shivering ball of fur that looked more like a discarded fetus than a woodland critter. It was love at first sight.ย
Apple TV+โs Spanish language seriesย Las Azulesย (Women in Blue) is set in 1971 and depicts Mexico Cityโs first female police force.1ย Itโs stunning to look at with the delightful โ70s wardrobe, the vintage-inspired color intensity, the midcentury architecture.ย Las Azulesย shares the aesthetic of crรณnica roja, a Latin American branch of contemporary literary journalism. Narratives with blood running through it. The red chronicle searches for ways to express the despair and political frustration of the time, the grittier side of documentarian work. But whereย Las Azulesย really shines is in how it moves beyond prior genres and narrative tropes in its interrogation of intergenerational cycles of violence, how it tries to provide an account of violence against women that is neither sentimental nor noir, but something more like analysis.ย
Kudos to .CHISARAOKWU. whose creative nonfiction piece “A Brief History of Painโ was featured in midnight & indigo.
My origin story begins with pain, or, at the very least, an attempt to avoid it. I was born by cesarean, the doctor believing my size too painful for my mother to push through. Since then, Iโve lived to avoid painโno diving into a lake or pool for fear Iโd hit the bottom and break both legs, quitting volleyball because the ball jammed my piano-playing fingers, staying away from action films because every punch or crash would send intense pain sensations through my body. Avoiding pain was a preoccupation; not wanting to cause pain or discomfort to anyone became a skill.
Shoutout to Jay O’Shea who published a fiction piece entitled “An Unchanged History” with 96th of October: Tales of the Extraordinary.
It doesnโt trouble me when my mother forgets my name. Sheโs 83 and has been in the nursing home for months. A battery of health problems brought her in, but cognitive decline was right up there. The doctors recently switched to calling it dementia.
Her face brightens when I arrive. Then comes a stumble: she calls me Leslie, the name of a cousin long dead. A terrified look crosses her face.
โLorna,โ I offer.
She bounces back, diving into a story Iโve heard dozens of times about a road trip we took when I was in fourth grade, about the locks on the Erie Canal and how I turned cartwheels on the dock. Thatโs not that odd. Old people live in the past. The rest of us live in the future. The present is where none of us want to be.
Big congratulations to Andy Anderegg whose fiction book entitled “Plum” was published with Hub City Writers Project.
Big shoutout to Michelle Smith whose poem “Escalate & Elevate” was published by Four Feathers Press. Her other poem “There’s a Sunflower” was also chosen as their print poetry awards nominee.
Itโs almost time! LA will play host to the iconic writerโs conference, AWP from March 26 – 29th, 2025. So many panels, readings, and off-site gatherings, itโs a lot for a group not especially known as extroverts. Iโm looking at you, fellow writers. But donโt worry, weโve got you covered.
Weโve put together a list to help you connect with other members of Women Who Submit. Itโs a way for you to support old friends and to make new friends. There are a ton of events featuring members. Check them out below. From book signings to readings to moderating, WWS will be representing at AWP.
Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of the conference.
First, we know you want to do all the things. So many sights to be seen, but remember you canโt do it all and to give yourself grace. Plan the events you want to attend and be sure to schedule some downtime in between. If you need to chill out, rooms 506 and 507 in the convention center are designated quiet spaces. Hit up room 511C if you need low lighting.
Second, stay hydrated, bring snacks, and for the love of all things holy, wear comfortable shoes. Bonus points, dress in layers because you never know what the air conditioning temps will be like. The days will be long, so pack a phone charger.
Third, have fun and be inspired! So inspired, maybe, that you will be ready to meet up on Sunday, March 30 for a WWS Submit All party (see below).
Anywho, enjoy and hope to see you at the conference!
Description: Join us for an unforgettable evening of powerful words and vibrant voices, a celebration of Los Angeles-based Latine poets who carry the legacy of resilience, identity, and cultural renaissance. This event brings together poets from the city that inspires them with resistance, justice, and action.
Poets: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Luivette Resto, Matt Sedillo, Jose Hernandez Diaz, William Archila, Angelina Sรกenz, Melinda Palacio, Vickie Vรฉrtiz, Antonieta Villamil, Luis J. Rodriguez, Hosts: Rey M. Rodrรญguez and Jorge H. Rodrรญguez
Location: Location: 1642, 1642 West Temple Street Los Angeles, CA 90026
Description: Seven literary luminaries perform their creative nonfiction work, at this benefit reading for LA fire relief. Audience donations on the night will go towards six local authors from the literary organization Women Who Submit, who lost their homes in the recent fires.
Speakers: Vanessa Angรฉlica Villarreal (Magical Realism), Annie Liontas (Sex With a Brain Injury), Shze-Hui Tjoa (The Story Game), Grace Loh Prasad (The Translatorโs Daughter), Jackson Bliss (Dream Pop Origami), and Minelle Mahtani (May It Have a Happy Ending). Hosted by Katie Lee Ellison, organizer of the Nonfiction for No Reason Series.
Location: Room 408B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: How can creative writers bring their expertise to the composition classroom? This panel will discuss how women of color/genderqueer creative writers challenge โtraditionalโ white supremacist frameworks in college-level composition courses.
Location: Booth T3358 Cรญrculo de poetas and Writers Booth, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description:Conversaciones con los difuntos / Conversations with the Dead is Diosa Xochiquetzacรณatlโs 5th poetry collection, her first fully bilingual book, and first collection to be published and artisanally handcrafted in Mexico by Editorial Desierto Mayor.
Location: Room 408A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: This multigenre, intergenerational panel focuses on a working-class literary Los Angeles that makes the glint possible, tasking us to rewrite our cityโs imaginings or get written out. Through fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and nonfiction, these writers craft a diverse, gritty, tangled city, capturing the complex interchanges of Los Angelesโs cultural and social history.
Panelists: Moderator: Vickie Vertiz Presenter: Steve Gutierrez Presenter: Joelle Mendoza Presenter: Jenise Miller Presenter: Tanzila Ahmed
Location: Room 402AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: This panel will discuss how emerging TV writers and screenwriters can establish a community of writers, producers, development executives, managers, and agents who can support and mentor them throughout their careers.
Location: Room 515A, Los Angeles Convention Center, Level Two
Description: How can writers cultivate a sustainable creative practice while paying the bills, growing a career, and accounting for domestic responsibilities? Award-winning authors with multiple books and diverse lived experiences discuss their ongoing journeys to do soโwhile also taking into consideration the roles of culture and institutionsโas well as their best advice for tending to the mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of the writing life.
Panelists: Presenter: Amanda Churchill Moderator: Lorinda Toledo Presenter: Karen Connelly Presenter: Janet Fitch Presenter: Reyna Grande
11:00 am – 12:30 pm
BOOK SIGNING: West of the Santa Ana and Other Sacred Placesby Diosa Xochiquetzalcรณatl
Location: Concourse Hall 153 ABC, Level One, Convention Center
Description: What do a queer undocumented immigrant, a former packinghouse worker, an organizer around issues of extrajudicial killings of Black people, a Korean adoptee, and a lawyer by training have in common? They are all poets laureate from various parts of California. These poets celebrate California but also challenge positions of power and privilege. The laureates will discuss their roles, read from their books, and engage in a Q&A with the audience.
Speakers: Moderator: Lee Herrick Presenter: Tongo Eisen-Martin Presenter: Yosimar Reyes Presenter: Joseph Rios Presenter: Lynne Thompson
Location: Room 408A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: This panel explores aspects of erasure, evanescence, and loss, as in the erasure of oneโs identity and subjectivity through racial and historical lenses, as in the extinction of 150 species in an average day, and how poets can โknock on silence,โ in the words of Chinese poet Lu Ji, so as to give voice to those rubbed out by ideology, history, and time, to reach across the void instead of staring into it and becoming monsters.
Panelists: Moderator: Tony Barnstone Presenter: Angie Estes Presenter: Mark Irwin Presenter: Douglas Manuel Presenter: Lynne Thompson
Location: LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, 501 N Main St, Los Angeles 90012
Description: Come celebrate the launch of our 30รฑera: Thirty Years of the Macondo Writers Workshop in Los Angeles! The night will be filled with poetry, stories, and the spirit of Macondo, accompanied by light refreshments and snacks. Bring your friends and celebrate with us as we honor 30 years of the workshop LA style! Speakers: Monica Palacios, Pat Alderete, Camilo Loaiza Bonilla, Ofelia Montelongo, Lori Anaya, Amelia Montes, Jonathan Ayala, Melissa Hidalgo, Natalia Treviรฑo, Denise Tolan, Renรฉ Colato Lainez, Lesley Tรฉllez, Mona Alvarado Frazier, Adela Najarro, Sebha Sanwar, Karina Muรฑiz-Pagรกn, Jennifer Nguyen, Alex Espinoza
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm FUNDRAISER: The Offing’s 10th Birthday and LA Fire Recovery Fundraiser Location: The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA-LA), 1717 East 7th Street Los Angeles, CA 90021 Description: Come celebrate a decade of creativity, community, and culture. Join us for birthday cake, a toast, and the release of The Offing’s anniversary anthology! We will donate all proceeds from our $5 ticket sales to rebuilding the Palisades Public Library and repopulating books burned in Pasadena Unified School District libraries. Cost $5 – $20
Location: Truly LA, 216 S. Alameda St., Los Angeles, CA 90012
Description: Exposition Review is turning 10! You are officially invited to Expoโs in-person, off-site, literary citizenship extravaganza. Letโs party, seltzer-style!
Location: Japanese American National Museum, 100 North Central Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Description: Join poets Brynn Saito and traci kato-kiriyama for a reading celebrating the forthcoming April 2025 release of The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration. Edited by Saito and Brandon Shimoda, this poetry anthology explores the afterlife of the historical yet enduring injustice of World War IIโera prisons and camps. Featured readers include David Mura, Heather Nagami, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, James Fujinami Moore, and others, with a special tribute to poet, educator, and activist Amy Uyematsu and Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan.
Location: Room 404AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: This panel represents distinct literary voices of several contemporary essayists from California who are drawn to re-envisioning โthe spirit of a placeโ in ways that challenge and fulfill the literary imagination.
Location: Room 503, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: This session investigates how we can adopt inclusive, socially responsible approaches to creative projects. Presenters steeped in how writing inspires change will explore creative freedom and cultural sensitivity.
Location: Room 411, Los Angeles Convention Center, Level Two
Description: Can a handful of established institutions serve the communities of a sprawling desert properly? Should BIPOC talent and labor be used to fight for access to PWI, or are we better served by creating and building our own spaces? Four writers, publishers, teachers, and community builders from the Los Angeles area discuss who benefits from inclusion into historically white spaces and whose work gets co-opted and ultimately wasted when BIPOC communities donโt build their own institutions.
Panelists: Hiram Sims, Peter Woods, Romeo Guzman, Sarah-Rafael Garcia, traci kato-kiriyama, moderated by Chiwan Choi
Location: Concourse Hall 152, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: This panel features cross-genre authors of color as they examine how to navigate the publishing industry on their own terms while alchemizing a code of belonging.
Location: Room 404AB, Los Angeles Convention Center, Level Two
Description: The panelโwhich includes editors, reviewers, professors, and scholarsโoffers insight and advice for those working on or trying to publish story collections; trend observations; and thoughts on how and why reading for the contest altered their own work.
Panelists: Moderator: Lori Ostlund Presenter: Jenny Shank Presenter: Hasanthika Sirisena Presenter: Michael Wang Presenter: Toni Ann Johnson
Location: Room 502A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center Description: How can hauntings be used to illustrate larger human stories? How can our own personal hauntings create and inspire stories that will haunt readers? From cities haunted by displacement and erasure, to haunted battlefields, to family ghost stories, five writers discuss how hauntings, real and metaphorical, have inspired their poetry and fiction. Panelists: Presenter: Xochitl Bermejo Moderator: Kate Maruyama Presenter: Latoya Jordan Presenter: Tanzila Ahmed Presenter: Chiwan Choi
Location: Los Angeles Convention Center, Hub City Booth #730
5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
READING: House Party, a Tin House Prose Reading Location: Other Books, Comics, and Zines, 2006 East Cesar E Chavez Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90033 Description: Come hear nine authors from Tin House perform โlightning readingsโ in fiction and nonfiction! Author chats and a book-signing session available afterwards. Speakers: Alisa Alering (Smothermoss), Myriam J.A. Chancy (Village Weavers), Talia Lakshmi Kolluri (What We Fed to the Manticore), Cleo Qian (LETโS GO LETโS GO LETโS GO), Shze-Hui Tjoa (The Story Game: A Memoir), Lena Valencia (Mystery Lights), Elissa Washuta (White Magic), Jane Wong (Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City), and Ghassan Zeineddine (Dearborn)
Location: Echo Park Writing Lab, 1714 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90026
Description: This event welcomes all 826LA community members, Angelenos, and visiting writers to engage with us during this pivotal moment. Whether you want to perform or simply listen, all are welcome to be part of this gathering.
Location: The Count’s Den1039 South Olive Street Los Angeles, CA 90015
Description: Poetics of Liberationย is an intersectional feminist reading and community gathering celebrating radical and queer writers whose work inspires social transformation. Hosted at The Count’s Denโa stunning, vampiresque theater in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles.
Speakers: Amanda Johnston, heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, mรณnica teresa ortiz, m. mick powell, Lily Someson, Stephanie Niu, Cloud Delfina Cardona, Jae Nichelle, Tala Khanmalek, Ari Kelly, Em Palughi, andย Anel I. Flores
Location: Pieter Performance Space, 2701 North Broadway Los Angeles, CA 90031
Description: โAll of us live in unruly bodies that weโre all trying to take care of as best we can.” โRoxane Gay Readers will share a story about their relationship with a body that refuses to act โas it should.โ In a world that controls and punishes bodies that are queer, trans, disabled, mad, sick, fat, and/or racialized, how can we begin to celebrate our unruly bodies?
Description: What craft techniques, including storytelling styles from our own culture, can we utilize to write into and around truth(s)? How can nonfiction subvert or defy expectations imposed on us as women and nonbinary people in underrepresented communities? Filipino women and femme nonfiction writers discuss the complexities and nuances of sharing their experiences, while confronting the uncomfortable truths of a culture that hasnโt always looked favorably on the act of public disclosure.
Speakers: Jen Palmares Meadows, Anna Cabe, Melissa Chadburn, Laurel Flores Fantauzzo, and Anna Cabe
Location: Room 405, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: Celebrating titles that feature the color pink on their covers, poets will read work that highlights the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and identity, and discuss how pink came to be a prominent element of their book, and what the color means to them and their writing.
Location: Room 403B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: In this panel, five award-winning fiction and nonfiction authors and screenwriters discuss the perils and rewards of writing around family secrets.
Panelists: Moderator: Aimee Liu Presenter: David Francis Presenter: Elle Johnson Presenter: Toni Ann Johnson Presenter: Colette Sartor
Location: Room 411, level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: These five poets representing LAโs diverse identities, including city poet laureates, examine queer community organizing through poetry. This combination discussion panel and reading will pair poems exploring poetryโs ability to hold space where trauma is prevalent and joy and delight are desperately needed.
Panelists: Moderator: Brian Sonia-Wallace Presenter: Jireh Deng Presenter: Jose Rios Presenter: Carla Sameth Presenter: Victor Yates
Location: Room 515B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: Our panelists will offer insights on literary activism, identity complexities, collaboration pitfalls, and best practices. We hope to acknowledge the work of women and femmes and ignite a new cohort of community leaders, hosts, teaching artists, and organizers.
Panelists: Presenter: bridgette bianca Presenter: Danielle Mitchell Moderator: Kelsey Bryan-Zwick Presenter: Natalie Graham Presenter: Jessica Wilson
Location: Room 410, Level Two, LA Convention Center
Descriptions: This multigenre panel of writer-librarians will share their knowledge, strategies, and best practices for how writers can connect with libraries and librarians for research, community, workshops, and book promotions.
Panelists: Moderator: Elizabeth Galoozis Presenter: Lisa Eve Cheby Presenter: Cybele Garcรญa Kohel Presenter: Lauren Salerno
Location: LA Convention Center, Room 405, Level Two
Description: Contemporary writers of the Salvadoran diaspora use the speculativeโthe imaginativeโto parse through the urgent sociopolitical issues affecting the US and El Salvador. If much of El Salvadorโs past was documented by outsiders, its future will be written by these speculative writers and their contemporaries.
Location: LA Convention Center, Level 2, Room 515B
Description: What does it mean to write about and from an unruly body? In a world that controls and punishes bodies that are queer, trans, disabled, mad, sick, fat, and/or racialized, writing about our unruly bodies can be an act of resistanceโbut that act can come at a cost. How do we write about our unruly bodies in a way that supports our flourishing? Is such a practice possible, and if not, what is needed to make it so?
Panelists: Moderator: Margeaux Feldman Presenter: Amanda Choo Quan Presenter: Carolyn Collado Presenter: Fariha Roisin Presenter: Kai Cheng Thom
Location: Espacio 1839, 1839 1st St, Los Angeles, CA 90033
Description: Join us for a community reading and discussion across all 15 issues of the New York War Crimes during Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) week.
*Accessibility notes: Masks are required for this event. Masks will be provided for those without one at the event.
Limited metered street parking is available. Espacio is one block away from the A-line. (formerly Gold line) Mariachi Plaza metro station.
Free but (if you can) please bring cash for donations.
Location: Beyond Baroque 681 Venice Blvd. Venice, CA 90291
Description: Close out your stay in L.A. with an event at the iconic Beyond Baroque with the Inlandia Books Road Show! Inlandia Books authors will share their work and you can meet and mingle and pick up signed copies of their books. Doors open at 5:30 pm and the event will begin promptly at 6 pm.
Speakers: Will Barnes, Elizabeth Cantwell, Lewis deSoto, Tiffany Elliott, Ellen Estilai, Elizabeth Galoozis, Stephanie Barbรฉ Hammer, Jennifer MacKenzie, and Angelica Maria Barraza Tran. Emceed by Cati Porter.
Location: Bar Franca,438 Main Street Los Angeles, CA 90013
Description: A star-studded lineup of local poets read their life-giving work, in conjunction with the LA-based literary journal Exposition Review. Audience donations on the night will go towards 3 organizations aiding with fire relief: World Central Kitchen, Octavia’s Bookshelf, and the Tongva Nation Eaton Wildfire Recovery Fund. Author signings and chats afterwards.
Location: Figat7th Food Court, 925 W. 8th St. DTLA
Description: In celebration of the AWP Writers Conference being in Los Angeles, and with support from the California Arts Council, WWS is hosting an in-person submission drive. Join us with your computer, your list of journals and open calls gathered from the AWP Book Fair, and your drive to “hit send”!
WWS CERTIFIED AT THE 2025 AWP LOS ANGELES BOOK FAIR
In 2019, I walked into the book fair at AWP Portland and into complete overwhelm. The enormous convention space held presses big and large, writing programs both esteemed and unheard of and writers, agents, and publicists everywhere. The whole place was so big and white and male. I had no idea where I might feel welcome me, where my stories my find a home.
So, for those of you heading to AWP LA, here are 21 WWS vetted presses tabling at the book fair. They show an appreciation for diverse voices in their spaces by having at least 50% women and 50% POC on their mastheads. Check them out. Chat them up, and then, after AWP, submit your words.
Today I looked up and saw a star crying across the sky. How did she know? Did she see me crying, too? When her tail of salted yellow dust and old magnesium green light lit across my eyelid shield for a moment I laughed because I, too, know how to color darkness know what itโs like to burn and yell and laugh through an unspoken language of ash. I wished upon her falling for rest for less from this body yet I remembered to be of this body is to be graceful and grateful for this pure burning can be fruitful and destructive and she must know there is joy after grief, after, after, after, she must know her language of color is real and true because I saw her falling from a separate darkness while looking up and felt her tears of history attempt to cure me in a land not meant for tenderness and silent loving, in dark, in light, in the real, in the way tears can never fall until we can bear no more until we bear it all and we cry for one another, until we cry for one, until we cry, until we cry until we cry
Avery C. Castillo is a Mexican American poet, artist, and editor from South Texas. She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Her work is published in various anthologies and literary journals. Visit www.writingsbyavery.com for more.
Every empire sings itself a lullaby. โLena Khalaf Tuffaha
Many sacred things live in the woods of my childhood where dreams go at night.
I said sacred but meant scared. The rabbits collect tears on little leaves. They are the rabbits of history.
When they take our tears, they are acting as confiscators. They refuse to let us have what we weep
to help us with our shameโnot to keep us from it but because we donโt have any.
We donโt understand. We think we are living quietly, the way rabbits do, staying low and hidden
in the violets along the edges of things. We donโt understand that rabbits do not seek
soft lives. Their bodies are made of fierceness and scramble. Their throats are big with screaming.
None of the rabbit-hearts beat in the woods anymore. They left the woods for fields so we could see
them coming through the bluestem like an invisible thread pleating fabric. Yet we lull ourselves.
Yet we tell ourselves stories about soft things that send us to sleep in the woods without heartbeats.
Linda Dove holds a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature and is an award-winning poet of five books. Her work has been nominated for four Pushcarts, a Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America, and two Best of the Nets. Despite a recent move to the east coast, she still teaches remotely at Woodbury University in Los Angeles, where she founded MORIA Literary Magazine.
