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!
I’ve 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.
‘Mr. Sinclair, get to class.’
I still remember Mr. Anderson’s 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.
‘My bad, Mr. Anderson, we was just trying to find my math book.’
‘And what does your math book have to do with Ms. Monroe?’ 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
—to 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 didn’t 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.
Apple TV+’s Spanish language series Las Azules (Women in Blue) is set in 1971 and depicts Mexico City’s first female police force.1 It’s stunning to look at with the delightful ‘70s wardrobe, the vintage-inspired color intensity, the midcentury architecture. Las Azules shares the aesthetic of crónica 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 where Las Azules 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.
Kudos to .CHISARAOKWU. whose creative nonfiction piece “A Brief History of Pain” 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, I’ve lived to avoid pain—no diving into a lake or pool for fear I’d 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 doesn’t trouble me when my mother forgets my name. She’s 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.
“Lorna,” I offer.
She bounces back, diving into a story I’ve 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. That’s 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.
It’s almost time! LA will play host to the iconic writer’s conference, AWP from March 26 – 29th, 2025. So many panels, readings, and off-site gatherings, it’s a lot for a group not especially known as extroverts. I’m looking at you, fellow writers. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
We’ve put together a list to help you connect with other members of Women Who Submit. It’s 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 can’t 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 Sáenz, Melinda Palacio, Vickie Vértiz, Antonieta Villamil, Luis J. Rodriguez, Hosts: Rey M. Rodríguez and Jorge H. Rodríguez
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 Angélica Villarreal (Magical Realism), Annie Liontas (Sex With a Brain Injury), Shze-Hui Tjoa (The Story Game), Grace Loh Prasad (The Translator’s 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 “traditional” white supremacist frameworks in college-level composition courses.
Location: Booth T3358 Círculo de poetas and Writers Booth, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description:Conversaciones con los difuntos / Conversations with the Dead is Diosa Xochiquetzacóatl’s 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 city’s 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 Angeles’s 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 so—while also taking into consideration the roles of culture and institutions—as 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 Xochiquetzalcóatl
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 one’s identity and subjectivity through racial and historical lenses, as in the extinction of 150 species in an average day, and how poets can “knock on silence,” 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 30ñera: 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 Treviño, Denise Tolan, René Colato Lainez, Lesley Téllez, Mona Alvarado Frazier, Adela Najarro, Sebha Sanwar, Karina Muñiz-Pagán, 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 Expo’s in-person, off-site, literary citizenship extravaganza. Let’s 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 II–era 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 “the spirit of a place” 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 don’t 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 panel—which includes editors, reviewers, professors, and scholars—offers 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 “lightning readings” 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 (LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S 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 Liberation is an intersectional feminist reading and community gathering celebrating radical and queer writers whose work inspires social transformation. Hosted at The Count’s Den—a stunning, vampiresque theater in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles.
Speakers: Amanda Johnston, heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, mónica teresa ortiz, m. mick powell, Lily Someson, Stephanie Niu, Cloud Delfina Cardona, Jae Nichelle, Tala Khanmalek, Ari Kelly, Em Palughi, and Anel I. Flores
Location: Pieter Performance Space, 2701 North Broadway Los Angeles, CA 90031
Description: “All of us live in unruly bodies that we’re all trying to take care of as best we can.” —Roxane Gay Readers will share a story about their relationship with a body that refuses to act “as it should.” 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 hasn’t 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 LA’s diverse identities, including city poet laureates, examine queer community organizing through poetry. This combination discussion panel and reading will pair poems exploring poetry’s 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 García Kohel Presenter: Lauren Salerno
Location: LA Convention Center, Room 405, Level Two
Description: Contemporary writers of the Salvadoran diaspora use the speculative—the imaginative—to parse through the urgent sociopolitical issues affecting the US and El Salvador. If much of El Salvador’s past was documented by outsiders, its future will be written by these speculative writers and their contemporaries.
Panelists: Presenter: Ruben Reyes Jr. Moderator: Janel Pineda Presenter: Gina María Balibrera Presenter: Leticia Hernández-Linares Presenter: Reyes Ramirez
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 resistance—but 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 Barbé 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 it’s 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. —Lena 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 shame—not to keep us from it but because we don’t have any.
We don’t understand. We think we are living quietly, the way rabbits do, staying low and hidden
in the violets along the edges of things. We don’t 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.
The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during February of 2025, and three of our members heard about these opportunities through WWS programming and/or another member. We appreciate everyone’s commitment to sharing and celebrating their work, especially during these difficult times for our beloved Los Angeles. Thank you and happy submitting!
I’ve 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 start out by congratulating Rochelle Newman-Carrasco whose creative nonfiction piece “Gathering Variables” was featured in TheNew York Times’ Modern Love column.
We see flames from our porch. No mandatory evacuation — yet. But my husband and I agree. Let’s prepare. I take my parents’ wedding album. My typewritten play that only exists on paper. I scan shelves, drawers, closets. Thumbing through love letters and legal docs. Why this, and not that? Beyond practicalities, you have to let your gut lead.
We sit in deep recliners that buffer the effects of age, looking out the window at winter’s bare trees, the same ones we watch flourishing in spring. Mom and I wear matching blue wristwatches and check them regularly. She is 99 and counting. We worry about time. But at this moment, we have enough.
Big shoutout to Lisa Eve Cheby for having her chapbooksContact Tracing, Love Lessons from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Buffy Averts a Mid-Life Apocalypse republished with Strikethrough Press.
Congratulations to Ashton Cynthia Clarke whose poem “Planting for the Harvest” (and others) appeared in Four Feathers Press‘ Poetry Blogspot series.
“Look up” is what I hear myself telling our seven year old almost every day. They say it could help us avoid text-neck. More importantly, there’s something grounding about witnessing the endlessness above us, how it holds space for both chaos and calm, for both the known and unknowable, and room for possibility. And every seven-year old should experience endlessness every so often.
Welcome to This Makes up the Sky: A Year of Looking Upward.
I’m excited to introduce myself to you as the newest Women Who Submit Blog Managing Editor. In the months prior to submitting my proposal for this series, I spent some time thinking of ways to continue writing while the world continues to erupt. I thought about the sky and how everything it holds is connected by that very thing, that perfect relationship of gravity and orbital motion. And when I came up with the series, I thought about what it means to create a shared space where writers can explore their own relationship with what the sky holds. The sky, in all its iterations, offers us a universal connection point—as simple as it sounds—we’re all under it, all witnessing its changes, all carrying our own interpretations.
Over the coming year, we’ll explore six themes that together tell the story of our shared sky. We’ll begin with Dreams – those just-above-the-surface visions that shape our understanding of what’s possible. From there, we’ll witness the mathematics of flight through Birds, explore the systems that animate unwritten rules in Weather, investigate the always shifting narratives of Clouds, contemplate precipitation in all its forms through Rain, and finally, we’ll discover the architecture of collective movement in Murmurations. For each theme (except Murmurations), we’ll publish four pieces that approach the subject from different angles, different genres, different perspectives – creating a mosaic of how we understand and experience these elements that make up our sky.
As a publisher, I consider myself lucky to have been able to approach anthology curation as a form of collective meaning-making. It’s a practice that might begin in what feels like a selfish place – this desire to reach out, to gather stories, to make sense of the world through perspective. But what comes of it is always so much more, I mean, isn’t this why we write and read and create and…all of it? Research has consistently shown that engaging with art and creative expression provides tangible, memorable real-life benefits for our emotional and psychological wellbeing. When we write about our experiences, when we share our perspectives, we’re not just creating sentences and paragraphs—we’re participating in one or more forms of collective healing. Studies show that we’re activating multiple brain regions and circuits, fostering neural connections that support regulation and cognitive resilience. In times when the world shows its horrendousness, a slight turn toward reflection and creative expression becomes essential.
I truly hope you enjoy reading each piece throughout the year, and the collective sum. And for those interested in submitting work, please read through the submission guidelines. I look forward to reading your work—your poems, your flash fiction, your essays, your hybrid forms. Each submission is a way of mapping the world around and above us, of making sense of both the physical and metaphysical. Through your words, we’ll build a constellation of perspectives, a year-long exploration of how we understand, imagine, and inhabit the space above us.
Looking Forward, Jessica Ceballos y Campbell
Jessica Ceballos y Campbell, Blog Managing Editor (she/they), is a writer, content strategist, publisher, and advocate whose work has been published in numerous anthologies and journals and three chapbooks: Gent/Re De Place Ing (2016), End of the Road (2017), and Facilitating Spaces 101: A Manual for equitable Arts Programming (2018), and has produced a ton of literary events throughout LA. She lives with her husband, seven-year-old, and their gato in Los Angeles, where she runs a small press and where she is ever-attempting to work on Happiest Place on Earth, her poetry contribution to conversations around memory, place, and belonging, inspired by a trip to Disneyland while in the foster system. www.jessicaceballos.com
The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during January of 2025, and four of our members heard about these opportunities through WWS programming and/or another member. We appreciate everyone’s commitment to sharing and celebrating their work, especially during these difficult times for our beloved Los Angeles. Thank you and happy submitting!
I’ve 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.
First up, let’s give a congratulations to Michelle Smith whose poem “Morning Decks & Decorum” was published with Four Feathers Press through their Saturday Afternoon Poetry Blogspot series (excerpt available below). She also published a poem entitled “Brightness” in Southern California Shadows with Four Feathers Press.
Fresh cut blades
of green grass stacked
on yards like neighborhood
houses. Awakens my olfactory
senses. Feeling
squishiness of the piled
high hill dancing in spring
coolness between my toes.
Big kudos to Ronna Magy for her publication of poems “Snow Globe” with Silver Birch Press (see excerpt below) and “Free Love” in Dionne’s Story, Volume IV Anthology with Carlow University Press.
between grandmother’s knobby fingers brown coin-purse frayed zipper thread-bare days. post second war she counts bus quarters. rations tickets for coffee sugar butter whole milk
we’re riding Detroit’s Woodward trolley. downtown electricity crackling Christmas lines yellow car clanging squeals to a stop.
Please give a shoutout to Dilys Wyndham Thomas whose poem “Elegy” was given a Pushcart Prize nomination by journal Rust and Moth, where it initially appeared in their Spring 2024 issue.
You will not appear in obituaries: cells and the universe colliding, contracting into an embryo, a whole half with me since before I was born. But they said this body could not keep you safe, so I carved your name into my bones, swallowed a pill that made a grave of my womb.
Congratulations to Yvette Siegert who translated five poems by Amanda Libertad and fiction piece “The Devil Knows My Name” by Jacinta Escudos from their original Spanish, which both appeared in Fence (the latter of which is shown below).
The Devil tells me everything
He comes to see me every day. He talks a lot. He tells me stories from every country in the world. About how human beings struggle and how they fear Evil, about how they spend their lives making up excuses so that they can give in to temptation and so be on good terms with both God and the Devil.
He tells me that he was once a charming prince, a man of flesh and bone like everyone else. Elegant and intelligent. Handsome. Wonderful. To such an extent that God chose him to become his favorite angel.
“But,” he says, “the problem is that I can’t stand taking orders from anyone.”
Please give a congratulations to Marya Summers for publishing her poem “The Congregation” with Pensive Journal in their ninth issue.
Kudos to Ruby Hansen Murray for their poem “White Hair Memorial” which appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of Michigan Quarterly Review. She also published another poem “Devotion” in Elysium Review (see excerpt below).
For years, in the women’s rest room at Dismal Nitch, a bouquet of wild flowers, white honeyed verbena, stalks of grass.
How small things stitch the fabric of our lives, river gray toward shore, the ridge beyond.
At schools, churches, art centers, auto shops, health centers, and in neighborhoods, artist Elliott Pinkney painted bold swaths of color and every shade of brown reflected in the community. The murals he designed across Compton in the summers of 1977 and 1978 mirrored the creative energy and consciousness of the city. His art extended into Watts, South Central, Long Beach, Carson, Lynwood, and Berlin, Germany, in over 90* murals across 50 different sites, many of which involved a total of over 200 local youth (*multiple murals painted at one site were counted as individual murals; in a career that spanned over 50 years, this total was likely higher).
Lastly, please give a kudos to Diosa Xochiquetzalcoatl who published a poem entitled “Mojada” with FLUP and Venas Abiertas Editor Popular.
Happy New Year! The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during December of 2024, and four of our members heard about these opportunities through WWS programming and/or another member.
I’ve 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 dedicated members who had their work published this month, and happy submitting!
The Republican Party campaigned for power by threatening to rip the lives of 20 million people from the fabric of this country. As horrifying a premise as it is, this act of political depravity has happened before.
Beginning in the 1930s, an estimated 1 million people —Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals— were expelled from this country. Following the Great Depression, Mexicans were targeted and scapegoated for taking jobs from “real” Americans and exploiting social welfare resources. The Hoover administration, scrambling to stay in power, gave cities and states authority as to how they would rid themselves of these “undesirables.” The smears used against this demographic have embedded themselves into the historic and now daily discourse of immigration.
Big shoutout to Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo whose poem “God Was Not” was featured in Poetry Magazine’s December 2024 issue (excerpt below). Her poems “When I Wince” & “Making an Amends to Myself for Letting Men Use Me” were also published in Riot of Roses Publishing House’s anthology SOMOS XICANAS.
in your kiss or fingertips, or how you liked to say goodbye, arms squeezing through my middle to lift my body from the ground
till bones cracked up my back. Like a child’s xylophone, you played me into laughter, but not in the good way giggles
Please join me in congratulating Deirdre Hennings for publishing her poem “Midnight, Wisconsin” in Humana Obscura‘s eleventh issue.
We’d lost the moon.
As if in the bottom of a well or some vast pit of sea we floated, nothing tethered but our soles. Each gravel-y step a search in blackness so deep we were nothing but beating hearts
Shoutout to Erin Jourdan whose fiction piece “Chimeras” appeared in Epiphany Issue 33.
Please give kudos to Jesenia Chávez whose creative nonfiction piece “A Meditation on Shopping Carts” was featured in Air/Light Magazine (see excerpt below). She also published a personal essay entitled “Abuelita Josefina Presente!” and a poem “Now I am crying” in Riot of Roses Publishing House’s anthology SOMOS XICANAS.
Shopping cart as found art
A shopping cart sits at the foot of the trail, perhaps because of the last “clean-up.” This is what they call it when they kick everyone out who has made a home in the hidden hills of Debs Park. Once I went off trail and into a camp and ran back the other way because I was scared.
Shopping carts are upside down on the riverbed, on the sidewalk right side up. Someone managed to push these shopping carts off a grocery store parking lot. This has given the carts new life.
Congratulations to Lorinda Toledo whose memoir piece “Chile Season” was selected as the second place winner of Exposition’s Review‘s Flash 405 “Otherworldly” Contest.
Kudos to Jasmine Vallejo-Love for their creative nonfiction piece “Breaking the Comb Ceiling” being picked up by Lunch Ticket.
There were four hard knocks on the door; the kind only the police made. We froze, every muscle still, breath slowing down. My eyes focused firmly on the hardwood floor, tears slow-danced down my cheeks, snot bubbles in my eight-year-old nose, little fists clenched. The loud squeaking of the front door, in desperate need of WD-40, signaled Mom had opened it.
Shoutout to Bonnie S. Kaplan whose poem “Wildlife Crossings” was featured in The Nature of Our Times.
A camel crossing in Kuwait, an elk overpass in Banff,
these culverts and corridors stitch together land
severed by highway, invaded by interstates,
our open road — their dissipating gene pool.
We make necessary reparations for wildlife,
dig a desert underpass for the tortoise,
reroute the deer in the headlights.
We all need to travel
safely home.
Huge congratulations to Ryane Nicole Granados for her novella The Aves being published with Leapfrog Press.
Kudos to M. Anne Kala’i whose fiction piece “The Visitation” appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs.
In June, Sadie and Lee filed into our home with news and the peach pie it had inspired: Sadie was pregnant. My sister was smiling but wouldn’t look at me. If our parents saw how scared she was, they didn’t let on. She hadn’t been married a month. The couple had said their vows in the same place she and I were born, the same place our mother was born: up the road, at Gran’s.
Over dinner, Mother asked how their new place was suiting them, though it wasn’t new. Sadie had moved into Lee’s efficiency apartment next to the filling station he owned. Maybe, Dad said, they ought to consider moving in with Gran before the baby arrived. I liked the idea, for the place was visible from my bedroom window.
The Aves, by Ryane Nicole Granados is a masterful coming-of-age story that introduces the world to ten-year-old Zora and her 1980s Los Ángeles neighborhood, affectionately called, The Aves. This Los Ángeles neighborhood is filled with an eclectic mix of residents, friends, and friends-turn-family who Zora learns to love and appreciate as she enters her teenage years. Zora narrates her stories and although the neighborhood is what we would now label marginalized, we soon learn that the residents of the Aves are made up of more than their economic status.
Congratulations to Diosa Xochiquetzalcoatl whose poem “Her Favorite Little Word, ¡Ya Basta!” was featured in Riot of Roses Publishing House’s anthology SOMOS XICANAS.
In addition to celebrating your wonderful literary accomplishments, I hope you are resting up and spending this time of year with family, friends, and pets (or curled up next to a book). Stay warm and congratulations once again!
Hello everyone and happy November! The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during November of 2024 (and five of our members heard about these opportunities either through WWS programming and/or another member, which is a wonderful tribute to this community!).
I’ve 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 amazing members who had their work published this month, and happy submitting!
Please give a shoutout to Melissa Chadburn whose creative nonfiction piece “Rarebit” appeared on Terrain.org.
I saw it in my mother’s face sometimes when she shook me by the shoulders. The other face she so often showed to the world, the one she wore in church and at work long gone. This one—the angry one—was it her legit face? Was she always working to suppress it? Maybe so. Maybe she was aswang—a shapeshifting, baby-eating vampire. Secretary by day, soul sucker by night. I could see that. Maybe she was a witch; all these women who live alone, who know longing, they’re called witches.
Today, election results run, a river of grief for another river that never became a wave. Tomorrow, perhaps a collapse we never imagined: a bridge, a body, a body politic, the world.
Still, the tide comes & goes. As I stand in the sand, the under- tow pulls my heels, dragging me insistently deeper. These returns can suck folks in beyond their depth, so I know not to wade further into turbulence, into a world half-eaten, equal parts hoorays & handkerchiefs.
Big shoutout to Monona Wali for her fiction piece “Love Thy Monster” being picked up by Santa Monica Review.
Please join me in congratulating Heather Pegas whose fiction piece “The Mermaid Has Finally Had It” was published with Does It Have Pockets?
It is the mermaid’s birthday, and she’s feeling her age. Sailors still like the shape of her tail, it gets their attention, but they turn away at the missing breast, the scarred floor of her chest. They see her hair has turned grey-green, call her a merma’am, and laugh.
The mermaid’s daughter and her friends need constant reassurance and talking down from erotic encounters with fickle seamen. They are forever falling in, and painfully out of, “love” but they reject her hard-won wisdom.
Times like these always lead me back to my Patron Saint of Hope, Leia Organa. Being a life-long Star Wars fan, my relationship to Leia is something that evolves as I go through changes in my own life. That relationship took a new turn in 2017 when I attended the Women’s March in Los Angeles. It was an important moment for me in my political life. The streets of Downtown Los Angeles were packed with people who knew that the next 4 years would not be easy.
Big kudos to Diosa Xochiquetzacoatl whose poems “Gigage,” “Tethered Tongues,” and “Diaspora” were chosen as a feature by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs in the 2024 Native American Heritage Month Calendar and Cultural Guide. See excerpt from “Gigage” below:
Red is the blood that boils within my veins. Red are the murdered and missing. Red is the lipstick he sees as slut. Red are my eyes filled with rage. Red is the war paint tattooed on my skin. Red are the hands of every broken treaty.
Shoutout to Laura Sturza whose creative nonfiction piece “The Super Saleswoman” appeared in OldsterMagazine. She also published “Our own Golden Bachelorette” in The Beacon. See excerpt of the former below:
Mom put those skills to work in future jobs. She became a saleswoman for whom “no” meant revving up for advanced negotiations. After her dad passed away, Mom revealed he’d been a terrible salesman. “He laid it on too thick,” she said. “They saw his desperation. You have to reel customers in with a good story, make them believe they can’t live without what you’re selling.
Please join me in congratulating Valerie Anne Burns whose creative nonfiction piece “Cornflower Blue” was featured in Sad Girl Diaries.
While my mother was still alive, we’d moved to a brand-new home in one of those strangely uniformed suburbs in South Miami. Because blue was her favorite color, the walls inside were mostly shades of blue, and the exterior was painted in a soft shade of sky blue. The builders of the houses in that neighborhood swept away every natural thing in sight as they put up countless blocks of new homes leaving one lonely palm tree to sway in the breeze.
Lastly, kudos to Carla Sameth for the publication of her poem “Thanksgiving” in Mutha Magazine.
Before the crab stuffing and the molten greens, the grieving turkey, crispy leg reserved for my wife, there is this year’s drink— tamarind, tequila, lime, mint, soda, jalapeño, and champagne. I am the eager taster, hiding in the corner from my previously sober son. Fix you a non-alcoholic drink? I ask jerkily while he lurks nearby this tureen of booze. Really, everywhere you look there’s booze, wine and beer and champagne, drinks that look like innocent cans of soda named spicy or fully loaded. Would you name your car, your cat, your girlfriend that? Do what you need to do my son, I murmur.
Hello everyone and happy November! The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during October of 2024 (and three of our members heard about these wonderful opportunities either through WWS programming and/or another member, which is so great to see!).
I’ve 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 amazing members who had their work published this month, and happy submitting!
Please give a shoutout to Marya Summers for her poem “A Begrudging Nomad” being featured in Rise Up Review.
Every dawn is an invitation to move on, every evening a surrender to the rhythms that call to rest. When I lived in foster homes, other people decided when I moved, who I lived with, whether I liked it or not. The only thing truly fostered: a sense of my own intrusion and impermanence, a knack for packing light and quick.
Huge congratulations to Elizabeth Galoozis for her poem “Worn” being published in Thimble Literary Magazine!
When we buried you, I didn’t know Jews don’t do clothing after death,
or display bodies without breath. You were buried without your glasses.
Without shoes. Those clothes are for the living, to guard us from exposure.
Thelma introduced the film world’s first nonagenarian action hero. The movie’s star, June Squibb, age 94, brought an irrepressible character to life and captured the hearts of viewers of all ages, including this 63-year-old fan.
In the movie, Thelma is intent on reclaiming money she lost to a scam artist and takes her family, her friend and the audience on a low-speed chase through Los Angeles that has the thrills of a Mission Impossible film.
Thelma embodies the things I love most about my 98-year-old mom, Evelyn Sturza. Mom is adventurous, forthright, funny, optimistic, creative and has a never-give-up attitude. Like Thelma, my mom also believes she has no limits.
I remember the stillness in September The whisper of a child on a swing Back and forth Back and forth The North and South are one Their shouts are eternal The burial of a season Ease is a long lost memory
The cemetery and majlis are one Gone is the wind of laughter The afterlife as cold as the dusk What does the dove say to the cage after breaking its bones to escape?
Please join me in applauding Khamil Riley for participating in Tupelo Press’ 30/30 Project where she published 30 poems over 30 days.
Congratulations to Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera for her fiction piece “Tough as Faith” being published in the Cowboy Up anthology with WolfSinger Publications.
Brown is the color of my eyes. Brown is the color of my skin. Brown is the ground which I call home. Brown is the color of my seraphim. As coffee is sweetened with creamer, so too my pupils are sweetened by the sun.
Shoutout to Flint for her publication of her creative nonfiction piece “The Great Chicken God” in Muleskinner Journal.
The baby chick is the only non-chocolate thing in Finn’s Easter basket, and it’s awful what we did, and we knew it, kind of, when we were doing it, but we did it anyway, even though we didn’t mean it to turn out the way it did.
But The Great Chicken God saw. And like any God, The Great Chicken God is a terrible God. A good and terrible God.
Please join me in congratulating Noriko Nakada for her poems “MONSTER MAKERS” and “Tarot Eclipse” being featured in The Rising Phoenix Review. See an excerpt of the former poem below:
we keep putting genocide together as if these words could ever make sense aid posing as trap
flour and blood pour from trucks idling near invisible borders
massacre disguised as justice transforms humanitarian into terrorist shatters peace
Congrats to Hazel Kight Witham whose poem “Father Light” appeared in Issue 47 of Bellevue Literary Review.
Kudos to Carla Sameth whose San Gabriel Valley Poetry Collage assembled from Nextdoor posts by residents of Altadena and Pasadena, CA was featured in the latest issue of American PoetsMagazine.
Lastly, please join me in giving a shoutout to Joy Notoma for her fiction piece “Uncle Jimmy” being published in Ploughshares Fall ’24 Longform Issue.
