Women Who Submit

Happy spring! The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during March of 2026. One of our committed members heard about their publication opportunity 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 some time to celebrate yourself and your wonderful accomplishments. Thank you and happy submitting!

Congratulations to Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo whose poem “In the Resting Place” appeared in CALYX Online.

– For Octavia Butler

There’s a memory I keep of a woman
cleaning a headstone. Her bird-bone hands
grab at crabgrass and clear weeds.

She washes dates of debris
with water and tears. So fevered
her work, I grow shameful

for never realizing a tombstone needs tending.
If no sister, or aunt, or mother exists
to weed a grave, how long does earth wait

to swallow it whole? Reader, you might think,
Why didn’t she write “daughter” or “child”?
Maybe that’s because, like Octavia,

I have neither.

Kudos to Marya Summers who published the poem “Shooting from the Lip” in Wayfarer Magazine.

It was the hour of showdown. The miraculous hour.” –Patti Smith

You have never had a gun.
But you have always stood
your ground, mouth like
an automatic weapon,
ripping through the preposterous
bodies of arguments, counterfeit
claims, more holes
than substance. No matter

what it cost, you were willing
to pay it, loaded
your mouth with another round
while the enemy looked
to cut you down: napalm
the bank account, close
the ranks so that everyone

told the same fiction, intimidation
by exile, by hunger, by confiscating
the last comfort that propped
your spirit.

Shoutout to Sibylla Nash whose essay “Black History Month Celebrates 100 Years, Can it Survive the Trump Administration?” was picked up by Clio and the Contemporary.

For anyone who’s ever taken a course in Black studies, there are certain mainstays like the documentary Eyes on the Prize, an unflinching look at the Civil Rights Movement, and anything written by Frederick Douglass. Even if you haven’t taken a Black studies or Black history class, you no doubt encountered Black history celebrations during February, when folks who have made a difference in the struggle for equal rights receive their flowers.

Unfortunately, the study of Black history is not so easy anymore with the current administration dismantling avenues to celebrate the achievements of Black luminaries and recognize the Black community’s contributions to the United States. It’s unclear what future generations will understand about slavery, racism, and Black resilience when there is a concerted effort to erase it.

Congratulations to Lauren Eggert-Crowe who had three poems “While my father was dying, I kept having dreams about my exes,” “The algorithm thinks I’m pregnant,” and “Talking about attachment theory with young people in a lamplit room” published in the New England Review. See excerpt of the former below (the other two poems are available in print):

The hospital was in Taylor Swift’s hometown

Two days before he died, I ate a bagel sandwich

in a coffee shop selling drinks named for her new songs I hadn’t heard

keychains for sale, tumblers with her face

The zeitgeist moves on without you

In each dream, I had urgent news to share

It was important that they knew my fault lines had ruptured

I was one kind of land and then boom I was another

Kudos to Jacqueline Lyons whose poem “I Am Not a Robot” was featured in Broadsided Press’ Signs of Life: Artists and Writers Respond to AI.

Congratulations to Lorinda Toledo whose article “How a Pulitzer winner resurrected a forgotten U.S.-Mexico border rebellion” was published by the Los Angeles Times.

“Autobiography of Cotton” is the story of a consequential labor strike carried out in the early mid-20th century in the borderlands of northern Mexico. Rivera Garza’s genre-bending work ultimately pays homage to the too-often invisible laborers who cultivate the land and build the cities on both sides of the border.

“My hope is that readers might see how artificial borders are, how tangential they are in regard to greater, larger projects, both at the very personal level, but also at the institutional and the state level,” Rivera Garza said in a recent Zoom interview from Paris. “And how organic migration is to our lives. Movement in search of better conditions — that is the basis of what we do as humans.”

Kudos to Emily Mohn-Slate whose two poems “Are all your poems about your kids?” and “Nobody Here Knows Pittsburgh is Beautiful” were featured in NELLE Issue 9.

Shoutout to Daria E. Topousis for her publication of fiction piece “Aurora Borealis” with CALYX Press.

Congratulations to Julie Pearson whose creative nonfiction piece “The Devil’s in the Details” appeared in Disco Kitchen.

I have this memory that nobody in my life can corroborate. I’m a first grader, at a school assembly in the auditorium with the blue curtains on the proscenium stage. I’m sitting on the floor listening to some visiting group of young adults tell us about the devil. Satan. Lucifer. They’re worked up, they’re impassioned. As a younger kid, I’m sitting toward the front of the crowd, and I can see their wide eyes flashing with trepidation like they’re telling us a ghost story.

I haven’t really heard much about the devil before this moment, but he doesn’t sound great. The thing is, they’re not being very clear about who or what the devil actually is. He sounds like a scary monster.

Until a fourth grader—an “older kid” and therefore an authority figure—raises his hand and says, “The devil killed my dad.” The speakers all go nuts over this, it’s the best thing they’ve ever heard. “Yes he did,” they say. “The devil did kill your dad!”

Kudos to Azalea Aguilar whose three poems “Ways to Say I Love You,” “The Primas All Marry White Men,” and “El Alto” were featured in the latest issue of Latin@ Literatures. See excerpt of the latter poem below:

teach our girls
how love can save
from danger approaching
when you and your father
took shelter
bolted as lightning struck
illuminated path
towards that concrete slab
in La Paz
rain screamed sideways
he held you
from winds wrath
covered
your fear with his
taught you threat
can teeter
you tell how sky
seemed to tremble
how quick
downpour came

Shoutout to Jasmine Vallejo-Love for their publication of five poems in Mud Season Review. See excerpt of “An Abecedarian for My Multiple Diagnoses” below:

Avoiding discussing mental health is a family value.

Black sheep–I dare to break tradition
cautiously toe-dip in Al-Anon, see from a

different lens. Graduate to cognitive behavioral therapy–
explains so much. Being Bipolar, I dissociate,

feel held hostage on a plane I’m supposed to pilot,
get easily overwhelmed, stuck, catatonic when not manic.

Having tools at my disposal made all the difference,
illuminates the rapid pendulum of emotions.

Congratulations to Jennifer Blackledge whose two poems “We watch a video of my daughter’s second birthday party” and “The Word of the Day is Sitzfleisch” appeared in The Summerset Review. See excerpt of the former below:

after dinner and cake for her twenty-second.
Three dogs and two couches ago,
the kitchen half-painted.
On the little screen we
light the candles over and over
again, again
and let her blow them out.
She dances to a tiny electronic piano
and spins until she can’t stand up
to the applause of everyone who loves her.

Kudos to Ronna Magy who published a poem “What Mothers and Daughters Talk About In Fitting Rooms” in The Muleskinner Journal.

Mom, maybe I’ll find you in lingerie’s fitting room again. Pink

curtains. Saleslady’s plastic tape circling my 12-year-old’s flesh.

You repeating Honey, stand still. Let her measure. Do you remember

we talked about garter belts? Sticky menstrual pads? Looped rubber

snaps? Sweaty women waving paper fans in July heat. And I asked

Where does the blood come from? How long does it last?

Wear pink lipstick, you advised. Polish your nails. Dab on blue

eye shadow. You never know.

Shoutout to Joyce Loh whose fiction piece “Something Borrowed, Something Blue” appeared in Pure Slush’s London Great Cities Vol. 2.

The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during February of 2026. Three of our committed members heard about their publication opportunity 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 some time to celebrate yourself and your wonderful accomplishments. Thank you and happy submitting!

Congratulations to Erica Castro whose creative nonfiction piece “Detention Centers, My dearest America” appeared in Daxson Publishing’s Together We Rise Voices from the Frontlines of Freedom Anthology Rebelling against Injustice.

Kudos to Anne Ramallo whose poem “When I Dream of Whales” was published in Cosmic Daffodil Journal: TIDAL LIGHT.

The ocean is alive with them—
orcas break its shimmering surface, stretching snouts
at a cerulean sky. Humpbacks and blue whales
twist pleated bellies, thrust their ribs like dancers
while I watch, laughing,from the tip of my own iceberg.

Something’s swimming beneath the precision of language—
beautiful, dangerous, ready to tip yachts,
straining, heaving, coming up for air and,
for one gloriousREM cycle, consoling, pressing love
into my skin through outstretched fins.

Shoutout to Diosa Xochiquetzalcoatl whose poems “Just Down My Street” and “Reclamation” were featured in Daxson Publishing’s Together We Rise Voices from the Frontlines of Freedom Anthology Rebelling against Injustice.

Kudos to Mahru Elahi whose creative nonfiction piece “Passing: A Softball Tale” appeared in Seventh Wave’s 2026 Community Anthology.

When I try to name where Ali and I fell along the racial spectrum, the word interstitial comes to mind. It was 1982 and we lived in the gaps, the only Iranians at our Southern California middle school. Iranians in Amrika were racialized before the 1978 Revolution, it was just that we were considered benign, exotic even, definitely not dangerous.

Ali’s skin was lighter than mine, with the blue-green cast of an abalone shell’s interior. His curly black hair, regal nose, and baby doll lashes might have made him attractive, but Ali’s mouth was a blunt weapon. He made the Science teacher cry. After that, I only saw him in PE.

Congratulations to Audrey Shipp whose article “How I Navigated My Way to a Memoir Deal from a Small Publisher” was featured in Jane Friedman.

Last year, as I began the query and submission process for my hybrid memoir, I knew I was going to submit directly to small publishers. I’d heard from industry experts about the difficulties non-celebrities face trying to publish a memoir. As recently as January of this year, a Jane Friedman newsletter referred to an article that notes non-celebrity memoir as the most difficult nonfiction genre in which to publish. Thus, I began my querying journey as a non-famous person knowing that agents are paid from a percentage of an advance, and the chances of securing a large advance from a big publisher were slim to nil.

I became familiar with the pitch-query-submission process after taking a series of courses from various creative writing and publishing providers. With Jane Friedman and Allison K Williams, I’d taken a slew of courses on topics such as writing the proposal, publishing paths, and book marketing. And following Courtney Maum’s guidelines, I learned how to pitch hybrid memoir specifically. As a result of my coursework, I wrote a 26-page proposal that I submitted on occasion since not all publishers required it. Although I didn’t always use the entire proposal, it was an incredibly useful resource because I pulled out sections related to my comps, my audience, or other topics that I could use for individual submissions. 

Shoutout to Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo whose article “Writing a Dream Into Reality” appeared in the March/April 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Kudos to Carla Rachel Sameth whose poem “The Fragility of Home” was featured in the anthology Signed, Sealed, Delivered: the Motown Poetry Revue.

Huge congratulations to Toni Ann Johnson who recently published a book But Where’s Home?: A Novella and Stories with Screen Door Press.

Shoutout to Melinda Palacio whose poem “Canopy over Milpas and Alphonse” was picked up by La Bloga.

The friend I invited to lunch declined, not for fear of ICE.
She is not worried for herself, but for me.
‘Can’t make it, watch out for ICE,’ she said, fancying herself funny.

I go along with the joke as nothing will keep me
from stopping by the restaurant that’s easily overlooked
with an empty dirt lot next to it, low ceiling.
Thick roots give rise to spindly branches and a lush.
top heavy Laurel Fig, an outstretched canopy over the world.

I tell my friend I have a strategy for defeating ICE.
Say I will expose how much of a good citizen I am

Kudos to Michelle Smith whose poem “Eight Shaved Heads” was published by LA Art News‘ Poet’s Place series . Two more poems of hers “For the Love Creme Brulee” and “Nana’s Heart” were featured in Four Feathers Press Online Edition: Love (excerpt of the latter available below).

Shiny sterling silver
Sparkly and cool to the touch
Inside soft red velvet
A jewelry box reminds me of Nana’s Heart.
No music, no jewelry, nor an empty find.
Memories open of childhood past and love,
For our matriarch,
Beautiful teacher, disciplinarian, and kind.

Congratulations to Lili Lang whose fiction piece “Love and Blood” was picked up by Die Laughing Literary Magazine.

Shoutout to Joyce Loh whose fiction piece “Something Borrowed Something Blue” appeared in Pure Slush.

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*

The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during November of 2025. Three of our committed members heard about their publication opportunity 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 some time to celebrate yourself and your wonderful accomplishments, especially with so many writers published this month. Thank you and happy submitting!

Congratulations to Michelle Smith who published “Fireball Whiskey” and “Too Hot Is…” with Four Feathers Press. Excerpt of the former available below:

Water fueling may not cool or calm me 

the red dragon of Fireball Whiskey 

utterances spiced, flame breathing 

He is my only child, my Creative, Happy, Righteous, Intriguing, Social Soul.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”, said MLK Jr.

 I love you to the moon and back 

Major props to Jacqueline Lyons whose poem “Fire Season: Super Perennial” appeared in Palette Poetry. It is also the winner of their 2025 Nature Poetry Prize, selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

Did the headline that read “Succulents Saved Their Home” end
with or without a question mark

Last night, distillations beneath a live oak’s canopy
a friend fantasizes a fire-proof dome over his house
Crassula along the fence absorb his carbon dioxide

In one dream, a rain shower in every room, matchbook rolled
into the hem of a yellow dress
fountain tumbling with smoke instead of water

Who said to make someone happy, take away everything they have
then give it all back

Kudos to Ronna Magy whose poem “Perhaps” was featured in SWIMM Every Day.

i will find you down basement stairs in a damp fruitroom along oilcloth covered shelves mason jarred cling peaches strawberry jam green tomatoes floating dilled stems and hard seeds bare light bulb pull chain dark earth under feet

perhaps your back will bend over wooden washboard and sink a bristled brush scrubbing out old family stains hot water murphy oil soap gnarled fingers hold a white shirt to dim light housedresses hankies pinned to the line

Shoutout to Kate Maruyama whose article “The Conversation Continues, Even When They’re Gone” was published in Locus Magazine‘s 778th Issue. Her fiction piece “Faith” also appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact.

Congratulations to Amy Raasch whose poem “ontology of llorando” was published with Sonora Review.

feet slap dark moss soft webbed

platypus    plap plap plap

bump on my eardrum    tap tap tap

cave-wall lit like a microphone

my       amoeba legs flow in and out

lightly on a lily pad lightly

to the rhythm of the white

flower blooming in the teal black

night    spilt into the bright

gold pond of a stick-on tear

why       (it asks why      forever)

Major props to Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley whose memoir piece “El Desahogo—The Undrowning” appeared in Exposition Review and was announced as an honorable mention in their Flash 405 competition.

One of the rare times that she let Papi sit with her, he called her “Mi amor.” She erupted like a faulty pressure cooker, blowing off her lid, splashing the scalding residue of everything that had been simmering inside. The pent-up rage from her shitty marriage and the injustice of why her and not him splattered all over the walls.

I resented her anger, but never let on. Not because Papi didn’t earn it but because her kids didn’t deserve its side effects. I stayed quiet and let her vent while my siblings talked back.

“Yo tengo derecho a desahogarme,” she said, defending her right to undrown herself.

Kudos to Laura Sturza whose article feature “Older pets and owners pair up” was published in The Beacon.

When a beautiful, fluffy calico cat named Lucy was 12 years old, her family gave her up. Lucy was sick, and they couldn’t afford her medical care, according to Maddie Lederer, an adoption counselor at the Montgomery County Animal Services and Adoption Center in Derwood, Maryland.

“We looked at her records and saw she had a history of bladder stones,” Lederer said. “We were able to treat her and put her on prescription diet food, so she hopefully wouldn’t have a recurrence.”

Lucy quickly became a favorite among staff and volunteers, who described her as a “purring machine” and a “professional loafer with a cute face.” Despite those endearing qualities, though, Lucy was overlooked by prospective adoptive families because of her age and medical condition.

Shoutout to Jesenia Chávez whose poem “i think my mom has been grieving since she was a kid” was featured in Chillona: the zine, produced by writer Sofía Aguilar.

Congratulations to Jennifer Blackledge whose poem “November waits for you in the parking lot after the bar closes” was published in ONE ART: a journal of poetry. She was also their top most-read poet of November 2025.

because it likes to pick a fight
rattles around like the last two pills in
a bottle labeled zero refills

it dims the lights and
rolls its eyes when you object
invites you to dinner but clears your plate before you’re done

sneers and shakes your trees bare
opens your gate and lets your dog out
because it likes to hear you cry for lost things in the dark

Kudos to Melissa Chadburn whose creative nonfiction piece “Tilting at Windmills” was featured in Adi Magazine and her article “The Facts of Comportment” was published by the Feminist Press’ Women’s Studies Quarterly. See excerpt of the former below:

One guy spent his childhood ducking under desks in his classroom, hiding from stray bullets from a war raging outside in his hometown in San Salvador. Another guy spent much of his adult life drenched in music. He would perform the danza de viejitos, the dance of the old men, which he later demonstrated for my students on campus, wearing a papier-mâché mask and the infamous clankity-clank huaraches while holding a cane, his guitar nearby. He came here to make a better way for his wife and daughter. But that is another story; this is the story of day laborers. 

Shoutout to Citlaly Penelope whose creative nonfiction piece “Cozy Weather” appeared in The Acentos Review.

I believed in Santa long after I probably should have. His arrival meant matching PJs in front of the fireplace and listening to the adults talk over whatever Christmas movie was playing on the tv. My mom’s blonde hair bobbed up and down whenever she spoke; her infectious laugh echoed through the white picket fence house, and I questioned if whatever she heard was that funny. His presence meant peace and hope–just for a little while, anyway.

I don’t remember Christmas before we moved into that house. Before, my older brother’s and I’s nights would involve making ourselves comfortable in two folding chairs with someone’s jacket covering us as we dozed off to the blasting Spanish music and smell of tangy stale air.

Major props to Amy Shimshon-Santo who published an essay collection entitled Piecework: Ethnographies of Place with Unsolicited Press. She also wrote the introduction “Savor This Book” to Writing Braille With Chocolate, co-edited with Madalyn U. Spangler and created by the Braille Institute of America Library.

Shoutout to Meg Whelan whose poem “Backyard Blue Pine” was featured in The Banyan Review. She begins with the words: Somewhere in the basement, sealed in a black pleather book, there is evidence.

Congratulations to Azalea Aguilar who published three creative works this month: the poetry chapbook Foxhole with Bottlecap Press, the poem “I Was Once a Whisper” in The Aerial Perspective with Quillkeepers Press, and another poem “May on Meridian Street” in If All the Trees were Pens Vol. 1.

Kudos to Ashton Cynthia Clarke whose two poems “Inspired by ‘Woman of the Popo Country’ Jamaica 1770s” and “Cracked” were both published by Four Feathers Press. The latter is available below:

I glared back at the sullen reflection wondering how this split came to be stitched together from faces of others come before two-toned swaths of a father’s dutifulness bitter rage seething on the reverse pulled & torn at ragged seams.

Props to Carla Sameth whose two poems “Dethroned” and “December, 1995” appeared in Mutha Magazine. Excerpt of the latter available below:

At first we all just took that December
to be the month before everything
would change. Of all
the mad scientist cures for miscarriage,
prednisone led to gestational diabetes
which led to food deprivation.
Finally pregnant, yet on a diet
after planning to eat whatever
I wanted when I had a real being inside,
at last. I held this sparkly feeling
that never left no matter
the taste of grey toast or dirt,
the strange bright red blood
at 13 weeks. This time,
the baby stayed.
The alchemist grew with me.

Shoutout to Molly Cameron whose memoir piece “Why I Still Want a Delia’s Bucket Hat” was featured in open secrets magazine.

Visiting my parents recently, I attempted to clean out a drawer in my childhood bedroom when I found what remained of my stash: four Delia’s catalogs, slightly worn and faded but otherwise preserved. One of them was the Summer 1997 issue that started my obsession, featuring the bucket hat. A thrill tingled through me. I spread them all out on the carpet and read each one cover to cover. I recognized all the models as if they had been old friends and remembered so many articles of clothing that I had lusted after. The floral-print ringer tee. The long green plaid skirt. The platform flip-flops. I put the catalogs in a Ziploc freezer bag and brought them home with me to Queens.

Congratulations to Mahru Elahi whose creative nonfiction piece “Body Double” was published in Black Warrior Review’s Issue 52.1, and they placed another creative nonfiction piece “Change of Name” with Solstice Magazine. Excerpt of the latter is available below:

Whether in its original or post-9/11 form, I can tell you that my first name is a multisensory site of racialized contention. It isn’t just the painful stutter that I have to watch out for. There has been a lifetime of dubious looks: when I stand and walk to a door held open by someone in scrubs for a doctor’s appointment, it’s there. I sense a bodily hesitation, like the door might close in my face. It happens when I press my papers to a bullet-proof glass window at passport check and wonder if the extra questions, the extra care with searching my body, is related to the name I carry.

The dubious look is followed, sometimes, by a question.

Kudos to Gina Rae Duran who edited Flowersong Press’ anthology The White Picket Fence: Stories of Individuality as Rebelliousness Collection (alongside Edward Vidaurre) where it was released just this month! They also placed a poem in the California Bards SoCal Poetry Anthology 2025, produced by Local Gems Press.

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*