Month: April 2016

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Early Morning Optimism

by Linda DeMers Hummel

It’s late afternoon. I know lots of bloggers who are just getting started about this time. Not me. I’m an extreme early morning writer, a luxury I can afford now that I won’t wake up anyone as I make coffee and then tread up and down the wooden stairs in my bare feet for the second and third cup. As a writer, I’m full of myself in the mornings. You would be hard pressed to find someone quite so confident at 5 AM.

But in these hours, as the light is leaving on what was a cool and cloudy day, I’m faced with the usual thought: I will never, ever be able to think of anything good to write ever again.

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Writing about Difficult Topics: Bringing Dark Corners into the Light

by Carla Sameth

“Bringing dark corners into the light sometimes is very painful and debilitating, but sometimes you have to do it.” Gerda Govine Ituarte

Sometimes you can’t help but do it…go into the room naked. Writing saved my life and writing has almost driven me mad. “They” say, show don’t tell, but sometimes you have to do both. In December 28, 2009, just before the news stories started to break in a substantial way about the culture of violence within the LA County Sheriff’s department (LACSD), a LACSD deputy broke my nose and something inside of me broke as I squatted in my own blood on the platform of the Highland Park Metro station. Three years later, I wrote about this in my cover story in the Pasadena Weekly, “One Day on the Gold Line”.

Continue reading “Writing about Difficult Topics: Bringing Dark Corners into the Light”

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Submitting on a Budget: Network

by Lisbeth Coiman

Where writing has become a self-employment enterprise, tracking expenses is vital for the emergent writer struggling to build her brand. Conferences, books, subscriptions, writing courses, memberships, tracking sites, and submission fees all add up quickly to a limited writing budget.

Arguably, artists can create great work without ever attending conferences, reading peers’ books, or participating in workshops, but writing great pieces is only one step in the process of getting published. Unless the emergent writer enjoys the benefit of a well-connected literary circle, a consistent flow of submissions to literary journals, contests, and online magazines is the only road to publication. Gaining access to information about submission calls takes up most of the money set aside to submit work. For that reason, submitting to publications on a regular basis on a shoestring requires a well thought submission plan.

Continue reading “Submitting on a Budget: Network”

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The Animal In Us

by Melissa Chadburn and Lauren Eggert-Crowe

One December night in Culver City, I, Melissa Chadburn, was talking to Lauren Eggert-Crowe about Kate Gale’s Huff Po missive about AWP’s inclusion and Carol Muske-Dukes’ defense of said article. Lauren said she’d wanted to write a response but it takes her time to write these things. I suggested we collaborate on a response to be read aloud at a Red Hen Press event. So on Thursday April 7th, rather than read the essay that Red Hen published in the Los Angeles Review, I read this:

MC:
I used to live in a group home. I used to wander the streets looking into people’s dining rooms with the worst kind of ache. I used to stand around with teenage boys on the street corner waiting for the stoplight to change color. I used to hitch rides through the Palisades to go to my group home for girls by the ocean. I used to worry about gonorrhea and feel like I was the worst piece of shit alive. I used to pat my mother’s hair between my hands like hamburger meat. I used to practice kissing girls by kissing the back of my hand or kissing my own shoulder just to see what my skin tasted like. I used to do graffiti on government issued desks waiting for my name to be called. I used to long to belong to a world of the ordinary.

Continue reading “The Animal In Us”

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The Rejection Game

by Loren Rhoads

In January 2012, I read a blog post that set me on fire. Business coach, Tiffany Han was aiming to get 100 rejection letters that year. Her goal was not really the rejections themselves, but to stretch, force herself out of her comfort zone, take some risks, and see where she could land. I was inspired by the thinking behind the project, which made collecting rejections a game as opposed to wallowing in the sting of them.

I’ve been on both sides of the editor’s desk, so I understand that things get rejected for a lot of different reasons: too long, too short, not to the editor’s taste, they just published something similar, they’re overstocked, they’re changing direction, you’ve hit one of the editor’s pet peeves… As much as I know that I am not my work and I as a person am (probably) not being personally rejected, it still hurts. Continue reading “The Rejection Game”

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Ten Small Presses Under $25

IMG_2016By Lisbeth Coiman

As if you didn’t gather enough information at the AWP, here is a bit more, a short list of publications to send your best work to. This time I rounded up ten small presses names with their contact information and a short review. They all have open reading periods. They all do exceptional work at bringing emergent voices on print.

1. 2Leaf Press
Reading Period: Opening date January 1.
Submission Guidelines
What They Like: NY-based nonprofit that promotes literature and literacy. They look for new voices, and produce quality work in a wide variety of genres by culturally diverse authors. Focus on literary fiction and cultural non-fiction.

2. Alternative Book Press
Reading Period: Not listed
Submission Guidelines
What they like: They are looking for work that can stand time, not just for a sale hit.

3. Cinco Puntos Press
Reading Period: Not listed
Submission Guidelines
What They Like: Although they have a focus on the US / Mexico border region, they also publish great writers from other parts of the countries with stories located in other settings. Submission starts with a phone call.

4. C&R Press
Reading Period: Now accepting
Submission Guidelines
Reading fee: $25
What They Like: They are interested in supporting authors whose thoughtful and imaginative contribution to contemporary literature deserved recognition and support.
5. Diversion Press
Reading Period: Opens May 1
Submission Guidelines 
Reading fee: 0
What They Like: Academic non-fiction, slice of life, how-to, history, and other non-fiction works. They also publish a poetry anthology and sponsor a poetry contest.
6. Outpost19
Reading Period: Not listed
Submission Guidelines
Reading fee: 0
What They Like: Looks for innovative projects and provocative reading. Uses submittable.
7. Pink Fish Press
Reading Period: Not listed
Submission Guidelines
Reading fee: $0
What They Like: Try to destroy the stigma of “poor quality work” that accompanies independent authors. They believe in talented voices, and gifted writers are the forefront of popular culture. Isn’t that nice?
8. Red Hen Press
Reading Period: Open till September
Submission Guidelines
Reading fee: $20
What They Like: Red Hen Press is committed to publishing work of literary excellence, supporting diversity, and promoting literacy in our local schools. They seek a community of readers and writers who are actively engaged in the essential human practice known as literature.
9. Wild Embers Press
Reading Period: Not listed
Submission Guidelines
Reading fee: $0
What They Like: Looking for experimental stories of love and liberation from marginalized place in all genres, fiction, creative non fiction, and poetry. Welcomes art included with narratives. Query via email at wildemberseditor@gmail.com. Only PDF files.

10. Willowbooks
Reading Period: Open from April 1 to September 1
Submission Guidelines
Reading fee: $0
What They Like: Their mission is to develop, publish, and promote writers typically underrepresented in the market, and the reading period is open to all writers from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Headshot 2Lisbeth Coiman is a bilingual writer standing (unbalanced) on a blurred line between fiction and memoir. She has wandered the immigration path from Venezuela to Canada, to the US, and now lives in Oakland. Her upcoming memoir The Shattered Mirror celebrates friendship among women and draws attention on child abuse and mental illness. She also writes short fiction and poetry, and blogs “irregularly” at www.gingerbreadwoman.org