Author Jim Bishop once wrote, “autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.” In September, the writers of Women Who Submit had lots of gold in their pockets.
From “When Depression Steals Your Voice,” by Alana Saltz in The Mighty:
I don’t know what to do now that depression has stolen my voice. I poise myself over a blank page, clench a pen and notebook in my hands, and nothing comes out. My brain is full of white noise that drowns out anything I might say. It’s like a switch has been flipped. Where there used to be words, there is emptiness.
From Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo‘s “Mini-Syllabus: Writing Poetry for Social Change” at Entropy:
In the summer of 2016, we witnessed Philando Castile die at the hands of a police officer in real time on our Facebook feeds, we listened to Christine Leinonen, mother of Christopher Leinonen, plea to know her son’s whereabouts after a gunman went into Pulse dance club and murdered 49 people, and we’ve cringed at the rise of a power hungry man bent on spewing a message of hate and fear with a wall at its epicenter. In response to World War II, George Orwell once said, “One ought to recognize that present political chaos is connected with the decay of language.”
From “For Those in Foster Care, ‘The Time of the Readiness’ Is Charged” by Melissa Chadburn in The Establishment:
At Edelman’s Children’s Court in Monterey Park, California, the judge called our name. The judge asked my mother if she contested my desire to emancipate. I hoped for a mother eager to prove she’d somehow overcome the facts of our lives—things like poverty and mental illness. A mom who allowed herself to want me, to fight for me.
From Stephanie Abraham‘s “Life-Affirming Narratives: Author Randa Jarrar Talks Arab-American Identity and Survival” in Bitch:
RANDA JARRAR:I write stories about Arabs, Arab-Americans, and Muslims. These are characters who are not typically portrayed in stories, unless they’re in the news, or being portrayed in a negative way, or as sidekicks. So I’m writing about people who have been historically wronged on so many levels, from the way they’re portrayed, to the resource theft they’ve experienced and the land that they get to live on—or don’t get to live on—to what space they’re allowed to occupy in the larger universal imagination.
Congratulations to Erin Michaela Sweeney whose piece “Change in Weather Over Many Days” was published in Dual Coast Magazine.
Congratulations to Barbara Berg whose poem “Perihelion” was published in Write Like You’re Alive 2016 from Zoetic Press.
Congratulations to Sandy Yang whose short story “Inside Joke” was published in Eleven Eleven.
Double congrats to Rachael Warecki who received publication acceptances for her stories “Four Blades” at Angels Flight Literary West and “The Fluid In Our Veins” at The Tahoma Literary Review.
Check out Li Yun Alvarado‘s chapbook Words or Water, now available on Amazon.com!