Month: May 2017

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A WWS PUBLICATION ROUND UP FOR MAY

A laptop computer with an article titled "Submissions Made Simple" on the screen and a stack of literary journals sits on top of the laptop base, titles facing out

April showers bring May flowers and lots of wonderful publications from Women Who Submit. Congratulations, all!

From Shawna Kenney‘s “The Best Vegan Skincare Products for Summer” at Paste:

We slathered and lathered in our home testing and came up with these winners. Bonus learning that each of these companies is eco-friendly and independently owned. And knowing no one was harmed in the making of these skincare products makes them feel even better going on.

From Lauren Eggert-Crowe‘s “Heaven Make Me a Warrior to Slay All the Bad Magic,” a runner-up for the 2016 poetry contest at Black Warrior Review:

your voice in me

and then the ghost

of your voice

in me

Spent my last nickels

on your pretty blues

Congratulations to Lauren whose chapbook, Bitches of the Drought, was released this month by Sundress Publications!

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Behind the Editor’s Desk: Nikia Chaney

by Lauren Eggert-Crowe

Early in 2017, Women Who Submit invited Nikia Chaney to one of our submission parties. It was the beginning of the year, so the room was packed with writers excited and motivated to accomplish their goals and renew their commitments to good work. We hung posterboard on the wall with goals like “Submit to Residencies,” “Get Paid For Work,” “Finish a Project,” and “Activist Writing.” We each scrawled our names in marker underneath the goals that spoke to us. Still buzzing from the spirit of the Women’s March and the inspiration of powerful intersectional feminist leaders, many of us were eager to connect our creative work to community building. Nikia Chaney, of Jamii Publishing, led new and seasoned WWS members in a great discussion about starting collaborative projects like a press or a journal, and how to best involve the community in the artistic process.

It’s safe to say Nikia knows a lot about goal setting. Jamii, an independent press based in San Bernardino, beautifully lays out its vision, mission, and goal: “Our mission at Jamii Publishing is to foster the communion of artists from all genres, foster growth in the artistic world, and to bring these arts to the community.  We strive to work with artists who are already active in the community as well as those who have a desire to reach outside of their comfort zone and share their art with the larger world. We want to gift books to these dedicated people and help them in turn help others.”

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June WWS Orientation & Two Book Releases

Writer Desiree Zamorano presents a workshop to seven women seated at folding tables, facing her

by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

Saturday, June 10th from 11am-3pm, Women Who Submit will host a public orientation and submission party at Art Share LA in the Arts District with free parking for attendees. Every other month, WWS hosts a public orientation and submission party for women and nonbinary writers in order to welcome new members to join our organization and learn about our mission and submission strategies in a comfortable, supportive and open environment. We will also have a round table discussion on strategies for applying to residencies and workshops.

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Goodwill and Gratitude: Twelve Years with Poets & Writers

13 writers sit around four folding tables fit together, facing the camera, smiling

by Jamie Asaye FitzGerald

For the last twelve years, I’ve worked for Poets & Writers, Inc. Founded by Galen Williams in New York City in 1970, and guided for over thirty years by the steady hand of executive director Elliot Figman, P&W is the nation’s largest nonprofit organization serving creative writers. Its mission is to foster the professional development of poets and writers, to promote communication throughout the literary community, and to help create an environment in which literature can be appreciated by the widest possible public.

I was hired as a program assistant in 2005, and have directed the California branch office of P&W and its Readings & Workshops (West) grant program for the past three years with the help of program coordinator and fellow poet Brandi M. Spaethe. I didn’t understand at the beginning how foundational the organization’s mission and key values of service, inclusivity, integrity, and excellence were, but over the years these tenets have seeped into my bones and informed my work and my life. I consider my time at P&W as post-post-graduate work—my unofficial PhD in literary community.

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Why Write About the Hardest Things

Woman dressed in a black, lace dress bends over the side of a bridge, facing a small, tree-lined canyon

by Antonia Crane

My mom’s aggressive cancer returned the same week I got into an MFA program for writing— a terrible idea considering the recession of 2008. Mom insisted I “Get that degree!” so I enrolled even though I had no way to pay for it. I’d lost my personal assistant job, and my sugar-daddy-once-removed, a stout, Mexican man who was missing part of his thumb, suddenly disappeared for good.

A few weeks into grad school, I drove up the California coast to Humboldt where redwoods cast long shadows and the icy ocean raged silently while I euthanized my mother. I immediately plunged back into sex work. There’s no pamphlet on how to keep showing up for class when your favorite person dies. It’s like waking up without arms or feet. I floated in the fog of her absence and I wrote about her frail limbs and her moans of pain when I took her off the morphine for a few hours those final days. I wrote about her peeing the bed. Spilling milk on the floor. Choking on water. I wrote about her writing her own obituary and her cobalt blue vases filled with her orange azaleas. I wrote about meeting men in motels off the 405 to jack them off—how I was usually one hand job away from being homeless. I wrote about my mom’s feeding tube and her pastel fuzzy socks I slid off her feet before they took her body away. In my mind and on the page, my mom’s dying body merged with mine going through the motions of sex work. I couldn’t separate the two because they were braided in my mind. I kept Cheryl Strayed’s essay “The Love of My Life” (The Sun, # 321) close at hand because it gave me permission to write about my specific raging body grief and how I hurled my pussy at the world and dared it to keep me safe. Continue reading “Why Write About the Hardest Things”