Happy New Year! And happy Women Who Submit publications! Congratulations to all the writers who were published in January.
From Ryane Nicole Granados‘ “Course Offers Specials-Needs Moms a Mindful Return to Work” at LA Parent:
Having a baby is a transformative experience, bringing intense physical changes and engulfing emotional ones due to the pending needs of this new human. The mind races from nesting to nursing to concern over who will care for this bundle of joy once parents return to work. These concerns are heightened when a child is born with a disability of medical condition.
From Noriko Nakada‘s “People Don’t Strike for 6%; We Strike for Justice” at United Teacher:
…this weekend was not like all the others, because I’m an LAUSD public school teacher, and like every other year, I had many papers to grade and many students on my mind as I made my way through the weekend, but unlike other years, this year held an added stress. All weekend I carried the weight of a looming work stoppage and very
public contract negotiations that put my colleagues and me in the crosshairs of public conversation on the sidelines of sporting events or gathered around a table waiting for the cake to come out.
Also from Noriko, “Lessons from the Picket Line,” at Cultural Weekly:
We are both UTLA members and we had been bracing for this day since December 19th when our winter break was interrupted by the setting of the strike date. Over the holidays we talked with friends and family about the strike and made plans for our kids during the work stoppage. Then, we worried and waited. After the new year, we went back to work at our school sites, and the strike was postponed, and maybe wouldn’t even happen, but that Sunday night, when the strike was definitely happening, new levels of anxiety rose to the surface: Would all of the teachers who had committed to strike show up to the picket? Would the lines hold? Would the community support us?
From “Yesterday Small Voices” by Donna Spruijt-Metz at Poets Reading the News:
whispered to me through the day
slick-nosed, nudging
demanding my elusive attention
I looked up from my
busy ephemera, startled,
as if caught in mid-slaughter
From “The Promotion” by Karin Aurino at Literary Orphans:
His eyelids fluttered. There was a ringing in his left ear. He didn’t think he would be nervous, but maybe he was.
It was the fifth city in six days. The audience had settled into their seats. It was a large crowd, maybe a hundred and fifty people at the Westfield Mall. He had done these over a hundred times before. He could do it in his sleep.
Congratulations to Anita Gill whose essay, “Hair,” was published this month in the Iowa Review!
Congratulations to Nina Clements whose poem, “Our Mother of Sorrows,” was published in Prairie Schooner!