February 2020 – Women Who Submit

February 29, 2020

A WWS Publication Roundup for February

Happy Leap Year and congratulations to all the Women Who Submit who were published in February!

From Jenise Miller‘s “How Compton’s Communicative Arts Academy Rebuilt the City for Artists and Community Life” at KCET:

Before NWA, there was the CAA. Decades before young rap artists blasted a tough city image onto the world stage, a group of artists in Compton established the Communicative Arts Academy (CAA), a vital arts program in the era of the Black Arts Movement in Southern California in the 1960s and 70s. During the height of their operation from 1969 to 1975, the CAA invigorated Compton with art inspired by life and possibility in California’s first majority black city.

Congratulations to T.M. Semrad who had 2 pieces published at Nightingale & Sparrow – “A Wedding” and “Toward the Unfinished.” From “A Wedding:”

The groom sketches a self-portrait. He begins with the feet. They are practically shod. His feet ache. The shoes are black lace-ups with rubber soles. They are planted wide. He erases and begins again. He starts with the feet. He wears socks: nubby, cream, and thick. His feet get cold walking across the bare floor. He erases and begins again. He starts with the feet. They are bare, wide, the toes short. The big toes curl slightly up. He erases. He brushes the pale pink crumbs and pencil dust from the page, now smudged gray.

Check out T.M.‘s poem, “Virtual Realized,” published at Pomme!

Congratulations to Angelina Sáenz who had 2 poems published at Acentos Review – “Humidity” and “Estoy Sola.” From “Humidity:”

Humidity transports me

to musty brick homes along dusty roads
moist sunrise rooster calls
ragged dogs roaming on roofs

to Tepic, Nayarit

Neighbors in my Tia’s living room tiendita call

¡Quiero!

Also check out Angelina‘s, “I Come From a Place Where All We Knew Was to Be Ghetto Fabulous and Together,” at every other!

Have a listen to Lituo Huang‘s “Something to Remember” at Manawaker!

Congratulations to Donna Spruijt-Metz whose “Devil’s Fair,” a translation of Lucas Hirsch from the Dutch, was published at Copper Nickel!

Congratulations to Helena Lipstadt who had 3 poems published in February – “From Kalisz, Air, Earth” in The Midwest Quarterly, and “Doina in the Studyhouse” and “It Could Happen” in the Blue Mountain Review!

Congratulations to S. Pearl Sharp, who had a poem featured in the City of Los Angeles’ 2020 African Heritage Month Calendar and Cultural Guide!

February 26, 2020February 26, 2020

Breathe and Push: Pushing Publishing at the AWP Book Fair: A Choose Your Own Adventure!

By Noriko Nakada

I’m heading to AWP again this year. Last year was my first because I had the chance to table for Jack Jones Literary Arts. I also listened in on panels, heard from writers I respect and admire, and tackled that book fair.

The book fair is so overwhelming. All of those presses and programs and tables and books and writers. You could run into Jericho Brown wearing a flower crown, or Terese Marie Mailhot signing her memoir, or Wendy Ortiz browsing. In that overwhelm that is the AWP Book Fair, I was star-struck, and buying too many books, and stuck in my head as I wandered the aisles. I saw presses I’d sent work to who had passed. There were presses I’d never heard of. There were presses who’d published me. What did I have to say at these tables where my words were or were not welcome?

I felt lost, and small, so I found my way back to the Jack Jones table again and again. I only tabled there for a few hours over the course of the conference, but it was always a magnet pulling me, and it felt like my home base within that chaos. Even when I wasn’t tabling for them, every time I found myself in that fair, I’d walk by their table, visit with the staff or an author, ask if they needed anything, and help out before making my way to a lecture or panel.

Jack Jones isn’t at AWP this year, but I want to tackle that book fair in a way that feels healthy and productive. I don’t want to feel so lost and overwhelmed. So this is my AWP Book Fair action, and I invite any Women Who Submit members who are attending to join me in putting a little activism into your book fair wanderings.

1) Approach a press with one of our Women Who Submit postcards.

2) Present the card and introduce yourself. Explain a little about Women Who Submit, an organization which, as a response to the VIDA count, empowers women and nonbinary writers to submit their work for publication.

3) Choose your own adventure:

a friendly press: Thank the presses for doing their part to bring more gender equity into the publishing world. Maybe ask how they think they will do on the 2019 count, and what they plan to do to ensure continued equity in 2020. Ask about how they think they’re doing publishing women of color.

a press that is making gains: Acknowledge that the press has improved, but isn’t yet equitable. Ask if they are doing anything to ensure more equitable gains on the 2019 count or for 2020. Ask if they know about their racial representation and how they think they are doing/can do better.

a press that isn’t friendly to women: OK, only one of these is at AWP this year, but go ahead and let them know that they aren’t very equitable in their publishing of women and ask if they’re doing anything to change this. Ask how they might improve their representation of women of color.

a press that isn’t on the VIDA count list: There are so many of these! Ask them how many women editors they have, editors of color, queer editors? Are they actively recruiting marginalized voices? What are their strategies? Do they pay? Are they interested in hearing from our members? Particularly if there are women tabling, and specifically women of color, thank them for the work they are hopefully doing to ensure more equity in publishing.

4) Ask them to look for Women Who Submit members in their slush piles, and to be on the lookout for submissions during our Annual Submission Blitz in August!

5) Record your interaction. Did they seem receptive to WWS’s mission? Any names of editors or upcoming submission deadlines you should note? Will you send them work?

Press/Table	Response to WWS Mission	Editor Names*	Any upcoming call for submissions	Will you submit?

Please record your activism on this google form.

https://forms.gle/MNw1syCdMGbX87z49

It’s that simple! Make the most of your AWP!

Press designations from the 2018 VIDA Count: Book Fair location or N/A (not attending)

Friendly Presses

+60% women published
McSweeney’s: T1930
The Missouri Review: N/A
Prairie Schooner: 1668-1669
The Normal School: N/A
Pleiades: T2034
The Cincinnati Review: 1533, 1534

+50% women published
Tin House: 1635
Granta: N/A
Boston Review: N/A
Ninth Letter: 1532
Jubilat: N/A
Colorado Review: 1430
Conjunctions: N/A
Virginia Quarterly: 1129
Fence: 1751
n+1: T1321
The Believer: 1643-1644
New England Review: N/A
Kenyon Review: 1655

Getting Better: (made improvements >+5% in more equitable representation, but still not to 50%)
Poetry: 1457
The New Yorker: N/A
Gettysburg Review: 1135
Southwest Review: T259
Harvard Review: T1220

Male-Dominated Presses (less than 40% women represented)
The Times Literary Supplement: N/A
The Nation: N/A
The Threepenny Review: N/A
London Review of Books: N/A
The Atlantic: N/A
The New York Review of Books: 1058

Find us for WWS cards at the ACCOLADES Release Party on Thursday, March 5th from 4pm-7pm at La Botanica or at the ACCOLADES Book Signing on Friday, March 6th from 12pm-2pm at table Nosotrxs: More Than Books, 1038.

You can also catch WWS members all over AWP. Here is our AWP San Antonio guide.

Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. Publications include: Through Eyes Like Mine (2010), Overdue Apologies (2012), and I Tried (2019). Excerpts, essays, and poetry have appeared in Catapult, Meridian, Kartika, Hippocampus, Compose, Linden Avenue and elsewhere.

February 25, 2020March 2, 2020

WWS at AWP20 San Antonio

Black woman speaking from podium in a conference room as other women in her black mother collective look on.

By Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

It’s time for our annual WWS-AWP guide. Below you will find a list of panels, readings, and book signings featuring our members, including the release of our very first anthology, ACCOLADES on Thursday, March 5th at La Botanica. Last year in Portland, I chose to only attend WWS events, and the result was inspiring. I wrote about the powerful collaborative panels I was lucky to attend last year in this piece for our blog. If you’re overwhelmed by all the offerings, try what I did and pick a few events from our list.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2020

Neo n Lit Offsite Reading

The Twig Book Shop: 306 Pearl Pkwy #106 San Antonio, TX 78215 / 7pm-9pm / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Lorinda Toledo. From description: “Please join us for our Neon Lit Alumni Reading @ AWP, San Antonio! There will be raffles/prizes.”

THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2020

Making Place in Hybrid Tongues

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 2016A / 10:35am-11:50am / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Sehba Sarwar. From description: “This panel highlights the work of writers who explore remembered and imagined attachments with place. Featuring five women of color whose living and writing transcend national borders and literary genres, the panel asks whether the places we navigate demand their own hybrid literary forms. Writers who wear multiple tags—novelist, memoirist, poet, translator, critic—read from new work. These works embody aesthetic and political choices involved in representing locales across genres.”

One Day on the Gold Line (Black Rose Writing 2019) Book Signing Featuring Carla R Sameth / Bookfair, Table #958 / 1pm-5pm

Accolades: WWS Anthology AWP Release Party

La Botanica: 2911 N Saint Marys St, San Antonio, Texas 78212 / 4pm-7pm / FREE

Join us in celebrating the release of ACCOLADES: a Women Who Submit Anthology at AWP! We will have featured readers, copies of the anthology for sale, and La Botanica will have drinks and food for sale. We’ve been empowering women and nonbinary writers to submit work for publication since 2011, but this is our very first, all our own publication.

One Poem Festival: Canto Mundo, Letras Latinas, and Macondo

San Antonio Public Library: 600 Soledad St, San Antonio, Texas 78205 / 6pm-7:30pm

Featuring WWS member, Vickie Vértiz as well as other writers from Macondo Writers Workshop, Canto Mundo, and Letras Latinas.

Po etry on the River Walk | AWP Offsite

Casa Rio (Veranda Room): 430 E commerce St., San Antonio, TX / 6:30pm-10pm / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Tanya Ko Hong. From description: “Join 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, Poetry Northwest, and Quarterly West for an AWP offsite poetry reading. Walk from the conference center to Casa Rio (Veranda Room), located on the River Walk. Free drinks and appetizers while they last. See you there!”

Tupelo Press 30/30/Conference Alumni Reunion Reading

La Villita Historic Arts Village: 418 Villita St, San Antonio, Texas 78205 / 7pm-9pm / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Donna Spruijt-Metz along side other Tupelo Press alumni. From description: “This fifth annual Alumni Reunion Reading for 30/30 and Conference alums.”

FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2020

ACCOLADES: A WWS Anthology Book Signing Featuring WWS Contributors / Bookfair, Nosotrxs: More Than Books #1038 / 12pm-2pm

The Woven Verse: An Exploration of the Latinx Verse Novel in Kidlit

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 217B / 12:10pm-1:35pm

Featuring WWS Member, Vickie Vértiz. From description: “Latinx novels in verse have burst the children’s and young adult literary world open with award-winning and groundbreaking books. Join celebrated authors as they delve into the craft of writing a novel through the art of poetry as well as how their unique Latinx identity and experiences inform and nourish their work.”

New Suns: Afrofuturist and Cyborg Aesthetics

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 214B / 1:45pm-3pm

Featuring WWS member, Karolyn Gehrig. From description: “Octavia Butler writes, “There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” Taking a cue from Butler—Afrofuturist and disabled writer—this panel will discuss and demonstrate some new suns. What can a poem do in the 21st century? What is the strange new grammar of screens? How do we create and conscript images for activism? Panelists work in multiple genres including creative nonfiction, mixed media, performance, and poetry.”

To Be Young, Black, & Tenure Track: Diversity in Higher Education

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 008 / 1:45 pm to 3:00 pm

Featuring WWS member, Ryane Granados. From description: “What does it mean when you walk into a classroom and the person at the podium looks like you? As colleges across the nation increase diversity and inclusion efforts to close equity gaps for students of color, they may be overlooking one thing—diverse faculty representation. Published authors and professors, our panelists share best practices for culturally responsive pedagogy, their experiences in academia, tips for supporting Black teachers, as well as how they make time for writing.”

UGA Author Signing Featuring Colette Sartor / Bookfair, UGA Press Booth #1730 / 3pm

Veliz Books, offsite reading

Menger Hotel: 204 Alamo Plaza, San Antonio, TX 78205, United States / 5:30pm / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Sehba Sarwar.

3×3: Offsite With ALR, The Pinch, and The Arkansas International

Francis Bogside: 803 S Saint Marys St, San Antonio, Texas 78205 / 6pm-8pm

Featuring WWS member, Soleil Davíd. From description: “3×3: A reading hosted by American Literary Review, The Pinch Literary Journal, and The Arkansas International. Come join us for another #awp off-site reading.”

New Futures: Apogee x Offing Off-Site

The Cherrity Bar: 302 Montana St., San Antonio, Texas 78203 / 6pm-8pm FREE

From description: “2020 is The Offing’s fifth birthday and Apogee’s ten-year anniversary! Come celebrate with six authors (all joint contributors) who are writing what’s possible for literatures to come. We’ll dream up what our communities need for ten more years of extraordinary publishing—writing for us and by us, another decade at the outermost.”

Saturday, March 7, 2020

Women Trespassing: Women Breaking the Rules in Fiction and Their Writing Careers

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 008 / 9am-10:15am

Featuring WWS member, Liz Harmer. From description: “A Catholic-turned-Buddhist has sex with her Zen master. A biomechanist builds a deer suit to live in the woods. A woman stalks the celebrity living on her street. A girl basketball player navigates a male-dominated world. In this panel, women writers discuss how they write trespassing women and break rules in their writing lives. Women writers have been too long excluded from spaces of authority. We’re taking the power back. This panel is for writers ready to make risky choices and daring work.”

In Limbo: The Dilemma of Digital Thesis Repositories

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 210B / 10:35 am to 11:50 am

Featuring WWS member, Lorinda Toledo. From description: “As universities across the nation have transitioned to electronic theses, many graduate students face a dilemma: to earn a degree they are required to submit their work to a digital thesis repository. And though several top programs offer exemptions, not all programs protect students from having to submit their creative work to open-access repositories. What solutions exist for programs to protect creative theses from future publication roadblocks or potential piracy? We’ll describe a few.”

Macondo Writers Workshop Book Signing Featuring Sehba Sarwar / Bookfair, Gemini Ink/Macondo Booth #1471 / 12pm

Writing Medicine: The Role of Artists in Cultural and Community Healing

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 213 / 12:10 pm to 1:25 pm

Featuring WWS member, Maya Chanchilla. From description: “In November 2018, the FBI reported that hate crimes increased for the third consecutive year. Writers and artists build resilience and help communities heal, not only through our work on the page, but through our work in the world. Panelists offer reflections on their healing practices, from hosting pláticas following the Pulse Nightclub shooting, to working with Central American migrants at the border, to rewriting the centuries-old proclamation for the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico.”

Being an Accomplice: Supporting Local Communities through Literary Programming

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 206B / 1:45-3pm

Featuring WWS members, Kate Maruyama and Traci Kato-Kiriyama. From description: “There is an explosion of literary events all over the country, from readings showcasing famous writers to poetry nights at the local bookstore. But a neighborhood, a community, a city needs more. Literary accomplices can work together to create events that open spaces, fight erasure, and shift culture, providing environments that are safe, generative, supportive, and inclusive. Join four panelists producing events around the country to elevate the unique communities in which they work.”

Chicanas de la Frontera: Writing and Activism from the Border States

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 205 / 1:45pm-3pm

Featuring WWS members Marisol Baca, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, and Viktoria Valenzuela. From description: “In the tradition of the 1960s Chicano Movement, made well-known by the United Farm Workers strikes of Central Valley, California, and high school blowouts of Los Angeles, Chicana poets and writers from the four border states—Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California—discuss creative writing, activism, and the connections between the two. Listen to poems and stories from the borderlands, learn about current day actions to fight tyranny, and gain strategies for organizing in your own communities.”

#DignidadLiteraria Read-In at AWP

The Grassy Slope Outside the Henry B. González Convention Center / 5pm / FREE

Featuring many Latinx and BIPOC writers. From description: “No badges. No featured writers. Just us, our words, our people, our dignity.”

February 19, 2020February 19, 2020

Storytelling in Action: the World of Audio

Still from Saturday Night Live January 25, 2020

by Ramona Pilar

About this Column:

When I was about to graduate form Graduate School, I realized I had no idea what I was supposed to do with an MFA in Creative Writing.

I was born and raised in the second tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a survival mode of sorts: living moment to moment, reactive instead of proactive, ready to put out fires, real and imagined. That level of “readiness” without an actual crisis transformed into debilitating anxiety. I learned I lacked the mental space, energy, and experience to plan. Having that buffer is a type of privilege I’m only now learning to understand and practice. Hence going to grad school under the assumption that there were career answers there. They may have been, but I knew not where to look or what questions to ask of whom in order to build a career.

The initial intention was to teach, but the MFA program I attending didn’t really provide TA-ships or other teaching opportunities. Again, proactivity was not a strength I’d developed or a muscle I even knew I had; It was mythical.

At the end of it all, with fat debt and fatter doubts in my abilities, the time came to take my skills into the professional realm. I had just enough skills and aptitude in certain areas to be hyper-aware of how unqualified I was for everything remotely related to my interests and training.

I was a playwright, essayist, arts & film critic, and novice marketing/PR copywriter with no big-name bonafides and a drought of confidence. There was no “fake it ‘till you make it” for me.

February 12, 2020February 11, 2020

WWS at the Start of 2020

Three women writers of color sitting at a table discussing the validity of writing programs. WWS banner in blue and green is displayed behind them.

By Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

February has been exciting! WWS partnered with #DignidadLiteraria and Antioch University Los Angeles to host the conversation, “Latinos and the Crisis in U.S. Publishing,” addressing the American Dirt and Flatiron controversy first ignited by Myriam Gurba’s review, “Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Justice Literature” published at Tropics of Meta. The panel conversation featured, Roxane Gay (founder of Gay Mag), Myriam Gurba (author of Mean), Romeo Guzman (editor at Tropics of Meta), Christopher Soto (cofounder of Undocupoets), Wendy C. Ortiz (author of Excavation), and moderated by yours truly. The night included a community conversation where those in the audience were invited to share their own grievances and solutions. You can see coverage of the night from L.A. Times, or watch the full conversation on the WWS Facebook page.

Writers of color sitting at a long table with microphones speaking on a panel on the crisis of Latinx writers in publighing. — From left to right: Christopher Soto, Myriam Gurba, Romeo Guzman, Roxane Gay, Wendy C. Ortiz.

This past weekend we hosted our first public workshop of 2020 at the Exposition Park Regional Library. Saturday, February 8th, we began at 10am with “Should I Go?” a discussion on applying to and attending creative writing programs with Dana Johnson, Sara Borjas, and Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera. They talked about financial barriers, family expectations, traversing white spaces, and more. You can catch the full conversation on the WWS Facebook page. At this event we also gifted five regrants to WWS members to offset submission fees. Our next regrants will be offered in May.

We are excited to announce the release of our very first anthology, ACCOLADES, edited by Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera and Rachael Warecki and published by Jamii Publishing. Join us Thursday, March 5th at 4pm at La Botanica in San Antonio for our AWP release party featuring Sakae Manning, Désirée Zamorano, Cybele Garcia Kohel, Kate Maruyama, Cynthia Carlson, Heather Romero Kornblum, Sehba Sarwar, Tanya Ko Hong, Mia Nakaji Monnier, Leticia Urieta, and hosted by Noriko Nakada. This anthology was made possible by the Center for Cultural Innovation, Investing in Tomorrow grant.

Mexican-American woman with short black hair, yellow top and red-lipped smile

New this month, we welcome back former “Claps and Cheers” editor, Ramona Pilar Gonzales with her new series, “Storytelling in Action,” which highlights interesting, alternative professional applications for (creative) writing skills and experience: podcasting, marketing, content creation/development, and whatever else there might be! Ramona Pilar Gonzales writes plays, prose, and songs. Her works have been produced around Los Angeles, published online and in print, and performed across Southern California. Her dramatized essay “Del Plato a la Boca” was produced via a grant from La Plaza Cultura y Artes Foundation.

Here at the WWS website, we offer new content every Wednesday. Be sure to visit us each week for new writing from “Submitting on a Budget” with Lisbeth Coiman, “Closing the Gap” with Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, “Storytelling in Action” with Ramona Pilar Gonzales, “Breathe and Push” with Noriko Nakada, and “WWS Publication Round Up” with Laura K. Warrell published on the last day of the month. And check out our guidelines and consider submitting an essay to any of the above.

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and the author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016). A former Steinbeck Fellow, Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grantee, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, National Parks Arts Foundation and Poetry Foundation. A Macondo Writers’ Workshop member, she has work published in Acentos Review, CALYX, crazyhorse, and American Poetry Review among others. A dramatization of her poem “Our Lady of the Water Gallons,” directed by Jesús Salvador Treviño, can be viewed at latinopia.com. She is a cofounder of Women Who Submit.

February 5, 2020February 11, 2020

Writing on a Budget: Risk Management for a Sabbatical Year

By Lisbeth Coiman

I have been thinking about an unpaid sabbatical to complete a couple of writing projects. I consider risk management is essential when thinking about leaving a fairly good job to pursue an artistic goal. As an emerging writer, I should meet the following benchmarks before taking a sabbatical year.