As 2020 draws to a close–and never have I wanted more to see a year end–I am yet again awed by the publication prowess of our members, who have had work appear in numerous venues across all genres. Congratulations to the following WWS members who published work during the month of November!
Continue reading “WWS November Publication Roundup”
Dear writers,
After nine years of service to our community as Cofounder, Chapters Director, consultant, and mentor, Ashaki M. Jackson will be leaving her official leadership roles within Women Who Submit to focus on other endeavors.
A Note from Ashaki
I remember writing late nights in Santa Monica. Alyss and I were a decade younger and buoyed by The Writers Junction’s bottomless coffee and tea. It was a short era where poems and creative paths came easy. Women Who Submit was one of those paths that became an endless road of opportunity, artistic generation, friendship, and change. I’ve appreciated the long walk with this community and now look forward to following other paths with greater intention. It gives me great pleasure to have walked beside many inspired artists in Women Who Submit, and I hope your respective journeys are rich and productive. Safe travels to us all!
In the summer of 2011, Ashaki invited me to partner with her and Alyss Dixson to establish what Alyss called, a submission party. I hosted our very first submission party at my parents’ house where I served homemade quiche. Ashaki brought a portable office of supplies and journals for our first lending library. So much of what has become standard within WWS is because of Ashaki’s vision and dedication.
It was Ashaki’s insistence to diminish any and all financial barriers to becoming a member of our community that established WWS as an organization that offers free workshops and support all year round. And thanks to her leadership as Chapters Director, a No Fee standard now exists with WWS communities across the continent.
We thank her for enriching our commitment to women and non-binary writers and the fight for gender parity and representation in literary publishing.
We honor Ashaki and her vision by renaming our submission fee regrant, The Ashaki M. Jackson No Barriers Grant. We congratulate her on moving forward into new and exciting path!
About the Grant
The Ashaki M. Jackson No Barriers Grant offers funding to our members on a quarterly basis to help offset submission fee costs. While much of the literary landscape supports “pay to play” models, Women Who Submit believes minimizing barriers, such as submission fees and other financial hardships, is central to the pursuit of gender parity and representation in literary publishing.
Funds are awarded in conjunction with our quarterly public workshops. Members are welcomed to request between $20-$100. During Covid, these fees may go towards writer relief. This grant is open to members of the Los Angeles headquarters. To become a member you can join a “New Member Orientation” on the second Saturday of February, May, August, or November.
The first official recipient of the Ashaki M. Jackson No Barriers Grant is Alix Pham. Co-lead of the West Los Angeles Chapter with Diana Love, Alix will be using her grant to submit poetry to chapbook contests.
To make a donation to this grant as well as our 2021 free workshop series, please go HERE. Your support makes our mission possible.
With respect,
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, WWS Director
By Lisbeth Coiman
In Günter Grass’ Post WWII German novel, The Tin Drum, the chapter “The Onion Cellar” reveals the emotional struggle of an entire country grappling with the guilt of their most recent history. I imagine the cellar to be no larger than a dive bar with stairs leading to a dungeon-like space with round tables, where post-war Germans went daily to drink, peel onions, and cry. In my reading, the onion represents the layers of guilt the Germans had to work through to understand their role in the Holocaust even though in the bar they continue to see themselves as regular citizens, devout Christians who did not really know about the crimes committed by the Nazis.
It took several generations after WWII, for Germans to fully comprehend the slow erosion of democracy: the creation of paramilitary squads to intimidate any budding dissent among the general population; the effort to keep neighbors against neighbors creating divisions instead of dialogue; the role of propaganda to brainwash the population; the political maneuvers to perpetuate power in the hands of the Nazi party; the handout of favors, lavish parties, and gifts to collaborators and sympathizers; lucrative contracts for the industry favoring for the party. Some eventually understood that they had sold their soul to the devil to survive.
Post-war German art is heavy with guilt.
Venezuelans wrestle with guilt too. I recognized it when a friend told me, almost in a confessional tone that he regretted voting for Chavez, for believing in him. “He threw sand in my eyes,” my friend said.
The die-hard Chavistas who sworn to defend Chavez with their lives held onto their somehow privileged political positions until oil money ran out, and they, too, began to question the moral fabric of the “revolution.” By then it was too late to save the country, so they jumped ship and emigrated. The guilt and finger pointing runs rampant in the Venezuelan diaspora.
Like Post WWII Germans, and Venezuelans today, Americans will have to reckon with current history and our role in it.
We are witnessing a “regime-in-the-making.” A quick look at the history of any totalitarian regime is enough to find all the signs of a democracy in demise. Every absurdity has been carefully planned to make the followers laugh, the opposition cringe, and keep the megalomaniac omnipresent in the media. I dare to say, the goal is to produce enough political unrest to the point of chaos to justify the cancelation or postponement of elections in November.
The great majority of people in this country believe themselves good citizens, church going, good neighbors, hard-working individuals. Some who would have died with a knife in their throats for Sanders, but not for their nation. Some stopped believing in the system; others allowed robots to drive the conversation on social media; the great majority just joked about the demagogue’s enlarged ego. Never forget the devout Christians, bless their hearts, who voted against the possibility of an abortion, but didn’t care much about the death of democracy. Like Venezuelans twenty years ago, some thought this will never fly. And yet it did.
The worst are those who continued to give a demagogue starving for attention a platform on mass media because people were watching and numbers were more relevant than the future of the country.
Four years later, we are now at this point. We are rightfully worried and horrified at the outrageous efforts by the White House to undermine democratic process, repeatedly attempting to toss out votes . The peak of this anti-democracy campaign recorded on video when a group of domestic terrorist try to derail the campaign bus of his opponent.
The nation is swinging in the pendulum of cold war era ideologies, accusing each other of communist and imperialist while funeral homes run out of space for the bodies waiting for burial.
Have we sold our soul to the devil to keep our slice of privilege intact? As my friend Angela Franklin points out, “whiteness will not protect you.”
This is happening on our watch whether we were always aware or not. The history books are going to say 330 million Americans let this happen. Twenty years down the road, when the Canadians need to invade the USA to free us from a brutal dictator, we will all sit in dive bars called the Onion Cellar to peel our eight layers of guilt, and cry.
Lisbeth Coiman is a bilingual writer wandering the immigration path from Venezuela to Canada to the US. She has performed any available job from maid to college administrator, and adult teacher. Her work has been published in Spectrum, Cultural Weekly, Hip Mama, the Literary Kitchen, YAY LA, Nailed Magazine, Entropy, and RabidOak. She was also featured in the Listen to Your Mother Show in 2015. In her self-published memoir, I Asked the Blue Heron (Nov 2017), Coiman celebrates female friendship while exploring issues of child abuse, mental disorder, and her own journey as an immigrant. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches ESL and dances salsa.
