By Noriko Nakada
Maybe you’ve heard, but in case you haven’t, Women Who Submit is celebrating 10 years! I mean, even Poets & Writers took notice of this badass organization and the women and nonbinary writers who are pushing against the patriarchy by supporting one another in our creative journeys.
As part of our first decade anniversary, we invite you to submit to our second anthology: Gathering. The first Women Who Submit anthology, Accolades highlights previously published work by Women Who Submit members, while Gathering celebrates how, in 2020-2021, “we continue to gather across the country, support one another, and find joy in the midst of our trauma.”
Gathering “welcomes submissions of both unpublished and previously published poems, essays, stories, plays, and hybrid work from all WWS members. Our goal is to gather work in response to the current conditions of our world. It is an opportunity to share the trauma and celebrate the joy.”
If you have already submitted, claps, claps, claps!
If you are still looking through your drafts for the right piece to submit, keep the May 31st deadline in mind.
If you don’t think you have anything written yet, here are some prompts for each of our genres. Go for it! You have a whole three-day weekend to draft, revise, re-read, revise, edit again, and submit something for Gathering. Or, just write to the prompts because it’s like improv and a fun exercise to jump into a different genre and write for fun for a bit.
PROMPTS
DRAMA: Write a scene between characters with an unresolved past who find themselves unexpectedly stuck in line together.
POETRY: Using recycled lines from poems you’ve drafted throughout the pandemic, write a new poem and incorporate specific flora and fauna. Maybe try a villanelle or a duplex!
FICTION: Capture a scene of post-pandemic bacchanalia where a character gets lost.
NONFICTION: Write three different brief scenes capturing various points of a relationship or a place. Weave them together into an essay.
Remember to read the submission guidelines and then, we hope you will breathe and push submit.
Noriko Nakada writes, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. She is the author of the Through Eyes Like Mine memoir series. Excerpts, essays, and poetry have been published in Kartika, Catapult, Meridian, Hippocampus and elsewhere. She edits Breathe and Push for Women Who Submit.