In years past, we’d called this annual event the “Submission Blitz,” reappropriating a destructive term in pursuit of gender parity and wider representation of marginalized voices in literary publishing. But as the last 20 years has brought unbearable violence punctuated by recent catastrophic times, we at WWS thought it was time for a new direction and outlook.
SUBMIT 1 is the one day out of the year WWS encourages women and nonbinary writers across the globe to send out at least one of their top pieces to one top tier journal as one community. This is no longer about bombarding editors’ desks and slush piles.
SUBMIT 1 is an act of solidarity and faith in our own voices and communities.
WWS hosts quarterly workshops and panels to help demystify the submission process and provide professional development to the writers. One of my personal favorites was “Strategies for Submitting to Contest” in 2016 with Tammy Delatorre, winner of the 2015 Slippery Elm Prose Prize and 2015 Peyton Prize.
On that day she advised us to send our best work, the pieces we loved, the ones we had to see in the world, our absolute favorites. This was an aha moment for me.
If I want an editor to love my work and champion it in their pages, I have to love it first. If I want to turn the heads of the readers at the top journals, the work I send should be top shelf quality.
This year, in our 8th installment of this literary submission drive, I invite you choose one piece of writing, your best and most beloved piece, and do the work of sending it to at least one top journal (Or five!). And when it’s rejected (because chances are it will be), send it out again, and then again, offering as many editors as possible the privilege of reading your work, until you finally find it the right home.
This isn’t an attack. This is an act of love.
How to Participate:
1. Before September 18th, study THIS LIST of “Top Ranked Journals of 2021” with current open calls to find a good fit for your work. Links to guidelines are included.
2. On September 18th, submit one of your best pieces of writing to at least one tier one magazine from where ever you are in the world at any time of day.
3. Notify us on Facebook, Twitter, or IG. Be sure to tag us @womenwhosubmit, so we can celebrate you with lots of claps, cheers, and funny gifs.
4. Hang with us on IG Live at @WomenWhoSubmit from 7am to midnight for a full day special guests, support, and resources. Here is where you can ask WWS members for tips on submitting, get encouragement, or receive LIVE claps for when you hit send.
7am-8am: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo (@xochitljulisa) & Lauren Eggert-Crowe (@dazzlecamouflage)
8am-9am: Elizabeth R. Straight
9am-10am: Cybele Garcia Kohel (@cybelegk)
10am-11am: OFFLINE
11am-12pm: Alix Pham (@alixenpham)
12pm-1pm: Thea Pueschel (@theapueschelofficial)
1pm-2pm: Suhasini Yeeda
2pm-3 pm: OFFLINE
3pm-4pm: Toni Ann Johnson (@treeladytoniann)
4pm-5pm: traci kato-kiriyama (@traciakemi1)
5pm-6pm: Deborah Edler-Brown
6pm-7pm: OFFLINE
7pm-8pm: Cassandra Lane (@cassandra.lane71)
8pm-9pm: Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley (@lucyrodriguezhanley)
9pm-10pm: Becca Gomez Farrell (@theGourmez)
5. After submitting, fill out THIS FORM to help us track how many submissions were sent out, which will help us in our continued mission towards gender parity and wider representation of marginalized voices in literary publishing.
Submission Drive Origins:
After the first VIDA Count was published in 2009 illustrating the dearth of women’s voices in tier one publications, members of VIDA, Women in Literary Arts, began asking the editors of these journals why they thought the numbers were unbalanced. The most common answer was women don’t submit as often as men. In response, Women Who Submit and the monthly submission party was created in 2011 to support women and nonbinary writers in submitting their work for publication in order to raise the number of such voices coming across editors’ desks.
Our annual submission drive is a call to writers to submit their well-crafted and cared for work en masse to tier-one literary journals that historically have shown gender disparities in their publications. It is a call to action. Our first WWS submission drive was in September 2014 at Hermosillo Bar in Highland Park, CA.