The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during April 2025. Five our committed members heard about an opportunity through WWS programming and/or another member.
I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety. Please take a moment to extend congratulations to our members who had their work published this month. Thank you and happy submitting!
Let’s begin by congratulating Amy Raasch who placed two poems “Why I Am Not a Gravedigger” and “Ashes” in the anthology Angel City Review: Ten Years of Poetry in L.A. Excerpt of the the former is available below:
I like to go to the diner, drink coffee,
and listen to Barbara talk shit. Barbara
doesn’t work the graveyard shift.
I tell her, church basement flooded
so we held the reception at the house.
I tell her nobody will sit
in my mother’s kitchen chair;
the air is too thick with her
unanswered questions.
Kudos to Romaine Washington who published a poem in Cholla Needles 100 produced by Cholla Needles Publishing.
Shoutout to Ronna Magy who published a poem entitled “Ode to the Female Body” with Sinister Wisdom 136: Icons.
Congratulations to Natalie Warther whose flash fiction pieces “Four Dads” and “Even the Horses” were featured in Had Journal. She also published fiction piece “Outside Husband” in Xray Literary Magazine (see excerpt of the latter below).
The survivalist stuff started as a hobby for my husband. An attempt to disconnect from the tech-dependent modern world. But quickly, our renovated backyard started looking more like a trash dump than a place to entertain the neighbors. He just kept making “tools.” Dental floss snares. Crayon candles. Pantyhose fishing nets. Dryer lint tinder. Maple syrup mouse traps. He used every single trash bag in the house for the water collection system.
Huge shoutout to Elizabeth Galoozis whose book Law of the Letter has been published with Inlandia Institute.
Please join me in congratulating Jacqueline Lyons whose hybrid creative nonfiction piece “Dialogic: Except the Rain” appeared in Eastern Iowa Review.
Dear John,
A new year, and time to dialogue—the opposite of breaking up—with the elements. Especially water. The elements speak with such singularity and purpose, ferrying blue glyphs as the crow flies, while human nerve bundles shoulder a mix of fear and longing, more list than image. All of us, most of the time, of at least two minds. Giant Sequoia, Sparrows, and Sharks too.
Except for the taco truck near the intersection of Los Angeles Avenue and Somis Road that concentrates its powers inward and births an illuminated island, an horchata oasis, a candle in the window radiant after 9 pm. Committed, they do not offer combinación plates.
Kudos to Valerie Anne Burns whose memoir piece “Does God Visit Santa Barbara” was featured in “Women in a Golden State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond.”
Shoutout to Marya Summers who published a poem “On the Dunes of Manchester Beach, Five Years without Housing” in Pensive Journal’s tenth issue.
Big congratulations to Kate Maruyama who published her novel Alterations with Running Wild Press.
Kudos to Ashton Cynthia Clarke who published creative nonfiction piece “A Writer’s Life in Altadena: In the Line of Arts and the Eaton Fire” in Los Angeles Literature.
I almost died in that house in the foothills.
But my story differs from others you may have read regarding African American homeowners in Altadena, who were devastated by the Eaton Fire.
Twenty-five years ago, the arms wrapped around mine, which were wrapped around my own shivering frame, belonged to my soon-to-be husband, Phillip. “Where are we?” I asked. I hadn’t seen my breath hang in the air since my last camping trip to the Angeles National Forest.
Shoutout to Lauren Eggert-Crowe whose poem “Persephone watches Buffy the Vampire Slayer” appeared in Mayday Magazine.
I, too, have known the dark
chocolate thrill of a kiss against the wall
of a mausoleum. Our hunger pangs caused us
trouble — the semiotics of leather jackets,
animal prints. Night smudges the lines,
sexual and otherwise. I know how lonely it is
to grow beside a lover who remains dead
inside the narrative he chose.
You think I don’t watch
Kudos to Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo whose poem “Motherless Mothers and the Daughters They Bear” was also featured in in Mayday Magazine.
I mother myself gentle because my mother’s hands
were rough, cracked, and ruby ringed.
When her mother died, she kept all the jewelry and left me
nothing. Maybe when your mother never mothers you,
it makes you a hoarder. Mother’s Day commemorative plates
from the 70s to the 90s collect dust on the family piano
that never feels fingers along its keys. A behemoth stand
for porcelain plates mocking images of mothering
she never saw.
Congratulations to Michelle Y. Smith who published poems “Windows of My Soul” and “Peace” with Four Feathers Press. Her poem “There is a Sunflower” was also featured in LA Art News’ April Poets Place (excerpt of the latter available below).
His brown coffee
Countenance
Of disk florets
Is framed with maize petals
Cheery and happy-go-lucky
Spirit pollinates
Where he goes
He laughter contagious
*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*