The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during October of 2025. Two of our committed members heard about their publication 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 some time to celebrate yourself and your wonderful accomplishments. Thank you and happy submitting!
Congratulations to Olivia Sawatzki who published fiction piece “The Devil was passing out gift cards at the corner of Figueroa and Slauson” in Does It Have Pockets.
The IHOP® was a big warm hug of brown linoleum. I felt instantly at peace there and could lose my mind in the mathematical swirling of the blue printed upholstery. I was a little nervous when it came time to pay for my Special Limited Time Offer which was a key-lime pie pancake so rich it made my teeth hurt. I explained the gift card away to Sheri, my waitress who looked uncannily like my Aunt Mary even wore the same perfume. I said I’m Not Sure if This Has Anything Left On It. I Can Check For You, she said and she whisked away my check and came back with a receipt and a pen. She said it would say on the bottom of my receipt and I looked and it said: $∞.
Kudos to Diosa Xochiquetzalcoatl who published “Out with the Old” and “To New Beginnings” in The Sand Canyon Review: Crafton Hills College’s Art and Literary Magazine, as well as “The Night My Forefathers and Foremothers Spoke” in Fresh Ink, the IE California Writers Club Newsletter. Her three poems “Just a Typical Day in Downtown LA in 1996,” “Como Comet / Like a Comet,” and “Noem-mames” appeared in the City of Los Angeles’ Latino Heritage Month 2025 Calendar and Cultural Guide (see excerpt of “Just a Typical Day in Downtown LA in 1996” below).
He was just
an 18-year-old kid
trying to do the right thing.
Un chilango
was drafted to war
by way of Mexico City.
He flew into LAX,
arrived at his tia’s
in Huntington Park.
Not a lick of English,
did this kid comprehend,
yet they sent him right on in.
Shoutout to Dilys Wyndham Thomas whose poem “a museum of waxwings” was featured in Chestnut Review. She also published fiction piece “Bellybutton Baby” in X-Ray Literary Magazine. See excerpt of the latter below:
I have this recurring nightmare in which I swim through amniotic fluid. Poppies litter the fluid, and a baby is lost somewhere amongst all the falling flowers, out of reach, beyond my thrashing hands.
To keep the nightmare at bay, I lay awake in yet another hotel room, avoiding sleep. The man in bed with me has his back turned, constellations of freckles scattered on sunburnt skin. It’s obvious from the way his body teeters on the edge of the mattress that he has decided I am a one-night stand. I run my fingers along the map that is this new back, find a replica of Cassiopeia on his shoulder. I will remember his skin long after I have forgotten everything else about him.
Slowly, I reach for the discarded condom on the floor, cup it in my palm. It is satisfyingly heavy. I tie another knot into the latex and slip out of bed.
Huge congratulations to Elline Lipkin whose poetry collection “Girl in a Forest” was recently released by Trio House Press.
Kudos to Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo whose creative nonfiction piece “How to Write a Love Poem” appeared in Cleaver Magazine.
My first poem was a love poem.
To write a love poem, one must be brave enough to speak directly to a “you.” It’s not easy work. It takes vulnerability and the threat of humiliation. Society likes to say that such endeavors are trivial, childish, and girlish. bell hooks writes in About Love: “Whenever a single woman over forty brings up the topic of love, again and again the assumption, rooted in sexist thinking, is that she is ‘desperate’ for a man.” When I was teen, all my poems were about boys and heartbreak. When I became a “serious poet,” my inner critic said such things were silly. It didn’t stop me from writing them, but I did worry, why would anyone care?
*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*