The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during May of 2026. One 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!
Kudos to Marya Summers whose poem “August Complex with Vehicular Homelessness” was published with Georgia State University.
Shoutout to Amy Raasch whose poem “Animal or Machine” was featured in Poetry International.
A poet famous for formalism says the poem is a robotic dog.
A poet obsessed with the 16th Century says the poem is a lyre with shotgun arms.
A poet married to a finer poet says the poem is a trash bag tied in a perfect knot.
A poet who fled war at age five says the poem is a chimera caped with a torn Russian flag.
A Midwest-born poet says the poem is his pet horse, cooked & eaten when winter takes the farm.
A poet who played Lady Macbeth in high school says the poem is a fake knife with real blood.
Huge congratulations to Rachel Turney whose poetry collection Retired Wannabe Club Kid was recently released with Parlyaree Press.
Kudos to Christy Umberger whose poem “Westward Call” appeared in Altar Magazine‘s first issue.
Monday afternoon, between work, therapy,
and car tune-up, a farewell walk,
where I cry, resting a hand
against my grandmother elm,
guardian I fell in love with,
despite my kicking and screaming
for spring before winter.
Shoutout to Barbara Berg for her publication of the poem “We need a mathematical solution for our neurons” in Poets for Science (excerpt available below). She also had her poem “To change the shape of wood, you must understand its properties” picked up by As It Ought to Be Magazine.
I folded into myself for years, by fold I mean in half, then quarters, then eighths.
What might be unclear or missing is how a body folds.
Today, as usual, it’s the DNA I missed.
Outside, I hear a buzzing and a hummingbird in a tree surprises me.
I caption a photograph: The wound of a firecracker plant.
Congratulations to Byurakn Ishkhanyan whose creative nonfiction piece “The Human in the Words” was featured in Ark Review.
Witness 1: My autistic daughter is driving me crazy. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.
Witness 2: I feel, I like sports and videogames. I showered this morning. I had pizza for dinner.
It’s 3 a.m. I am nursing my daughter and playing the Turing Test on my phone. Here, one of the two human players is assigned to be either the interrogator or one of the two witnesses. The second witness is the AI. The interrogator’s task is to figure out which witness is the human. The witness’s task is to convince the interrogator that they are human.
In this round of the game, I am the interrogator and I ask the witnesses, “What makes you human? Tell me in sixteen words.”
Kudos to Emily Mohn-Slate whose interview appeared in Two Sylvias Press’ Weekly Muse. Read “Interview: How Motherhood Can Inform Poems” on Substack here.
Shoutout to Mahru Elahi whose creative nonfiction piece “Boghz بغض as Re-memory: an Iranian American Counternarrative to Diasporic Zionism and U.S. Imperialism” was published with Mizna.
In the summer of 2024, I moved Baba into a memory care facility. His room overlooked the gas station on the corner. I hung a painting that he has owned since the 1960s on the wall of his new room and hoped the familiar sight would bring him comfort. It didn’t seem to help. He kept asking when he was going home.
After painful months of deflecting, there was a pronounced reduction in questions about his departure. Baba settled into the rigid routine of mealtime, chair yoga classes, and naps in the facility’s loungers. His sharp political analysis returned, and I was relieved. Though the florid monologues on imperial theft and plunder that I grew up with were now a thing of the past, his pronouncements had evolved into poetry: weighty words and phrases. Baba called the white man he befriended (a fellow resident with a quick smile) farangi—foreigner—and chuckled with delight.
Congratulations to Michelle Smith whose poem “Impression” appeared in Don Kingfisher Campbell’s Turtle Island Poetry #5. She also published the poem “15 To Serve” with Don Kingfisher Campbell.
Kudos to Christine Heriat whose fiction piece “The Hum of Mataiva” was featured in The Hamilton Stone Review Issue # 54.
Since losing the last election, Nino had found fault in John’s every decision. He’d protested renovations to John’s office on the grounds that they weren’t “traditional,” without any idea of what it was like to sweat through video calls and struggle to find an outlet for the new printer. John suspected it was spite couched as custom.
Eventually, Nino would figure out John’s plan, what with them being neighbors. Nino lived windowless and doorless, in line with “tradition.” Traditional nosiness.
*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*
