The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during October of 2026. 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!
Huge shoutout to Monona Wali who published the novel Sutra Americana with the University of Wisconsin Press.
Congratulations to Melissa Chadburn whose article “My Year Workshopping Lectures” was featured in Academe Blog.
In 2023, I was confounded by my humanness as I entered my first full-time visiting faculty position in my mid-forties. The brain fog. The creeping anxiety. Feeling my confidence and capacity to speak in front of other people vanish, even though I had a lot of experience with public speaking, panels, and reading my work in bookstores. I had even performed in a hilariously competitive reading series called Literary Death Match. None of that prepared me for my mind being hormonally hijacked as I spoke in front of a room full of twenty-year-olds, lecturing and criticizing myself internally at the same time. Me, visibly mortified, trying to make my way to The End. The end of standing in front of people, the end of uncomfortable clothing, the end of interacting at all. The end of the day.
Kudos to Anais Godard whose article “An Open Letter to Cornell University from the Mother of a Prospective Male Student” appeared in McSweeny’s.
And one day, I may hand him to a university like Cornell. I may spend eighteen years teaching him that doing the right thing doesn’t stop being the right thing when it becomes inconvenient, then trust you with the rest of his education. Teach him physics. Literature. Engineering. Teach him whatever impossible thing he decides he wants to know. There are just a few things I’d prefer he not unlearn.
That “stop” is a complete sentence.
That silence isn’t permission.
Shoutout to Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl whose poem “Brilliant Bilinguals” was featured in the California Association for Bilingual Education Multilingual Educator Fall 2026 publication.
Brilliant and bilingual, that is what you are!
You, my child, will grow up to be a spectacular, shining star!
Brillante y bilingüe, el mundo es para ti.
Tus éxitos, logros y triunfos jamás tendrán un fin.
Bilingual and brilliant being, never forget who you are!
Always remember your roots, and I assure you that you will go far.
Congratulations to .CHISARAOKWU. whose poem “Labor” appeared in AGNI’s 104th Issue.
Kudos to Lituo Huang who published two fiction pieces: “Death at the Double Kiss” with Fiction on the Web and “The Mystery of the Unhallowed Trail” in Wicked Shadow Press’ Halloweenthology: Dark Harvest anthology. Excerpt of the former available below:
Two men guard the door of the pool hall. They don’t work here. They exhale smoke into the dim evening air, snowflakes dancing around them.
My late father’s brother Francis, who recently took me on as his eight-ball doubles partner, nod to the two men. We step between them and Francis opens the door, sucking cold cigarette smoke inside the pool hall. I feel quiet tension. Maybe because it’s playoffs, or maybe because of the unexpected snow.
Shoutout to Audrey Shipp whose book review “REVIEW: Desire Lines A Memoir by Kristen Millares Young” was featured in Hippocampus Magazine.
In Desire Lines (Red Hen Press; Oct 2026), a memoir-in-essays, Cuban American novelist, journalist, and essayist Kristen Millares Young delivers a series of confessions, one being how her life story began in a fractured household. She makes this revelation in “Add a Little Salt,” the tenth essay in the collection. And perhaps it is the fractured household that compels her to tell her story in fifteen interlocking narratives. From the brokenness of family and the ruptured female body, she forges literary structure.
Congratulations to Michelle Smith whose poems “Unearthed Bodies, “Friendships,” and “Missing You Bites” were picked up by Four Feathers Press. See excerpt of the latter below:
Making the bed isn’t fun anymore
In our lives you have gone
September has no joy
Sunken places are a pillow crease
I hold it as if you were near
Nearly 35 years ago we met
God took you home under his care
You, my son, and I
Opening and closing of our lives
United we were sage, season, and strong
Kudos to Jasmine Vallejo-Love whose memoir piece “You Don’t Look Disabled” appeared in Flare Magazine.
I appear fine. Fat. But otherwise, I look ordinary. I often like it that way because no one stares, and I hate being the center of attention. All the things that differentiate me are inside—my personality, the sound of my laughter, and my invisible illnesses. For a long time, I was able to keep the fact that I am sick hidden. I didn’t claim my disabilities openly or even call myself a disabled person. I only felt bad in fits and spurts, so I didn’t think I “qualified.” Then my body started to betray me more with each passing year. Over time, it made even mundane tasks like twisting my hair or washing the dishes difficult, so I began to accept my lot in life and found ways to cope.
*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*