Author: Ariadne Makridakis Arroyo

The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during November of 2025. Three 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, especially with so many writers published this month. Thank you and happy submitting!

Congratulations to Michelle Smith who published “Fireball Whiskey” and “Too Hot Is…” with Four Feathers Press. Excerpt of the former available below:

Water fueling may not cool or calm me 

the red dragon of Fireball Whiskey 

utterances spiced, flame breathing 

He is my only child, my Creative, Happy, Righteous, Intriguing, Social Soul.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”, said MLK Jr.

 I love you to the moon and back 

Major props to Jacqueline Lyons whose poem “Fire Season: Super Perennial” appeared in Palette Poetry. It is also the winner of their 2025 Nature Poetry Prize, selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

Did the headline that read “Succulents Saved Their Home” end
with or without a question mark

Last night, distillations beneath a live oak’s canopy
a friend fantasizes a fire-proof dome over his house
Crassula along the fence absorb his carbon dioxide

In one dream, a rain shower in every room, matchbook rolled
into the hem of a yellow dress
fountain tumbling with smoke instead of water

Who said to make someone happy, take away everything they have
then give it all back

Kudos to Ronna Magy whose poem “Perhaps” was featured in SWIMM Every Day.

i will find you down basement stairs in a damp fruitroom along oilcloth covered shelves mason jarred cling peaches strawberry jam green tomatoes floating dilled stems and hard seeds bare light bulb pull chain dark earth under feet

perhaps your back will bend over wooden washboard and sink a bristled brush scrubbing out old family stains hot water murphy oil soap gnarled fingers hold a white shirt to dim light housedresses hankies pinned to the line

Shoutout to Kate Maruyama whose article “The Conversation Continues, Even When They’re Gone” was published in Locus Magazine‘s 778th Issue. Her fiction piece “Faith” also appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact.

Congratulations to Amy Raasch whose poem “ontology of llorando” was published with Sonora Review.

feet slap dark moss soft webbed

platypus    plap plap plap

bump on my eardrum    tap tap tap

cave-wall lit like a microphone

my       amoeba legs flow in and out

lightly on a lily pad lightly

to the rhythm of the white

flower blooming in the teal black

night    spilt into the bright

gold pond of a stick-on tear

why       (it asks why      forever)

Major props to Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley whose memoir piece “El Desahogo—The Undrowning” appeared in Exposition Review and was announced as an honorable mention in their Flash 405 competition.

One of the rare times that she let Papi sit with her, he called her “Mi amor.” She erupted like a faulty pressure cooker, blowing off her lid, splashing the scalding residue of everything that had been simmering inside. The pent-up rage from her shitty marriage and the injustice of why her and not him splattered all over the walls.

I resented her anger, but never let on. Not because Papi didn’t earn it but because her kids didn’t deserve its side effects. I stayed quiet and let her vent while my siblings talked back.

“Yo tengo derecho a desahogarme,” she said, defending her right to undrown herself.

Kudos to Laura Sturza whose article feature “Older pets and owners pair up” was published in The Beacon.

When a beautiful, fluffy calico cat named Lucy was 12 years old, her family gave her up. Lucy was sick, and they couldn’t afford her medical care, according to Maddie Lederer, an adoption counselor at the Montgomery County Animal Services and Adoption Center in Derwood, Maryland.

“We looked at her records and saw she had a history of bladder stones,” Lederer said. “We were able to treat her and put her on prescription diet food, so she hopefully wouldn’t have a recurrence.”

Lucy quickly became a favorite among staff and volunteers, who described her as a “purring machine” and a “professional loafer with a cute face.” Despite those endearing qualities, though, Lucy was overlooked by prospective adoptive families because of her age and medical condition.

Shoutout to Jesenia Chávez whose poem “i think my mom has been grieving since she was a kid” was featured in Chillona: the zine, produced by writer Sofía Aguilar.

Congratulations to Jennifer Blackledge whose poem “November waits for you in the parking lot after the bar closes” was published in ONE ART: a journal of poetry. She was also their top most-read poet of November 2025.

because it likes to pick a fight
rattles around like the last two pills in
a bottle labeled zero refills

it dims the lights and
rolls its eyes when you object
invites you to dinner but clears your plate before you’re done

sneers and shakes your trees bare
opens your gate and lets your dog out
because it likes to hear you cry for lost things in the dark

Kudos to Melissa Chadburn whose creative nonfiction piece “Tilting at Windmills” was featured in Adi Magazine and her article “The Facts of Comportment” was published by the Feminist Press’ Women’s Studies Quarterly. See excerpt of the former below:

One guy spent his childhood ducking under desks in his classroom, hiding from stray bullets from a war raging outside in his hometown in San Salvador. Another guy spent much of his adult life drenched in music. He would perform the danza de viejitos, the dance of the old men, which he later demonstrated for my students on campus, wearing a papier-mâché mask and the infamous clankity-clank huaraches while holding a cane, his guitar nearby. He came here to make a better way for his wife and daughter. But that is another story; this is the story of day laborers. 

Shoutout to Citlaly Penelope whose creative nonfiction piece “Cozy Weather” appeared in The Acentos Review.

I believed in Santa long after I probably should have. His arrival meant matching PJs in front of the fireplace and listening to the adults talk over whatever Christmas movie was playing on the tv. My mom’s blonde hair bobbed up and down whenever she spoke; her infectious laugh echoed through the white picket fence house, and I questioned if whatever she heard was that funny. His presence meant peace and hope–just for a little while, anyway.

I don’t remember Christmas before we moved into that house. Before, my older brother’s and I’s nights would involve making ourselves comfortable in two folding chairs with someone’s jacket covering us as we dozed off to the blasting Spanish music and smell of tangy stale air.

Major props to Amy Shimshon-Santo who published an essay collection entitled Piecework: Ethnographies of Place with Unsolicited Press. She also wrote the introduction “Savor This Book” to Writing Braille With Chocolate, co-edited with Madalyn U. Spangler and created by the Braille Institute of America Library.

Shoutout to Meg Whelan whose poem “Backyard Blue Pine” was featured in The Banyan Review. She begins with the words: Somewhere in the basement, sealed in a black pleather book, there is evidence.

Congratulations to Azalea Aguilar who published three creative works this month: the poetry chapbook Foxhole with Bottlecap Press, the poem “I Was Once a Whisper” in The Aerial Perspective with Quillkeepers Press, and another poem “May on Meridian Street” in If All the Trees were Pens Vol. 1.

Kudos to Ashton Cynthia Clarke whose two poems “Inspired by ‘Woman of the Popo Country’ Jamaica 1770s” and “Cracked” were both published by Four Feathers Press. The latter is available below:

I glared back at the sullen reflection wondering how this split came to be stitched together from faces of others come before two-toned swaths of a father’s dutifulness bitter rage seething on the reverse pulled & torn at ragged seams.

Props to Carla Sameth whose two poems “Dethroned” and “December, 1995” appeared in Mutha Magazine. Excerpt of the latter available below:

At first we all just took that December
to be the month before everything
would change. Of all
the mad scientist cures for miscarriage,
prednisone led to gestational diabetes
which led to food deprivation.
Finally pregnant, yet on a diet
after planning to eat whatever
I wanted when I had a real being inside,
at last. I held this sparkly feeling
that never left no matter
the taste of grey toast or dirt,
the strange bright red blood
at 13 weeks. This time,
the baby stayed.
The alchemist grew with me.

Shoutout to Molly Cameron whose memoir piece “Why I Still Want a Delia’s Bucket Hat” was featured in open secrets magazine.

Visiting my parents recently, I attempted to clean out a drawer in my childhood bedroom when I found what remained of my stash: four Delia’s catalogs, slightly worn and faded but otherwise preserved. One of them was the Summer 1997 issue that started my obsession, featuring the bucket hat. A thrill tingled through me. I spread them all out on the carpet and read each one cover to cover. I recognized all the models as if they had been old friends and remembered so many articles of clothing that I had lusted after. The floral-print ringer tee. The long green plaid skirt. The platform flip-flops. I put the catalogs in a Ziploc freezer bag and brought them home with me to Queens.

Congratulations to Mahru Elahi whose creative nonfiction piece “Body Double” was published in Black Warrior Review’s Issue 52.1, and they placed another creative nonfiction piece “Change of Name” with Solstice Magazine. Excerpt of the latter is available below:

Whether in its original or post-9/11 form, I can tell you that my first name is a multisensory site of racialized contention. It isn’t just the painful stutter that I have to watch out for. There has been a lifetime of dubious looks: when I stand and walk to a door held open by someone in scrubs for a doctor’s appointment, it’s there. I sense a bodily hesitation, like the door might close in my face. It happens when I press my papers to a bullet-proof glass window at passport check and wonder if the extra questions, the extra care with searching my body, is related to the name I carry.

The dubious look is followed, sometimes, by a question.

Kudos to Gina Rae Duran who edited Flowersong Press’ anthology The White Picket Fence: Stories of Individuality as Rebelliousness Collection (alongside Edward Vidaurre) where it was released just this month! They also placed a poem in the California Bards SoCal Poetry Anthology 2025, produced by Local Gems Press.

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*

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*

The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during July of 2025. One of 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 some time to celebrate yourself and your wonderful accomplishments this summer. Thank you and happy submitting!

Congratulations to Christine Heriat who published a short story entitled “The Secret Fishing Spot” in Made in L.A. Vol. 6: Hollywood Adjacent.

Kudos to Lois P. Jones who published the poem “Epistolary to Frida’s Sister Rose” in Image Journal.

Dear Rose,

From his balcony, the night sky is a portal to a pinhole
of other lives—some barely visible. As if what is remembered grows
far away. This is the way life is: You are always here on hard soil
and what you want is north or south of you. Sometimes I think death
is a sky so black we leave all our lives behind.

Shoutout to Mary Camarillo who wrote a book review entitled “Locals Only, The Golden Women of Orange County” in Citric Acid of Women in a Gold State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond, an anthology collection which features many WWS members’ work.

I’ve been an Orange County woman since 1966 when I was fourteen and my father’s aerospace job transferred him to Santa Monica from Charlotte, North Carolina. The Beach Boys sang about “California Girls” on the radio as we drove across the country. I couldn’t wait to be one, but when we settled in Fountain Valley, California, I realized I didn’t quite fit the profile. I wasn’t blond, my skin never tanned, and I wasn’t allowed to wear a French bikini.

I’ve never felt like a true California girl, but almost sixty years later, California is still my home. And now, as “a woman of a certain age in youth-obsessed California,” I’m delighted to be included in a new anthology from Gunpowder Press, Women in a Golden State, California Poets at 60 and Beyond.

Congratulations to Tanya Ward Goodman whose blog post “A Living Artifact: Remembrances from Tanya Ward Goodman” appeared in SPACES.

It was boiling hot in Simi Valley on the day I first visited Bottle Village. I was not yet twelve years old and wore cotton, shortie pajamas, the only clothes that didn’t scrape like sandpaper against the sunburn I’d acquired the day before at Will Rogers State Beach. For close to ten days, we’d been travelling the back roads from Albuquerque, New Mexico to the Golden State with dad at the wheel of a brown Chevy pick-up he’d dubbed “Daedalus.” My grandmother, Rose, rode shotgun, and, in the back, under the camper shell, me, my brother, and our three best friends from school nestled in sleeping bags, loose as popcorn. We’d been to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm, but Dad was never content with only the main tourist spots. He ballpoint tattooed the pages of his Rand McNally road atlas with alternate routes, and drew stars to mark roadside attractions, artists’ homes, and miscellaneous wonders.

Kudos to Luivette Resto who published the poem “A Mother Is Like an Archipelago” in the 2025 issue of the Latino Book Review.

Puerto Rico is not an island.
Despite what has been said
she does not stand alone.

She is an archipelago,
an arm’s length away from smaller islands
–Culebra, Vieques, Mona.

Greeted by hands clapping
as the wheels touch the tarmac
and the sign of the cross gesticulated by abuelitas

I tell my children on our first family visit:
a mother is like an archipelago.

Please also join me in congratulating Jesenia Chávez whose memoir piece “Move-In Day” also appeared in the same issue of Latino Book Review.

Move-in day at UC Santa Barbara in the fall of 1998 was quick. We packed up my mom’s gray dodge van. My older sister would drive, my things were in the back and some girls from Latinas Guiding Latinas de UCLA would join us. My stuff fit in a couple cardboard boxes, and we had plenty of room. I would never again have such little stuff to move and pack.

Mom and dad could not come, it was only my sister, like always she was taking care of me. My parents had to hustle and work. But I had my sisters, so that comforted me.

Shoutout to M. Anne Kala’i whose poem “Emancipation” appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review.

I.

Mother didn’t teach me how to garden.
She taught me to pack up a house
after the water turned off,
then the lights.
Well-labeled boxes swallowed
our things and spit out
new cities. I learned you can change
your heart and name
after a hand in marriage
and divorce, marriage
and divorce.
I can’t fix cars or build shelves
and I’ve never been able to save money,
but I run like her
and I always get away.

Kudos to Stephanie Abraham whose op-ed “Finding Courage During Challenging Times” was featured in PRsay.

In a blog post published last month, PRSA’s Los Angeles Chapter President Marisol Barrios Perez, APR, wrote, “I urge our PR community to do what we do best: Raise our voices. Because when we speak together — with purpose, with clarity and with courage — we shape the narrative. And we stand on the right side of history.”

Indeed, these are unprecedented times that call for unprecedented measures. Just a glimpse at the last six months in Los Angeles, where I live, is telling. January started with the deadliest and most destructive wildfires in the state’s history. In early June, the president sent the National Guard and Marines to our streets, exchanging insults and accusations with California Gov. Newsom in the process. With a softening job market, an uncertain economy and a fragile geopolitical climate, it’s enough to make you want to hide under the covers and wait for calmer days.

Shoutout to Mahru Elahi whose creative nonfiction piece “Summoning” was picked up by Multiplicity Magazine.

In my dreams, I am dressed in loose clothing and rise into the air with only a thought, guided by the warmth in my belly. Usually it is night, but sometimes the sun is out. I am alone and curious, and propel myself high above the landscape, delighting in the patterned streets and rolling hills, the geometry of buildings. When I wake from these dreams, the feeling in my belly is a reminder of where I’ve gone. I replay gauzy snatches of dream-memory throughout the day, the lightness that filled me. I want to return, to live again suspended above the earth.

I have always had dreams of flight. They come less often the older I get, and I am missing something from their absence. 

Congratulations to Monica Cure who published a poem entitled “A Reading of the Seagull” in Volume 119 of Poet Lore.

Kudos to Sophie Hamel whose fiction piece “The Pythia” was featured in The Plentitudes.

From the stone bleachers of Delphi’s ancient theater, the view of the Parnassus mountains had a before-civilization-turned-everything-ugly charm we all wanted a slice of. We took pictures, crowding the frame with our friends and defiant smiles.

The cultural field trip had so far taken us from one half-column to the next with the regularity of burning sunshine. Today, we were blessed with a mostly intact theater. Unfortunately, it was about to be a stage once again. We shifted in our seats as Mrs. Perlotti marched to the orchestra’s center.

“Quiet,” she said, the word harnessing power as it glided up to the seats Justine and I had claimed. “One of you will read a poem to the rest of the class, who will li-sten,” she over-articulated as if the concept couldn’t be grasped by our still-growing teenager brains.

Big shoutout to Diana Radovan who published a poetry collection entitled Seasons of Change with Outpost Press.

And lastly, congratulations to Ariadne Makridakis Arroyo whose creative nonfiction piece entitled “Trying on Womanhood for Size: It’s She AND They” appeared in 826LA’s Along The Way, We Saw The World: A 20th Anniversary Collection of Prose and Poetry.

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*