Author: Ariadne Makridakis Arroyo

Hello everyone and happy November! The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during November of 2024 (and five of our members heard about these opportunities either through WWS programming and/or another member, which is a wonderful tribute to this community!).

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 amazing members who had their work published this month, and happy submitting!

Please give a shoutout to Melissa Chadburn whose creative nonfiction piece “Rarebit” appeared on Terrain.org.

I saw it in my mother’s face sometimes when she shook me by the shoulders. The other face she so often showed to the world, the one she wore in church and at work long gone. This one—the angry one—was it her legit face? Was she always working to suppress it? Maybe so. Maybe she was aswang—a shapeshifting, baby-eating vampire. Secretary by day, soul sucker by night. I could see that. Maybe she was a witch; all these women who live alone, who know longing, they’re called witches. 

Huge congratulations to Love TaShia Asanti whose fiction novels The Seer: Legacy of Stone & Spirit and Any Heart Open have been published and are now available for purchase!

Kudos to Marya Summers for her poem entitled “On This Post-Election Shore, 2024” being featured in Dissident Voice.

Today, election results run, a river
of grief for another river that never
became a wave. Tomorrow, perhaps
a collapse we never imagined:
a bridge, a body, a body
politic, the world.

Still, the tide comes & goes.
As I stand in the sand, the under-
tow pulls my heels, dragging
me insistently deeper. These
returns can suck folks
in beyond their depth, so I know not
to wade further into turbulence,
into a world half-eaten, equal parts
hoorays & handkerchiefs.

Big shoutout to Monona Wali for her fiction piece “Love Thy Monster” being picked up by Santa Monica Review.

Please join me in congratulating Heather Pegas whose fiction piece “The Mermaid Has Finally Had It” was published with Does It Have Pockets?

It is the mermaid’s birthday, and she’s feeling her age. Sailors still like the shape of her tail, it gets their attention, but they turn away at the missing breast, the scarred floor of her chest. They see her hair has turned grey-green, call her a merma’am, and laugh.

The mermaid’s daughter and her friends need constant reassurance and talking down from erotic encounters with fickle seamen. They are forever falling in, and painfully out of, “love” but they reject her hard-won wisdom.

Congratulations to Lauren Salerno for their article “How Princess Leia teaches us not to lose hope as we head into another Trump presidency” being featured in The Mary Sue.

Times like these always lead me back to my Patron Saint of Hope, Leia Organa. Being a life-long Star Wars fan, my relationship to Leia is something that evolves as I go through changes in my own life. That relationship took a new turn in 2017 when I attended the Women’s March in Los Angeles. It was an important moment for me in my political life. The streets of Downtown Los Angeles were packed with people who knew that the next 4 years would not be easy.

Big kudos to Diosa Xochiquetzacoatl whose poems “Gigage,” “Tethered Tongues,” and “Diaspora” were chosen as a feature by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs in the 2024 Native American Heritage Month Calendar and Cultural Guide. See excerpt from “Gigage” below:

Red is the blood that boils within my veins. Red are the murdered and missing.
Red is the lipstick he sees as slut. Red are my eyes filled with rage.
Red is the war paint tattooed on my skin. Red are the hands of every broken treaty.

Shoutout to Laura Sturza whose creative nonfiction piece “The Super Saleswoman” appeared in Oldster Magazine. She also published “Our own Golden Bachelorette” in The Beacon. See excerpt of the former below:

Mom put those skills to work in future jobs. She became a saleswoman for whom “no” meant revving up for advanced negotiations. After her dad passed away, Mom revealed he’d been a terrible salesman. “He laid it on too thick,” she said. “They saw his desperation. You have to reel customers in with a good story, make them believe they can’t live without what you’re selling.

Please join me in congratulating Valerie Anne Burns whose creative nonfiction piece “Cornflower Blue” was featured in Sad Girl Diaries.

While my mother was still alive, we’d moved to a brand-new home in one of those strangely uniformed suburbs in South Miami. Because blue was her favorite color, the walls inside were mostly shades of blue, and the exterior was painted in a soft shade of sky blue. The builders of the houses in that neighborhood swept away every natural thing in sight as they put up countless blocks of new homes leaving one lonely palm tree to sway in the breeze.

Lastly, kudos to Carla Sameth for the publication of her poem “Thanksgiving” in Mutha Magazine.

Before the crab stuffing and the molten greens,
the grieving turkey, crispy leg reserved
for my wife, there is this year’s drink—
tamarind, tequila, lime, mint, soda, jalapeño,
and champagne. I am the eager taster, hiding
in the corner from my previously sober son.
Fix you a non-alcoholic drink? I ask jerkily
while he lurks nearby this tureen of booze.
Really, everywhere you look there’s booze,
wine and beer and champagne, drinks that look
like innocent cans of soda named spicy or fully loaded.
Would you name your car, your cat, your girlfriend that? 
Do what you need to do my son, I murmur.

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*

🌰 As with the beginning of a new season, there are new publications to share! 🍂 The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during September of 2024. 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 wonderful members who had their work published this month, and happy submitting!

Huge congratulations to Laura Sturza for her humor/opinion piece “Cats Are Ready to Cast Their Votes for Kamala Harris” published in Medium and her story “Pedal Power” published in Unfolding: A Market Street Writers Anthology. See excerpt of the former below:

Our cats are frustrated that they have previously been denied the right to support a candidate who will advocate for their rights as members of an interspecies family. While Republican candidates have yet to comment on the sanctity of interspecies families like ours, I think their position can be guessed. On the other hand, Harris is an animal rights advocate endorsed by the Humane Society. Walz’s interspecies family includes orange tabby Afton, who is prepared to move to the vice-presidential mansion.

Big shoutout to Désirée Zamorano for her latest novel Dispossessed and a blog post for the novel entitled “Peeling Away Decades of Whitewashing Our History: On the Writing of the Novel, Dispossessed” in La Bloga (see below for an excerpt). What a huge accomplishment!

From the 1930s to the 1950s an estimated 2 million people, Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals, were expelled from this country. Few of us know about this essential American history. The famous line, “A single death is a tragedy, million deaths is a statistic,” informed me that that’s how our history would have to be portrayed, through the life of someone buffeted and impacted by this historical event. I kept waiting for someone to write that novel. I looked around and waited some more. I waited long enough to realize that someone was me.

Please join me in congratulating Rachael Rifkin for the publication of her article “Non-Nuclear Families — Out of Necessity — Are Sought After, and on the Rise” in Good Housekeeping.

Amidst changes in the economy, urbanization, immigration, caregiving burnout, rising loneliness and marriage and reproduction rates, however, there’s been a shift away from the self-reliant nuclear family as the center for family life. In fact, there is no one predominant family form anymore. Instead, people are returning to the idea of having a strong support network and living with or near the people we’re closest with, just like we did for most of humanity. In fact, it’s become such a ubiquitous desire that if you’re having a conversation with someone of millennial age or younger, it’s only a matter of time before they wistfully bring up their dream of getting a plot of land with their friends and living in a more communal way.

Kudos to Monica Cure for translating and publishing three poems by Adela Greceanu in Romanian poetry anthology Cigarettes Until Tomorrow and in The Dial. Excerpt from “Goose” below:

Words are also a province
when it comes to the lively meanings beneath them,
meanings unimaginable there, above.
However
tartine, quasi-unfamiliar, and to handle a relationship
are words spoken with such power
that they yanked up from underneath them
a meaning that made them synonyms.
Though only for me, to be fair.

Please give a shout out to Deirdre Hennings whose poem “Life after Transplant” (among others) was featured in Volume 17:Issue 2 of Ars Medica.

I cringe when the car peels out
I’d rather not be here
you’re so moody again, so often angry now—

Kudos to Diana Radovan for publishing her creative nonfiction piece “Oh, My Friend, How Is Your Blue?” in Humans of the World.

I’m on my way to the Berchtesgaden National Park. It is Friday afternoon and between seasons. The trees still have red, old leaves. Winter catches me on the way. A snow blizzard takes over the roads, slowing all the cars down.

I’m stuck at the top of a mountain road in the middle of a snowstorm, just 10 km before my final destination of the day in Berchtesgaden National Park.

Let’s give a big congratulations to Jesenia Chavez whose poem “Pictures of You” was featured in the Latino Book Review Magazine.

I wonder what my grandfather’s hands were like,
Playing clarinete, what did he sound like?
Where did he practice? What were his botas and
huaraches like?

How did the músicos travel from town to town?
On horseback, on foot?
How did you request them?

Please join me in giving a shoutout to Dilys Wyndham Thomas whose poem “a ghazal for Doggerland” was picked up by Ink Sweat & Tears (see excerpt below). She also published her poems “Channel Seascape” and “still lives” in The Passionfruit Review.

we walk through the exhibition hall lost
amongst water-logged bones, a sunk haul lost

grave-deep underwater, newly unearthed
as North-Sea fishing boats treasure-trawl lost

Congratulations to Heather Pegas who published fiction piece “I Did Not Die” in Weird Lit Magazine.

Since he’s been gone, she has dodged thirty-seven calls from her sister and been forced to answer eighteen. Gloria, her astrologer friend, has called twenty-two times, been spoken to twelve. For twenty-nine meals in a row she’s eaten a lump of cottage cheese with a handful of Goldfish crackers on top. She has gone through thirty cartons of Tillamook ice cream, but only nine liters of vodka. It has been ninety-two days since he’d gone, so she considers this restraint.

On one of those days, she made it to the gym and swam four complete laps before the weight of her body sank her. She’d come home and thumbed through thirteen old copies of The New Yorker. Why were they even still here? 

Kudos to Stephanie Yu whose fiction piece “A Knock at the Door” was picked up by Wigleaf.

Larry and Susan are sitting arms folded at opposite ends of the couch when their elderly neighbor knocks at the door. She is holding a measuring cup and asks if they have some flour for an apple cake she is making. Susan takes the cup, sifts the flour, taking care not to leave air pockets. Larry makes terse conversation with their neighbor at the front door, his fingers tightening reflexively against the knob whenever she leans forward to speak. Weeks later, their neighbor slips while getting out of the shower and dies. Susan will discover her when she checks on her three days later, having noticed the smell.

Last and certainly not least, please join me in giving a resounding congrats to Ronna Magy who published her poem “Distance” in The Cost of Our Baggage Anthology from Gnashing Teeth Publishing.

At least three of our members published in September heard about these opportunities through Women Who Submit. Thank you for your wonderful community and encouragement! Happy Fall! 🎃

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*

The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during  August of 2024. 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 wonderful members who had their work published this month, and happy submitting!

Huge kudos to Donna Spruijt-Metz for her poem “Crow Comes Back” being featured in the latest issue of the Alaska Quarterly Review.

Please join me in congratulating Lisa Eve Cheby for her publication of a review of Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo’s second poetry collection Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites at Terrain.org.

Bermejo reminds us each joy, each life celebrated is fragile. She refuses to let us forget that Black and Brown bodies, even in their joy, are always under threat by oppressive colonialist systems—and individuals acting in service to those systems—that seek to erase these people, including women, children, immigrants, and anyone who does not conform to colonialist, patriarchal, racist narratives. More importantly, Bermejo depicts the richness of the lives behind the litany of the names in news reports, names too easily anonymized and dehumanized. 

Lastly, we have Dilys Wyndham Thomas whose poem “as you light up” was featured in Scooter Literary Magazine ‘s 18th issue entitled “Nightlife.”

Everyone included in this monthly publication round up found out about these opportunities either through another WWS member or our programming. Thank you all for this extraordinary and sustaining literary community! Stay cool for this last bit of summer.

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*