Claps and Cheers – Page 2 – Women Who Submit

February 5, 2017March 7, 2018

WWS at AWP17

Are you feeling anxious just yet about this year’s AWP conference? Not to worry because we have a guide to all events where you can find the happy, shining faces of Women Who Submit and friends. And while you are combing the bookfair, be sure to find us at booth 975 with Roar Feminist Magazine and Dandelion Review to pick up an “I submitted!” button and to add your name to the WWS daily giveaway. It will include one WWS tote with books, chapbooks, and zines from our members including copies of Posada: Offerings of Wintess and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016) by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Gent/Re Place Ing (Write Large Press 2016) by Jessica Ceballos Campbell, Surveillance (Write Large Press 2016) by Ashaki M. Jackson, Cake Time (Red Hen Press 2017) by Siel Ju, Excavation (Future Tense Books 2014) by Wendy C. Ortiz, Wrestling Alligators (Martin Brown Publishers 2016) by Diane Sherlock, Traci Traci Love Fest, a collection of poems from L.A. poets writing in support of poet, performer and community activist Traci Kato Kiriyama as she battles breast cancer and more!

Plus, don’t forget to reread this piece by Lauren Eggert-Crowe for reminders on how to stay happy and healthy over the next week, and we recommend checking out Entropy’s guide if you are looking for avenues of resistance and action. Continue reading “WWS at AWP17”

January 18, 2017March 6, 2018

Claps and Cheers: The Power of Niche-tivism

Painting by Caden Crawford of a silhouette figure rising with birds against a sunset backdrop

by Ramona Pilar
Header Photo by Caden Crawford

Too often the reader repeats the question to the writer in the form of a command: You have shown me the problem, now show me the solution. But the writer can not save us — only show us we need saving. The writer is not a savior, but a blessing. The solution must come from community rising, writing is communion —shared sustenance. – Dominique Matti on Medium

There are people who find the power and energy to found and organize marches, coalitions, and movements. There are those who, on the daily-weekly-monthly-yearly, take up the mantle to carry those actions forward. Actions with specific intent, fueled by a passion to effect change, to correct imbalances, to adjust societal subluxations in order address the pains that have affected how we, as a symbiotic organism, function.

These folks are the shining beacons of a seemingly disconnected group of people with similar values who have been feeling the need to be “a part of something,” who want to “make change” but don’t know how to start. Who don’t know how to rally. Who don’t know how to find faith in themselves to harness that league of extraordinary doers to heed the call to action and revolt. Who don’t know how to conjure up the elements that lead to a moment – or series of moments – that would definitely make the biopic or before-battle speech.

Continue reading “Claps and Cheers: The Power of Niche-tivism”

December 28, 2016March 7, 2018

2016 in Review with Encouraging Words from Sara Novic for 2017

by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

2016 began with the establishment of the WWS Leadership Team who worked together on debut presentations for AWP16, BinderCon Los Angeles, and MixedRemix Festival. Thanks to our WWS Chapter Director, Ashaki Jackson, we welcomed new chapters in New York City, NY, Grand Forks, ND, Seattle, WA, and Oaxaca City, MX as well as other locations across the country. In September, we celebrated our 3rd Annual WWS Submission Blitz where over 100 women participated remotely and submitted to top-tier journals with over 20 women joining the LA meet up at the Faculty Bar. We held five private submission parties hosted by LA members, and new this year, we held our bimonthly new member orientations at different art and literary centers across the city. In February we met at Libros Schmibros in Boyle Heights with guest speaker, Tammy Delatorre, who shared strategies for contest submissions, April was dA Center for the Arts in Pomona with Cati Porter talking about directing Inlandia Institute and creating Poemeleon, a journal of poetry, June was Antioch University in Culver City with Pamela Redmond Satran speaking about the road to becoming a successful professional writer, October was Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center in Venice Beach with Siel Ju sharing tips for finding an agent, and finally this month at Avenue 50 Studio in Highland Park, Sara Novic skyped in from Cincinnati, OH to talk about writing and activism post election. Continue reading “2016 in Review with Encouraging Words from Sara Novic for 2017”

October 19, 2016

Claps and Cheers: When the Student is Ready, the Teacher Appears

by Jesse Bliss

Mentorship is an integral part of developing as an artist. We can be mentored officially, through mentorship programs or by merely engaging and asking a respected professional for guidance. And there are unofficial mentors who come into our lives when we most need the encouragement of someone who’s embarked on a journey we’ve just begun. They are powerful presences who impact the course of our lives and we cherish them for as long as we can.

Writer, educator, and mentor Jesse Bliss recently lost her mentor Linda Lowry. This Claps and Cheers is Bliss’s homage to her late mentor. – Ramona Pilar, Ed.

* * *

It was a typically windy, cold to-the-bone yet electric San Francisco night. I was a 20 year-old walking up Market Street around the corner from the Tenderloin District where I lived next door to a Thai restaurant. Next to that was a known location for sex solicitation. I often cruised toward the train gripping the handle of a knife. The danger in that hood was not gangs, but unpredictable drug-induced violence. I had just left Sacramento and all that was trying to keep me from my dreams, and had shown up in the Golden Gate city with nothing more than a bag and a friend, ready to discover my soul as a professional artist.

Continue reading “Claps and Cheers: When the Student is Ready, the Teacher Appears”

September 14, 2016

Lunas on the Road

by Karineh Mahdessian and Sophia Rivera
(intro by Ramona Pilar)

Las Lunas Locas is a Los Angeles-based poetry collective who aims to empower women through their different identities and cultures. They have a writing circle that has been meeting on Mondays for the past few years to “create a safe space for a community of self-identifying womyn to write, right and rite.” They also host/present/produce and organize a plethora of events and writing workshops in Los Angeles.

This is an amazing group of literary artisans who are inspiring in their level of energy commitment to community, and dedication to forging their own path (literally as you’ll see below) whether or not the mainstream takes notice.

Earlier this year, a group of about 30 of the Lunas embarked on a four city reading tour that began on a whim. Initially an invitation for poets to read at a bookstore San Francisco ballooned into “a wonderful, serendipitous event that grew to be too big to be contained,” according to Karineh Mahdessian, one of the co-facilitators of the Monday meetups and Lunas organizational juggernaut who helped to make the reading tour materialize. I followed their journey via social media and was blown away all that they were able to accomplish with the power of The Ask and a strong community.

In the tradition of a road journal, Karineh writes about that journey and what it took to take a group of about 30 women to Northern California for a reading tour.

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Las Lunas Locas, a womyn’s writing group from Los Angeles, formed into existence in July of 2014 and has met every Monday night at Here and Now in El Sereno. For the past two years, we have participated in various community poetry readings.

In November of 2015, five of the Lunas had the opportunity to read with the Poet Laureates of Los Angeles and San Francisco at Avenue 50 Studios in Highland Park. Continue reading “Lunas on the Road”

May 25, 2016

Writing English as a Polyglot

by Hong-My Basrai

When we finally left communist Vietnam, my father said: “Never look back.” His words had a finality to them. They stuck in my twenty-two-year-old mind, and so I began my never looking back process, starting with learning to communicate predominantly in English.

The acquisition and manipulation of languages were second nature to me. I had been doing it all my life—soaking up Vietnamese in the cradle, French in kindergarten, Chinese from classmates, English to survive, and Gujarati because I had married into a Gujarati Indian family.

Basic English had come to me easily enough. It was just a small step from uttering my first “thank you” to verbal fluency, then progressing fast from ESL writing class to English 1A composition. What was harder was learning to elevate my writing proficiency to a level suitable for a public audience. Since I had picked up English on the go, learning it by imitation, like a baby, with most words borrowed from my prior knowledge of French, I had to pay extra attention to spelling of similar words, particularly homophones like address and adresse, envelope and enveloppe, May and mai; false cognates, words that have similar spelling but different meanings, like infant and enfant, anniversary and anniversaire, song and son; and words of Latin and Greek roots like destroy and détruire, or abnormal and anormal, etc. Continue reading “Writing English as a Polyglot”

April 6, 2016

The Rejection Game

by Loren Rhoads

In January 2012, I read a blog post that set me on fire. Business coach, Tiffany Han was aiming to get 100 rejection letters that year. Her goal was not really the rejections themselves, but to stretch, force herself out of her comfort zone, take some risks, and see where she could land. I was inspired by the thinking behind the project, which made collecting rejections a game as opposed to wallowing in the sting of them.

I’ve been on both sides of the editor’s desk, so I understand that things get rejected for a lot of different reasons: too long, too short, not to the editor’s taste, they just published something similar, they’re overstocked, they’re changing direction, you’ve hit one of the editor’s pet peeves… As much as I know that I am not my work and I as a person am (probably) not being personally rejected, it still hurts. Continue reading “The Rejection Game”

February 1, 2016

A WWS Publication Round Up for January

Over the last month, WWS members have been getting work published and some have won awards. Here is a brief look at what has come out this month.

From Guest Post: The Art of Low Stakes Daily Writing and How It Can Transform Your Year by Li Yun Alvarado:

I’m not brilliant, or inspired, or awake enough every day to write something meaningful, and with Low Stakes Daily Writing I don’t have to be. Each day I connect with the page. Each day I promise a few moments—however brief—to my writing. To myself.

From Melissa Chadburn’s “On Kitchens of the Great Midwest: Why We Read Books” published at LA Review of Books:

Kitchens of the Great Midwest transported me to a place I longed for. A place that was warm. The protagonist Eva Thorvald had so much of what I was lacking. She was tall. So to me she had a backbone. A backbone and a discerning palate. We’re talking about a palate that lusted for heirloom tomatoes at three-and-a-half months old.

From “Melissa Chadburn interviews Carmiel Banasky” published at LA Review of Books:

This is a side people don’t get to see of women too often. Women who don’t merge or women who merge and then don’t. Women who are fickle in love.

Or women who love each other so much they think they are in love, or vice versa — who say they are in love, but it turns out to be just a beautiful, if sexless, affection. (I think we see portrayals of that dynamic between heterosexual duos on TV and whatnot, but not between female friends.)

One of my closest female friends and I certainly have had some sexual tension — but I think this is an extension or offshoot of a really lasting, big love for each other.

From “MUSLIMS DIDN’T INVENT TERRORISM” by Lisbeth Coiman published at Hip Mama:

Muslims didn’t invent terrorism
It has always existed since
Humanity created gods. No
Muslims didn’t create fear today
But we want to believe it’s true

From “HOW ON EARTH COULD YOU RAISE A KID IN LA?” by Ryane Nicole Granados published at Forth:

When they hear car speakers blasting so loud that their tiny feet and swaying car seats move in a musical jamboree, I hear a radio rewind of the Watts Prophets, West Coast Hip Hop, G-funk and that wanna-be-b-girl in me. Friday nights at the Good Life Café, schoolgirl crushes cemented by a Fatburger and a meticulously made mix-tape.

Congratulations to Tammy Delatorre for the winning Slipper Elm’s 2015 Prose Prize for her essay, “Driving Lessons,” which can be read in the latest edition out this month!

Congratulations to Siel Ju whose manuscript “Cake Time” won the Red Hen Press Fiction Manuscript Award!

January 15, 2016

Awareness into Action

by Ramona Pilar

For many artists, creation takes the form of protest. They are tasked, chosen, or ignited somehow to use their mode of expression to make sense of incongruity/injustice and provide individual solutions to inherent systemic challenges, obstacles that became embedded into the status quo long before any of us were alive.

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Jesse Bliss, educator, writer, and activist, created the chapbook I Love Myself Golden to, in her words, “cultivate self-love and respect in the young women she encounters in the [juvenile] halls.” Bliss has been leading creative writing workshops within the juvenile hall system in Los Angeles for upwards of 10 years. Through her experiences she became impassioned and has since dedicated her work as an artist to advocate against the Prison Industrial Complex. She was compelled to create this book to address young, incarcerated women who are, in this society, of the most invisible and vulnerable populations.

The book itself was created as the result of a workshop series she developed through InsideOUT Writers and was supported with a grant from Poets & Writers. It is intended as “a love letter, speaking piercingly to all young women in and outside of physical bars.”

Through the years of working with this community and hearing the girls ask questions such as how to give birth, Bliss was moved to create something to give to them, but she didn’t know exactly what. “What to Expect When You’re Expecting… [would be] totally insulting to them. That’s for upper and middle class people.” Bliss drew on her experience creating chapbooks through her creative writing class at Inner City Arts to craft I Love Myself Golden for this one, specific demographic. “Because it’s been in my heart for so many years, I already [knew] what it should look like… I feel like a lot of us don’t do these types of things because there’s no time, there’s no money. So my first thought was, ‘How can I make this succinct, and how can I make it to size for them, and who can I find that can illustrate it that will really appeal to these girls?’”

Enter Alfie Ebojo, aka Alfie Numeric, a brilliant artist and writer based in the Los Angeles area. Her artwork has a surreal whimsical aesthetic overlying a weighted gravitas in the subject and composition, reminiscent of Mark Ryden and Margaret Keane. “There’s beauty and pain coupled together [in her work]… There’s young women of color… expressing their pain in a way that also shows strength and beauty…”

“’For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.’ A head nod to Rudyard.” – 2011 Acrylics on wood

While the initial aim of the chapbook was inspired by the young women who had questions around motherhood (some of whom were soon to be new mothers themselves), the scope expanded. “I realized it couldn’t just be for those girls; it had to be for all the girls because they were all susceptible to the same circumstance, of pregnancy…it was all connected. It was not separate. The same things needed to be said to the girls who were not pregnant…I feel like all young women in our society are targeted to think and believe that we’re not worth anything because it’s a big money maker: ‘You’re not pretty enough. Your size isn’t right…’ By empowering girls, they’re taught that there’s other options.”

The Roots and Wings Project, founded by Bliss, is a “politically charged, socially transformative theatre company that brings attention to truth and provides stage and space for stories of the unnamed, unspoken and misunderstood through theatrical innovation and multi-media collaboration.” Having written and produced theater for most of her career, this chapbook marks an expansion to other forms of writing. “Theater is my #1 vantage point as an artist, but I’ve always written poetry…Since the time my daughter’s been born, I’ve been noticing that I really should let my work live on the page…and [let other forms of writing] open up a new world for me.”

Bliss, along with partner Peter Woods and publisher Mark Gonzalez have organized an event inspired by the chapbook, which is not so much a chapbook release as it is a platform for “elevation, transformation, conversation,” with the book itself as a catalyst. The event will be held at Espacio 1839, a collectively-run boutique, art gallery and radio station located down the street from Central Juvenile Hall, where some of the workshops took place.

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Activism and self-determination can have a wide breadth of incarnations; some manifestations emerge in the form of dedicated, tenacious protest. Some inspire individuals to take on the vocation of creation, conjuring, crafting and bringing into existence the very needed thing that hadn’t yet materialized, that was waiting for that one particular voice and vessel to bring into this realm. Hechiceras and hechiceros del arte, mediums who produce the work that affects, inspires, ignites and heals.

Ramona Pilar is a writer, performer, emotional fluffer and native Californian. She is currently working on a collection of essays entitled “Darth Vader Abandoned his Daughter and Other Thoughts Along The Heroine’s Journey.” She can occasionally be found troubadouring with her band The Raveens.

Jesse Bliss is a playwright, director, producer, actress, poet and veteran arts educator with her work produced around the world at venues such as the United Nations, Edinburgh Festival, Lincoln Heights Jail, S.P.A.R.C at the Old Jail in Venice, The Last Bookstore, The Rosenthal Theater at Inner-City Arts, Casa 0101 Theater, Theatre of Note, Occidental College, UCSC, UCLA, and California Institute of Integral Studies to name a few. She has taught and created curriculum for Center Theatre Group, The Geffen, Inner-City Arts, Unusual Suspects, J.U.I.C.E. and Inside OUT Writers among others. She is a featured artist in Kate Crash’s LA WOMEN and in Yahoo News’ SHINE Documentaries. Ms. Bliss is a grant recipient from the Flourish Foundation and recently from POETS and WRITERS for writing workshops for incarcerated girls inspiring her chapbook I LOVE MYSELF GOLDEN. Jesse is Co-Producer of KPFK 90.7’s THINK OUTSIDE THE CAGE. She is Founder and Artistic Director of The Roots and Wings Project. www.therootsandwingsproject.com.