February 2026 Publication Roundup

The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during February of 2026. 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. Thank you and happy submitting!

Congratulations to Erica Castro whose creative nonfiction piece “Detention Centers, My dearest America” appeared in Daxson Publishing’s Together We Rise Voices from the Frontlines of Freedom Anthology Rebelling against Injustice.

Kudos to Anne Ramallo whose poem “When I Dream of Whales” was published in Cosmic Daffodil Journal: TIDAL LIGHT.

The ocean is alive with them—
orcas break its shimmering surface, stretching snouts
at a cerulean sky. Humpbacks and blue whales
twist pleated bellies, thrust their ribs like dancers
while I watch, laughing,from the tip of my own iceberg.

Something’s swimming beneath the precision of language—
beautiful, dangerous, ready to tip yachts,
straining, heaving, coming up for air and,
for one gloriousREM cycle, consoling, pressing love
into my skin through outstretched fins.

Shoutout to Diosa Xochiquetzalcoatl whose poems “Just Down My Street” and “Reclamation” were featured in Daxson Publishing’s Together We Rise Voices from the Frontlines of Freedom Anthology Rebelling against Injustice.

Kudos to Mahru Elahi whose creative nonfiction piece “Passing: A Softball Tale” appeared in Seventh Wave’s 2026 Community Anthology.

When I try to name where Ali and I fell along the racial spectrum, the word interstitial comes to mind. It was 1982 and we lived in the gaps, the only Iranians at our Southern California middle school. Iranians in Amrika were racialized before the 1978 Revolution, it was just that we were considered benign, exotic even, definitely not dangerous.

Ali’s skin was lighter than mine, with the blue-green cast of an abalone shell’s interior. His curly black hair, regal nose, and baby doll lashes might have made him attractive, but Ali’s mouth was a blunt weapon. He made the Science teacher cry. After that, I only saw him in PE.

Congratulations to Audrey Shipp whose article “How I Navigated My Way to a Memoir Deal from a Small Publisher” was featured in Jane Friedman.

Last year, as I began the query and submission process for my hybrid memoir, I knew I was going to submit directly to small publishers. I’d heard from industry experts about the difficulties non-celebrities face trying to publish a memoir. As recently as January of this year, a Jane Friedman newsletter referred to an article that notes non-celebrity memoir as the most difficult nonfiction genre in which to publish. Thus, I began my querying journey as a non-famous person knowing that agents are paid from a percentage of an advance, and the chances of securing a large advance from a big publisher were slim to nil.

I became familiar with the pitch-query-submission process after taking a series of courses from various creative writing and publishing providers. With Jane Friedman and Allison K Williams, I’d taken a slew of courses on topics such as writing the proposal, publishing paths, and book marketing. And following Courtney Maum’s guidelines, I learned how to pitch hybrid memoir specifically. As a result of my coursework, I wrote a 26-page proposal that I submitted on occasion since not all publishers required it. Although I didn’t always use the entire proposal, it was an incredibly useful resource because I pulled out sections related to my comps, my audience, or other topics that I could use for individual submissions. 

Shoutout to Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo whose article “Writing a Dream Into Reality” appeared in the March/April 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Kudos to Carla Rachel Sameth whose poem “The Fragility of Home” was featured in the anthology Signed, Sealed, Delivered: the Motown Poetry Revue.

Huge congratulations to Toni Ann Johnson who recently published a book But Where’s Home?: A Novella and Stories with Screen Door Press.

Shoutout to Melinda Palacio whose poem “Canopy over Milpas and Alphonse” was picked up by La Bloga.

The friend I invited to lunch declined, not for fear of ICE.
She is not worried for herself, but for me.
‘Can’t make it, watch out for ICE,’ she said, fancying herself funny.

I go along with the joke as nothing will keep me
from stopping by the restaurant that’s easily overlooked
with an empty dirt lot next to it, low ceiling.
Thick roots give rise to spindly branches and a lush.
top heavy Laurel Fig, an outstretched canopy over the world.

I tell my friend I have a strategy for defeating ICE.
Say I will expose how much of a good citizen I am

Kudos to Michelle Smith whose poem “Eight Shaved Heads” was published by LA Art News‘ Poet’s Place series . Two more poems of hers “For the Love Creme Brulee” and “Nana’s Heart” were featured in Four Feathers Press Online Edition: Love (excerpt of the latter available below).

Shiny sterling silver
Sparkly and cool to the touch
Inside soft red velvet
A jewelry box reminds me of Nana’s Heart.
No music, no jewelry, nor an empty find.
Memories open of childhood past and love,
For our matriarch,
Beautiful teacher, disciplinarian, and kind.

Congratulations to Lili Lang whose fiction piece “Love and Blood” was picked up by Die Laughing Literary Magazine.

Shoutout to Joyce Loh whose fiction piece “Something Borrowed Something Blue” appeared in Pure Slush.

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*

January 2026 Publication Roundup

The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during January 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!

Congratulations to Thea Pueschel whose creative nonfiction piece “Pleasure: Sacred Paint Chips and Memory Fragments” appeared in Flowersong Press’ anthology The White Picket Fence: Stories of Individuality as Rebelliousness Collection.

Kudos to Lisa Eve Cheby whose article “Well, we start, not surprisingly, with research:’ Depictions of Guided Inquiry and Critical Information Literacy Instruction in Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was published in Slayage: The International Journal of Buffy+.

From Covid to the current elections, information literacy is often the thin line between our well-being and our endangerment. In 2022, NATO declared the lack of media literacy education a global threat and partnered with the Center for Media Literacy (CML) to host a series of webinars addressing the global crisis of media literacy (Media and Learning Association). Tessa Jolls, president of the Center for Media Literacy, chronicles the history of media literacy and the new urgency for common frameworks and pedagogy to better prepare people in an increasingly decentralized, globalized media landscape. Rather than seeking to rely on social media companies’ accountability, Jolls recommends building media literacy frameworks to guide interventions through education—both formal and informal—of the public in the process-skills needed to understand the content and context of media messages.

Shoutout to Joyce Loh whose poems “Uh-oh” and “Kembangan – a pantoum” (among others) were featured in poems on the mrt. She also published another poem “Lotus Buds – a Sestina” with Frazzled Lit’s fourth issue (excerpt available below).

The tropical heat glows upon the roof.
In the morning light the mother
busies herself before waking the child.
Tiptoeing across the floorboards of wood,
gathering the embers of yesterday’s fire,
adding new coal, noting her beating heart.

The Promised Land, she tells her heart
where they would have a roof
over their head, a kitchen with fire.
She touches her jade bangle, the mother;
arranges the kettle on the wood.
The floor creaks, here comes the child.

Kudos to Audrey Shipp whose memoir piece “How to Eat Grits” appeared in A Gathering Together: Literary Journal.

Life demanded that my sister and I eat weekday breakfasts of cold cereal before school, but we often enjoyed traditional weekend meals that stretched out time ensuring family experience remain in our memory.

On a Saturday morning that didn’t require weekday rushing, Grandmom wore her thin, pale pink house robe with a pajama dress underneath. Her brown legs displayed a sprinkled patchwork of dark moles beneath the robe. Her hair was tied in a rust-colored scarf, darker than her brown skin.

I sat on the kitchen stool and watched as she stood in front of the stove pouring dry grits into a small pot with boiling water. At six years old, my legs didn’t reach the floor. My ten-year-old sister stood nearby in the home we lived in with just Grandmom and our step-grandfather, Hayden.

Congratulations to Gabriella Contratto whose fiction piece “The Floods” was featured in The Tiger Moth Review‘s fifteenth issue.

Until recently, Althea had been a girl who lived by the sea. Her life had been simple, and quite happy. Her father and brother would go fishing every morning in the reef by the village, looking for eels or other delicious fish. Althea would go to the village’s school, and in the afternoon, she and her mother would work in a small shack by the beach, taking the catch and turning it into nilarang. Their nilarang was made with the freshest fish possible and it made their shop one of the most popular on the beach. Locals, after a hard day’s work, would come to the beach to relax and spend time with their family. They would always finish off their day with Althea’s nilarang and praised the family for the tasty dish. American tourists, in their flashy clothes, would giggle over the strange fish in the soup, yet devour it all the same.

But when the typhoon came, the tourists went away. They were unable to fly into the island because the flood waters had risen over the landing strip of the airport. Althea’s father and brother had to stay home and board up the shop as best they could, but the corrugated tin was no match for the howling wind and pounding waves. Their little shop was swept away. The family was disappointed, but it was not the first time that a typhoon had taken from them, and their house further inland had survived better. The family helped their neighbors and began to rebuild the shop, even though the beach had been mostly swept away, and was now seven feet more inland than before.

Shoutout to Azalea Aguilar whose four poems “Sunday Best; Mother Tongue; Late December in DC; You Can Run” appeared in The Mid-Atlantic Review. She also published the poem “Straw Houses” in Yanaguana Volume 1, Issue 1.

I was 8 when she left my father for the last time

One morning I decided to ask about the straws
I’d seen them around before
On top of bookshelves, tucked deep into drawers
Straws cut into smaller pieces

She stumbled through the apartment half awake
Starting her clean of the night before
Counters covered in empty beer bottles, ashtrays overflowing
A couple passed out on our living room floor

What are these?

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*

December 2025 Publication Roundup

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

Huge congratulations to Amy Raasch whose poem “My Sister Donates Her Eyes to the State of Minnesota” won the Beullah Rose Poetry Prize.

Kudos to Christine Heriat whose fiction piece “The Ledger” was published in Shotgun Honey.

You carry a heavy case. 

His narrowed eyes, his tight mouth, tell you it would’ a been smarter to carry what’s inside the case in your waistband, or hand. But you worried too much over drawin’ the attention of other gang members, a stray cop, that sorta thing. Really, your big case makes you feel big, even though you left your colors at home. Gotta find a way to look strong when you take this kinda risk. Make a move to improve your circumstance, scratch your way up with one fingernail, one job, one bullet. 

Shoutout to Elizabeth Galoozis whose poem “ode to an adolescent niece” was featured in Sontag Mag.

you’re blazing

hot pink-orange,

an angry sunrise

through wildfire smoke,

a highlighter

obliterating words

you’re expected

to remember.

Please join me in congratulating Diosa Xochiquetzalcoatl who published a new poetry collection MeXicana: poemas y mas poemas with Riot of Roses Publishing House.

Kudos to Viktoria Valenzuela whose poem “Top & Tail Lover’s Knot” appeared in Zócalo Public Square.

Congratulations to Shelley Ettinger whose poem “Disappear” was featured in Radical Catalyst Vol.1, No.2.

Shoutout to Michelle Smith whose poem “Heart of Simon” appeared in LA Art News‘ December Poet’s Place series (excerpt available below). She also published the poem “Look Out Below” and the book Do SoCal Palms have Branches? with Four Feathers Press.

Simon Rodia visionary Italian artist

33 years climbing The Watts Tower

1990 historic California landmark

At 70 years old

a.k.a El Nuestro Pueblos

Is mightier than gold

Globally admired

Symmetrical

Intricate

Magnificent

Ornate

Nuance

Renowned

Original

Daring

Intriguing

Artist

Lastly, huge congratulations to Julia C Gaytan who published a new book Imported Sand with Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social.

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*

November 2025 Publication Roundup

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*

October 2025 Publication Roundup

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*

September 2025 Publication Roundup

The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during September of 2025. Four 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. Thank you and happy submitting!

Congratulations to Dilys Wyndham Thomas whose poem “Titan[ic]” was published in Mslexia Magazine‘s 107th issue.

Kudos to Elizabeth Galoozis who published the poems “I keep falling asleep in the motherland” and “they made us” in Santa Fe Literary Review. See excerpt of the former below:

I came into this world
landlocked.
They pulled me out
by the same ankles
the sea now circles,
pushes my feet
to the edge of the land
I came from.
The waves tug at my blood,

lulling me,
slowing me,
whispering

why
would you
ever
leave.

Shoutout to Maria Caponi whose poem “I Am Not a Good Tourist” was featured in the City of Manhattan’s Older Adults Program September Newsletter.

I don’t like guided tours
I’m not a joiner or a follower
I’m not good with large groups
I’m not a regular person


I want to pause, linger, drift,
where others march in lockstep
and
I want to keep going,
where others want to stay

Huge congratulations to Louise Moore who published a poetry collection entitled Poems to the Muses: To All The Women I have loved and Will love.

Kudos to Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin whose poem “As Mexican as a Nopal” was announced as a short list finalist for the 2025 Four Feathers Press Chapbook Prize. Her poem “Mother and Child From Gaza” also appeared in the 2025 Southern California Haiku Study Group Anthology.

Shoutout to Azalea Aguilar whose poem “Last Seen in Oakland Park” was featured in Somos En Escrito Magazine. She also published “My Father and I Meet for Coffee to Discuss War” in Liebestraum Review and “Sun in Your Eyes” with South Broadway Press. Excerpt of the latter is available below:

is he coming or going
slamming of a screen door
angry or rushed
in or out
her or him
idling in front of a fridge
hunger or thirst
boredom or pleasure
is it the beginning or the end
I tell her I can’t
remember
a time before

Kudos to Carla Rachel Sameth for her publication of the poems “Everything Here Is Broken,” “A Magpie Soars Across the Sky,” “The Darkest Water,” “Like My Skater Son” and “Ghazal of the 3 PM Wall,” in Cholla Needles 105. Excerpt of the latter available below:

They asked me, What do you do when you hit the 3 PM wall?
I don’t know but I can’t even remember the age of my baby.
 
It was after a faux rave, a celebration for a movie about a rave.
A 2 AM breakfast, the question came at me, I was a sage with a baby.
 
I’ll be up by 5 AM, I said, uncertain if I’d be nursing or playing.
All I knew is that I had six never-born, a raging ex-husband, and one baby.
 
What do you do when you hit the wall? they laughed the question again.
Strangely awake, what happens after being up all night, I was a rampage, a baby.

Shoutout to Michelle Otero who poem “Birthright” was featured in American Poetry Review. She also published the memoir piece “Stepson, I have been writing to you in my head since we met…” in Letters to Our Children: an Anthology.

Lastly, congratulations to publisher Brenda Vaca and all the contributors of Riot of Roses Publishing House’s new anthology Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow Codex I.

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*

July 2025 Publication Roundup

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*

February 2025 Publication Roundup

The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during February of 2025, and three of our members heard about these opportunities through WWS programming and/or another member. We appreciate everyone’s commitment to sharing and celebrating their work, especially during these difficult times for our beloved Los Angeles. Thank you and happy submitting!

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 members who had their work published this month.

Let’s start out by congratulating Rochelle Newman-Carrasco whose creative nonfiction piece “Gathering Variables” was featured in The New York Times’ Modern Love column.

We see flames from our porch. No mandatory evacuation — yet. But my husband and I agree. Let’s prepare. I take my parents’ wedding album. My typewritten play that only exists on paper. I scan shelves, drawers, closets. Thumbing through love letters and legal docs. Why this, and not that? Beyond practicalities, you have to let your gut lead. 

Kudos to Laura Sturza who published creative nonfiction piece “A Promise Through Time” with the same New York Times column listed above (excerpt available below). Her article “How These Dynamic Women Won the Ms. Senior America Pageant” was also featured in The Ethel.

We sit in deep recliners that buffer the effects of age, looking out the window at winter’s bare trees, the same ones we watch flourishing in spring. Mom and I wear matching blue wristwatches and check them regularly. She is 99 and counting. We worry about time. But at this moment, we have enough. 

Big shoutout to Lisa Eve Cheby for having her chapbooks Contact Tracing, Love Lessons from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Buffy Averts a Mid-Life Apocalypse republished with Strikethrough Press.

Congratulations to Ashton Cynthia Clarke whose poem “Planting for the Harvest” (and others) appeared in Four Feathers Press‘ Poetry Blogspot series.

She lives

a life 

well tilled

her time

like spring boughs 

laden heavy with faith 

and family 

harmony and heart


and memories . . . 

loves 

redolent of summer mamey 

take root beside 

acid limón of loss

they graft and grow 

new fruit inseparable

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*

January 2025 Publication Roundup

The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during January of 2025, and four of our members heard about these opportunities through WWS programming and/or another member. We appreciate everyone’s commitment to sharing and celebrating their work, especially during these difficult times for our beloved Los Angeles. Thank you and happy submitting!

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 members who had their work published this month.

First up, let’s give a congratulations to Michelle Smith whose poem “Morning Decks & Decorum” was published with Four Feathers Press through their Saturday Afternoon Poetry Blogspot series (excerpt available below). She also published a poem entitled “Brightness” in Southern California Shadows with Four Feathers Press.

Fresh cut blades

of green grass stacked

on yards like neighborhood

houses. Awakens my olfactory

senses. Feeling

squishiness of the piled

high hill dancing in spring

coolness between my toes.

Big kudos to Ronna Magy for her publication of poems “Snow Globe” with Silver Birch Press (see excerpt below) and “Free Love” in Dionne’s Story, Volume IV Anthology with Carlow University Press.

between grandmother’s knobby fingers
brown coin-purse
frayed zipper
thread-bare days.
post second war
she counts bus quarters.
rations tickets for coffee sugar butter whole milk

we’re riding Detroit’s Woodward trolley.
downtown electricity
crackling Christmas lines
yellow car clanging
squeals to a stop.

Please give a shoutout to Dilys Wyndham Thomas whose poem “Elegy” was given a Pushcart Prize nomination by journal Rust and Moth, where it initially appeared in their Spring 2024 issue.

You will not appear in obituaries:
cells and the universe colliding,
contracting into an embryo, a whole
half with me since before I was born.
But they said this body could not keep you safe,
so I carved your name into my bones,
swallowed a pill that made a grave of my womb.

Congratulations to Yvette Siegert who translated five poems by Amanda Libertad and fiction piece “The Devil Knows My Name” by Jacinta Escudos from their original Spanish, which both appeared in Fence (the latter of which is shown below).

The Devil tells me everything

He comes to see me every day. He talks a lot. He tells me stories from every country in the world. About how human beings struggle and how they fear Evil, about how they spend their lives making up excuses so that they can give in to temptation and so be on good terms with both God and the Devil.

He tells me that he was once a charming prince, a man of flesh and bone like everyone else. Elegant and intelligent. Handsome. Wonderful. To such an extent that God chose him to become his favorite angel.  

 “But,” he says, “the problem is that I can’t stand taking orders from anyone.”

Big shoutout to Sibylla Nash who had an essay “It Happened To Me: I Almost Brought Home the Wrong Baby” featured in Another Jane Pratt Thing’s Substack blog.

Please give a congratulations to Marya Summers for publishing her poem “The Congregation” with Pensive Journal in their ninth issue.

Kudos to Ruby Hansen Murray for their poem “White Hair Memorial” which appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of Michigan Quarterly Review. She also published another poem “Devotion” in Elysium Review (see excerpt below).

For years, in the women’s rest room at Dismal Nitch,
a bouquet of wild flowers,
white honeyed verbena, stalks of grass.

How small things stitch the fabric of our lives,
river gray toward shore, the ridge beyond.

Shoutout to Jenise Miller whose article “How The Murals of Elliott Pinkney Captured the Creative Energy of Compton and Beyond” was featured in PBS SoCal.

At schools, churches, art centers, auto shops, health centers, and in neighborhoods, artist Elliott Pinkney painted bold swaths of color and every shade of brown reflected in the community. The murals he designed across Compton in the summers of 1977 and 1978 mirrored the creative energy and consciousness of the city. His art extended into Watts, South Central, Long Beach, Carson, Lynwood, and Berlin, Germany, in over 90* murals across 50 different sites, many of which involved a total of over 200 local youth (*multiple murals painted at one site were counted as individual murals; in a career that spanned over 50 years, this total was likely higher).

Lastly, please give a kudos to Diosa Xochiquetzalcoatl who published a poem entitled “Mojada” with FLUP and Venas Abiertas Editor Popular.

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*

December 2024 Publication Roundup

Happy New Year! The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during December of 2024, and four of our members heard about these opportunities 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 a moment to extend congratulations to our dedicated members who had their work published this month, and happy submitting!

Let’s begin by extending a congratulations to Désirée Zamorano for publishing her essay “Echos of 1930s Expulsions, A Warning for Today” with The Latino Newsletter.

The Republican Party campaigned for power by threatening to rip the lives of 20 million people from the fabric of this country. As horrifying a premise as it is, this act of political depravity has happened before.

Beginning in the 1930s, an estimated 1 million people —Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals— were expelled from this country. Following the Great Depression, Mexicans were targeted and scapegoated for taking jobs from “real” Americans and exploiting social welfare resources. The Hoover administration, scrambling to stay in power, gave cities and states authority as to how they would rid themselves of these “undesirables.” The smears used against this demographic have embedded themselves into the historic and now daily discourse of immigration.

Kudos to Romaine Washington whose poems “Puzzled,” “Ars Poetica in Bloom,” and “Secondary Cento” were published in Saltwater: A Wild Seed Poetry & Arts Collective Anthology.

Big shoutout to Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo whose poem “God Was Not” was featured in Poetry Magazine’s December 2024 issue (excerpt below). Her poems “When I Wince” & “Making an Amends to Myself for Letting Men Use Me” were also published in Riot of Roses Publishing House’s anthology SOMOS XICANAS.

in your kiss or fingertips,
or how you liked to say goodbye,
arms squeezing through my middle
to lift my body from the ground

till bones cracked up my back.
Like a child’s xylophone,
you played me into laughter,
but not in the good way giggles

Please join me in congratulating Deirdre Hennings for publishing her poem “Midnight, Wisconsin” in Humana Obscura‘s eleventh issue.

We’d lost the moon.

As if in the bottom of a well
or some vast pit of sea
we floated,
nothing tethered
but our soles.
Each gravel-y step a search
in blackness so deep
we were nothing
but beating hearts

Shoutout to Erin Jourdan whose fiction piece “Chimeras” appeared in Epiphany Issue 33.

Please give kudos to Jesenia Chávez whose creative nonfiction piece “A Meditation on Shopping Carts” was featured in Air/Light Magazine (see excerpt below). She also published a personal essay entitled “Abuelita Josefina Presente!” and a poem “Now I am crying” in Riot of Roses Publishing House’s anthology SOMOS XICANAS.

Shopping cart as found art

A shopping cart sits at the foot of the trail, perhaps because of the last “clean-up.” This is what they call it when they kick everyone out who has made a home in the hidden hills of Debs Park. Once I went off trail and into a camp and ran back the other way because I was scared.  

Shopping carts are upside down on the riverbed, on the sidewalk right side up. Someone managed to push these shopping carts off a grocery store parking lot. This has given the carts new life. 

Congratulations to Lorinda Toledo whose memoir piece “Chile Season” was selected as the second place winner of Exposition’s Review‘s Flash 405 “Otherworldly” Contest.

Kudos to Jasmine Vallejo-Love for their creative nonfiction piece “Breaking the Comb Ceiling” being picked up by Lunch Ticket.

There were four hard knocks on the door; the kind only the police made. We froze, every muscle still, breath slowing down. My eyes focused firmly on the hardwood floor, tears slow-danced down my cheeks, snot bubbles in my eight-year-old nose, little fists clenched. The loud squeaking of the front door, in desperate need of WD-40, signaled Mom had opened it.

Shoutout to Bonnie S. Kaplan whose poem “Wildlife Crossings” was featured in The Nature of Our Times.

A camel crossing in Kuwait, an elk overpass in Banff,

these culverts and corridors stitch together land

severed by highway, invaded by interstates,

our open road — their dissipating gene pool.

We make necessary reparations for wildlife,

dig a desert underpass for the tortoise,

reroute the deer in the headlights.

We all need to travel

safely home.

Huge congratulations to Ryane Nicole Granados for her novella The Aves being published with Leapfrog Press.

Kudos to M. Anne Kala’i whose fiction piece “The Visitation” appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs.

In June, Sadie and Lee filed into our home with news and the peach pie it had inspired: Sadie was pregnant. My sister was smiling but wouldn’t look at me. If our parents saw how scared she was, they didn’t let on. She hadn’t been married a month. The couple had said their vows in the same place she and I were born, the same place our mother was born: up the road, at Gran’s.

Over dinner, Mother asked how their new place was suiting them, though it wasn’t new. Sadie had moved into Lee’s efficiency apartment next to the filling station he owned. Maybe, Dad said, they ought to consider moving in with Gran before the baby arrived. I liked the idea, for the place was visible from my bedroom window.

Please join me in giving a shoutout to Desiree Kannel for publishing the book review “Infusing Her Los Ángeles Roots in The Aves, by Ryane Nicole Granados” in Los Angeles Literature.

The Aves, by Ryane Nicole Granados is a masterful coming-of-age story that introduces the world to ten-year-old Zora and her 1980s Los Ángeles neighborhood, affectionately called, The Aves. This Los Ángeles neighborhood is filled with an eclectic mix of residents, friends, and friends-turn-family who Zora learns to love and appreciate as she enters her teenage years. Zora narrates her stories and although the neighborhood is what we would now label marginalized, we soon learn that the residents of the Aves are made up of more than their economic status.

Congratulations to Diosa Xochiquetzalcoatl whose poem “Her Favorite Little Word, ¡Ya Basta!” was featured in Riot of Roses Publishing House’s anthology SOMOS XICANAS.

Lastly, big kudos to Flint whose performance poem piece “crawling…” was featured in Beyond Queer Words – A Queer Anthology.

In addition to celebrating your wonderful literary accomplishments, I hope you are resting up and spending this time of year with family, friends, and pets (or curled up next to a book). Stay warm and congratulations once again!

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*