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*

August 2025 Publication Roundup

The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during August 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 this last stretch of summer. Thank you and happy submitting!

Congratulations to Tanzila Ahmed whose creative nonfiction piece “Eavesdropping as a Solidarity Tactic” was published in the imprint We Are Civic Media by Northwestern University Press.

Big kudos to Donna Spruijt-Metz whose poetry collection Wu Wei Eats an Egg was published with Ben Yehuda Press.

Shoutout to Dinah Berland whose poem “Between the Lines” was featured in Van Spuk Art Books.

Congratulations to Amy Raasch whose poem “Broken Sonnet for the Phone Call I Didn’t Pick Up” was featured in Tahoma Literary Review (see excerpt below). Her poem “ontology of llorando” was also announced as a winner in Sonora Review‘s Noise Contest, and her poem “Ornament” was selected as a finalist for The Florida Review 2025 Editor’s Award for Poetry.

I heard Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” sung
in Spanish at a funeral last week, twice —
Processional and Communion. Stained glass shook
loose & boomeranged rose-gold sharps into tall-boned
Jesus till he swayed between stone femurs
like a receiver in a phone booth waiting
for his last phone call from God. Your last call
went to voicemail, then you hung up on yourself.

Kudos to Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin whose chapbook As Mexican as a Nopal was selected as a shortlist finalist in Four Feather Press’ Chapbook Prize.

Shoutout to Désirée Zamorano whose novel The Amado Women was republished with Lee & Low Books.

Congratulations to Lisa Eve Cheby whose poem “Witnessing” appeared in Cultural Daily.

last night I dreamt I was interrogated by I.C.E.

they knew about how I ghosted Esteban after one date, about the small, behind the scenes disputes
in our non-profit writers’ group of women who refuse to submit.

I only wanted to imagine a world of liberation and joy,
not how to integrate the mundane with the horrific.

on the 4th of July with the day laborers in the Home Depot parking lot
we ate mango and piña cream paletas from Sal’s cart.

Kudos to Heather Pegas whose creative nonfiction piece “Family Lore: A Semi-History” was featured in The Muleskinner Journal.

Maybe Connie made her special soup at the diner, maybe she saves one bowl to bring home.

Perhaps she intends it for her father, or maybe she was keeping it for herself after shopping, vacuuming, washing, drying and folding the family laundry. My beautiful aunt, the one they only half-jokingly call “the maid,” puts her soup in the icebox, I imagine, saving it for later.

It is not to be. Her brothers come home all at once, and they encounter the soup.

I want that, says George, the eldest. I’m going to eat it.

Not so fast, says Manny, the second son, muscling in. I want it too.

And lastly, shoutout to Dilys Wyndham Thomas whose poem entitled “Titan[ic]” was published in Mslexia Magazine’s 107th Issue.

*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*

June 2025 Publication Roundup

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

Congratulations to Michelle Y Smith who had poems “Click & Strike,” “The April of My Life,” and “The Act of Selfies” published in Four Feathers Press Online Edition: Stone Worlds, as well as the poems “He’s Not My President,” “Time Magazine April 30,” and “World Flux” published in Poetry for the People. Except for the latter is available below:

Art makes the world go round, 

At his ECF artecf.org, there’s

a kaleidoscope of materials

Chris enjoys to crochet 

and paint. He too is a ceramist

freely his creations take shape. 

Food, flowers, and folks. 

Art is essential and 

is home sweet home. 

Poetry and prose writer is me.

Seasons, seashells, life experience 

takes me. With a stroke of a pen,

I am free.

Big kudos to Amy Raasch whose manuscript (which included the piece “Why I Am Not a Gravedigger”) was picked as a finalist for the 2025 Jack McCarthy Prize for Write Bloody Publishing‘s manuscript contest. Catch a glimpse of the manuscript sample here.

Let’s give a shoutout to Anais Godard whose fiction piece “The Clay of It” appeared in fractured lit.

When he walked into her studio, Elodie was sculpting her seventh ceramic penis of the week. This one had antlers.

She didn’t look up. “Custom or classic?”

The man hesitated. He was tall, with nervous shoulders and a brown paper envelope clutched like it contained his last will and testament. “Custom,” he said.

She glanced at him, a quick, assessing look. No sleazy grin, no too-wide eyes pretending not to scan her overalls. His posture said apology. She’d learned to read them, over the years: the oglers, the moaners, the “accidental” touchers. Men who claimed it was about art but watched her work like they were waiting for a lap dance. This one wasn’t like that. This one was here for something else. Something he almost didn’t want to ask for.

Congratulations to Romaine Washington whose poem “Cannibals and Treatises” was featured in The Coachella Review.

how we can slice a human mind in two
while the skull is intact. lying
in the most conspicuous places,

white crime usually dresses in business suits
and we mistake them for flesh and blood men.
as though words create new realities
,

Zelenskyy, I have my popcorn
ready to hear you wax eloquent.

i witness you running with adrenaline chiseling
a new rib in your chest. you think you see
a porch light on, hear a tv commercial cooing

Kudos to Mahru Elahi who published a hybrid piece entitled “The Fuel of Nations: a Cold War Girlhood in Iranian America” in Issue 10.1 of Foglifter. They also had a creative nonfiction piece entitled “American Breakfast | صبحا” featured in Lambda Literary’s 2024 Emerge Anthology.

Shoutout to Heather Pegas whose poem “And Then It Died” appeared in Heavy Feather Review and her fiction piece “A Study of Sophie-Claude Clement (1841-1914)” was published in the Thieving Magpie’s thirtieth issue. Excerpt of the latter is available below:

“But why would I wash only my legs?” I asked the artist. “Am I a shepherdess, a barefoot shepherdess? So that my feet got dirty, and I splashed mud up and down my calves, with some dung as well? And as we live in Paris, how am I meant to have come across this sheep dung, and am I to bathe my legs in a street puddle, or in the Seine? I mean to say is this not a ridiculous pose to be striking? To be concentrating so intently on cleaning my legs and only my legs?”

At this, the artist began to hop about!

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*

May 2025 Publication Roundup

The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during May of 2025. Eight 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. We have so many wonderful members featured in this month’s publication roundup, so please take a moment to extend gratitude to one another! Thank you and happy submitting!

Let’s begin by congratulating Dilys Wyndham Thomas whose poem “weather warning” was published in Issue 57 of Beyond Words Magazine.

Kudos to Sharon Langley who published her poem “I Saw My Mom Today” in the poetry anthology Women in a Golden State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond by Gunpowder Press.

Congratulations to Mary Camarillo whose fiction piece “Flip Flop” also appeared in Women in a Golden State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond.

Shoutout to Laura Sturza whose creative nonfiction piece “I Never Want to Leave These People, This Place” was featured in Issue 32 of Santa Fe Writers Project Journal.

Los Angeles felt more like home than my suburban Maryland hometown. Every corner of the city on the edge of the Pacific was interconnected—dots on a map linking people and places that brought joy and grace into my life. There was the drab, crowded newsroom where I filed my first stories as a newly minted city hall reporter, anxious about whether I had gotten the facts right. There was the noisy restaurant where my future husband Tom and I had our first date and were thrilled we both looked like the photos in our dating profiles. It also had sites where my heart was broken—the workplace with the angry boss, and the second-floor apartment where my lovely neighbor and I swapped cat-care duties when we traveled, at least until my lush, long-haired Calico passed away.

Congratulations to Romaine Washington who published poem “Café con Libros y Corazon” with Dim Lights & Obsidian Tongues: A Pomona Poetry Anthology and El Martillo Press. She also published poem “And Then Tomorrow” in Cholla Needles: Soft Power Edition.

Kudos to Mona Alvarado Frazier whose two poems “Sunrise” and “Good Girls Don’t Wear Red Panties” was featured in Santa Barbara Independent Magazine. Excerpt of the latter is available below:

Voices ebb and flow
Hello? Mom?
Nurse?

Sweat puddles
into a damp swamp
of twisted sheets

Harnessed by machines
Fluids drip, drop, 
bloody crook of arm

Free me 
from this web
Please

Huge shoutout to Didi Anofienem who published fiction novel Essien of Alkebulan: Wielders of Floods and Flames with Turner Publishing Company.

Congratulations to Tisha Marie Reichl-Aguilera whose fiction piece “Open Mind” appeared in Flowersong Press’ anthology The White Picket Fence: Stories of Individuality as Rebelliousness.

Kudos to Anais Godard whose article “An Open Letter to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Who Thinks My Daughter Is a Tragedy” was featured in McSweeney’s Open Letter To People or Entities Who Are Unlikely to Respond.

Dear Mr. RFK Jr.,
(The “dear” is tradition. Don’t mistake it for affection.)

You said autistic children are a burden. That they ruin families. That they’ll never pay taxes or write poems. That they are, in essence, collateral damage.

I’d like to introduce you to my daughter.

She is five. She does not speak in sentences yet, but she knows how to answer a joke with a smirk. She organizes her markers by color, then chaos, then color again. She plays baseball without rules, which is probably the right way to play it. She hums when she’s thinking. She hums a lot.

When another child’s upset—before the adults notice, before the child even cries—she takes their hand. She leans her forehead against theirs, gently, like she’s checking for a fever only she can feel.

Shoutout to Jesenia Chavez who published creative nonfiction essay “My Favorite Mother’s Day” with Mobile Data Mag.

It was a hot day in LA, we arrived and then we got a wheelchair for my grandmother. We walked around the gardens. I remember I wore the wrong shoes because they had a small heel that kept digging into the grass. We took turns pushing my grandmother’s wheelchair. When it was my turn, I was terrified of rolling my grandma down a hill and accidentally letting go. It was funny because the gardens are not too wheelchair friendly, but we managed. I was sweating a lot while it was my turn to push. We all took turns. My older sister Erika pushed the most because she is the toughest and complains the least.

Congratulations to Heather Pegas whose fiction piece entitled “Gem of My Eye” appeared in Issue 9 of Heimat Review.

A man lurched out at me on the street. I had been making my way down the busy sidewalk between the gym and the post office, almost late for a doctor’s appointment. In my haste and in that crowd, the man should not have stood out to me, but he did, even before he stepped into my path.

The man was skinny. He had a Roman nose, a head of black curly hair, and he’d been scanning passersby with an agitated air, as if he might jump out of his skin. He seemed young to me, perhaps thirty, not much more.

Naturally, I recoiled to find him right in front of me, but quickly recovered. In my city, in broad daylight, no one ever stopped you but for two reasons—cash or directions. I felt unwell, my money was for my doctor, and I didn’t have time for any lost soul. But I noticed the man had pressed trousers, a good dress shirt. He probably didn’t need my money, so I put his agitation down to being lost.

Kudos to Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo who published a poem entitled “The Story of the Othermother” with Santa Fe Writers Project Journal, as well as creative nonfiction piece “So You Don’t Like to Read” in Boundless 2025: The Anthology of the Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival with Flowersong Press. See excerpt of the former below:

I Love Lucy fantasies planted from the TV
and into her mind on sick days home from school.
So far back buried the seed of a husband
she was to reach for with twinkles in her eyes
before saying, “Ricky, Darling.”

She believed in what would grow between them
and the culture they’d carefully collect like items for a nest–
drums and poetry, dance and gratitude.

But no husband sprouted.

Shoutout to Jasmine Vallejo-Love who published six poems “Existential Crisis,” “A Gentle Push to Persevere,” “Butterfly Cinquain for a Burning LA,” “Sole Breadwinner,” “Cerulean Heart,” and “For the Puerto Rican Serviceman Who Lost Their Lives in the Aftermath of 9/11” in Cholla Needles: Soft Power Edition.

Congratulations to .CHISARAOKWU. whose poems “Sleep-Wake Cycle” and “Fancy” were featured in Anomaly. See excerpt of the former below:

In sleep, I hold catastrophe at bay;
awake, the fat arm of an aunt
and an uncle’s mustard breath
press against my softest parts—
This wreck: persistent, recurring
brain on loop, glitch in the algorithm,

Kudos to Flint whose poem “The Trouble with Double Vision” was picked up by Quartet Journal.

My eyes are in my mouth
in between my teeth

and my tongue glosses
over them as truthfully

as vodka dresses the ice
in the highball sulking

its way down my throat.
Throat wide as hunger

Shoutout to Ronna Magy whose five poems “Afternoon Prayer,” “Like a Virgin, “Knives, Forks, Spoons, Mothers, Children,” “Grandmother,” and “What Kind of Times?” appeared in Cholla Needles: Soft Power Edition. She also published “Women in a Golden State” in Women in a Golden State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond by Gunpowder Press.

Congratulations to Elizabeth Galoozis who published blog post “Shaping a Collection into a Book” with awpwriter.org.

When I was matched in the Writer to Writer program in 2022, I’d been trying to compile a poetry collection for a few years. “Compile” is really the right word. The manuscript I brought to my mentor, Claire Wahmanholm, was more of a portfolio, in which I tried to faithfully represent the last twenty years of my poetic development. Intellectually, I understood that other poetry collections weren’t comprehensive or documentary. But emotionally, it was difficult for me to chart a middle path between the comprehensive and the tightly themed (books like Brittney Corrigan’s Daughters or Terrance Hayes’s American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin). I knew the latter model wouldn’t work for what I had, and at almost forty, I wanted to work with what I had.

And lastly, kudos to Sakae Manning for their hybrid piece “My Grandmother’s Affair with the San Andreas Fault” being featured in Driftwoods 2025 Anthology.

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*