WWS at AWP Los Angeles

WWS @ AWP GUIDE

It’s almost time! LA will play host to the iconic writer’s conference, AWP from March 26 – 29th, 2025. So many panels, readings, and off-site gatherings, it’s a lot for a group not especially known as extroverts. I’m looking at you, fellow writers. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

We’ve put together a list to help you connect with other members of Women Who Submit. It’s a way for you to support old friends and to make new friends. There are a ton of events featuring members. Check them out below. From book signings to readings to moderating, WWS will be representing at AWP.

Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of the conference.

First, we know you want to do all the things. So many sights to be seen, but remember you can’t do it all and to give yourself grace. Plan the events you want to attend and be sure to schedule some downtime in between. If you need to chill out, rooms 506 and 507 in the convention center are designated quiet spaces. Hit up room 511C if you need low lighting.

Second, stay hydrated, bring snacks, and for the love of all things holy, wear comfortable shoes. Bonus points, dress in layers because you never know what the air conditioning temps will be like. The days will be long, so pack a phone charger.

Third, have fun and be inspired! So inspired, maybe, that you will be ready to meet up on Sunday, March 30 for a WWS Submit All party (see below).

Anywho, enjoy and hope to see you at the conference!

By Sibylla Nash, Inaugural Kit Reed Travel Fund Recipient

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2025

6:00 pm 

READING: Tia Chucha Poetry Reading, Resistance & Revival

Location: LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, 501 N Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90012

Description: Join us for an unforgettable evening of powerful words and vibrant voices, a celebration of Los Angeles-based Latine poets who carry the legacy of resilience, identity, and cultural renaissance. This event brings together poets from the city that inspires them with resistance, justice, and action.

Poets: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Luivette Resto, Matt Sedillo, Jose Hernandez Diaz, William Archila, Angelina Sáenz, Melinda Palacio, Vickie Vértiz, Antonieta Villamil, Luis J. Rodriguez, Hosts: Rey M. Rodríguez and Jorge H. Rodríguez

Free

6:45 pm – 8:00 pm

READING: Love + Community: an AWP offsite reading with donations for LA fire relief

Location: Location: 1642, 1642 West Temple Street Los Angeles, CA 90026

Description: Seven literary luminaries perform their creative nonfiction work, at this benefit reading for LA fire relief. Audience donations on the night will go towards six local authors from the literary organization Women Who Submit, who lost their homes in the recent fires.

Speakers: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal (Magical Realism), Annie Liontas (Sex With a Brain Injury), Shze-Hui Tjoa (The Story Game), Grace Loh Prasad (The Translator’s Daughter), Jackson Bliss (Dream Pop Origami), and Minelle Mahtani (May It Have a Happy Ending). Hosted by Katie Lee Ellison, organizer of the Nonfiction for No Reason Series.

THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2025

9:00 am – 10:00 am

SIGNING: BREAKING PATTERN & STORIES ALL OUR OWN

Location: Inlandia Booth T1018, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera will be signing her books Stories All Our Own and Breaking Pattern.

9:00 am – 10:15 am

PANEL: Disrupting the Composition Classroom: Strategies from BIPOC Creatives

Location: Room 408B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: How can creative writers bring their expertise to the composition classroom? This panel will discuss how women of color/genderqueer creative writers challenge “traditional” white supremacist frameworks in college-level composition courses.

Panelists:  Moderator: Cynthia Guardado  Presenter: Bridgette Bianca Presenter: Arielle Jones  Presenter: Michelle Brittan Rosado  Presenter: Simona Supekar

10 am – 11 am

BOOK SIGNING & READING: Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl

Location: Booth T3358 Círculo de poetas and Writers Booth, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: Conversaciones con los difuntos / Conversations with the Dead is Diosa Xochiquetzacóatl’s 5th poetry collection, her first fully bilingual book, and first collection to be published and artisanally handcrafted in Mexico by Editorial Desierto Mayor.

10:35 am – 11:50 am

PANEL: Rewriting LA: Literature from the Modern Working Class

Location: Room 408A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: This multigenre, intergenerational panel focuses on a working-class literary Los Angeles that makes the glint possible, tasking us to rewrite our city’s imaginings or get written out. Through fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and nonfiction, these writers craft a diverse, gritty, tangled city, capturing the complex interchanges of Los Angeles’s cultural and social history.

Panelists:  Moderator: Vickie Vertiz  Presenter: Steve Gutierrez  Presenter: Joelle Mendoza  Presenter: Jenise Miller  Presenter: Tanzila Ahmed

12:10 pm – 1:25 pm

PANEL: Combining Community & Mentorship to Help Build a Screenwriting Career

Location: Room 402AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: This panel will discuss how emerging TV writers and screenwriters can establish a community of writers, producers, development executives, managers, and agents who can support and mentor them throughout their careers.

Panelists: Moderator: Colette Sartor  Presenter: Eirene Donohue  Presenter: Winnie Kemp  Presenter: Lisanne Sartor  Presenter: Patrick Tobin

12:10 pm – 1:25 pm

PANEL: Getting Out of Our Own Way”: Cultivating a Sustainable Writing Practice

Location: Room 515A, Los Angeles Convention Center, Level Two

Description: How can writers cultivate a sustainable creative practice while paying the bills, growing a career, and accounting for domestic responsibilities? Award-winning authors with multiple books and diverse lived experiences discuss their ongoing journeys to do so—while also taking into consideration the roles of culture and institutions—as well as their best advice for tending to the mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of the writing life.

Panelists: Presenter: Amanda Churchill  Moderator: Lorinda Toledo  Presenter: Karen Connelly  Presenter: Janet Fitch  Presenter: Reyna Grande

12:30 – 1:30

BOOK SIGNING: An Accidental Pilgrim, a memoir in prose and verse by Maria Caponi

Location: Booth 319, Atmosphere Press, Los Angeles Convention Center

1:30 pm – 3:30 pm

READING: Círculo de poetas and Writers Reading

Location: Beyond Baroque  Literary Arts Center, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291

Description: Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl along with other Círculo members, will be reading from their work during this event.

Free

1:45 pm – 3:00 pm

POETRY READING: Celebrating the Golden State: A Reading by Poets Laureate from California

Location: Concourse Hall 153 ABC, Level One, Convention Center

Description: What do a queer undocumented immigrant, a former packinghouse worker, an organizer around issues of extrajudicial killings of Black people, a Korean adoptee, and a lawyer by training have in common? They are all poets laureate from various parts of California. These poets celebrate California but also challenge positions of power and privilege. The laureates will discuss their roles, read from their books, and engage in a Q&A with the audience.

Speakers:  Moderator: Lee Herrick  Presenter: Tongo Eisen-Martin  Presenter: Yosimar Reyes  Presenter: Joseph Rios  Presenter: Lynne Thompson

3:20 pm – 4:35 pm

PANEL: Remembering What Is Vanishing: Poets on Ecology, History & Race

Location: Room 408A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: This panel explores aspects of erasure, evanescence, and loss, as in the erasure of one’s identity and subjectivity through racial and historical lenses, as in the extinction of 150 species in an average day, and how poets can “knock on silence,” in the words of Chinese poet Lu Ji, so as to give voice to those rubbed out by ideology, history, and time, to reach across the void instead of staring into it and becoming monsters.

Panelists: Moderator: Tony Barnstone  Presenter: Angie Estes  Presenter: Mark Irwin  Presenter: Douglas Manuel  Presenter: Lynne Thompson

5:00 pm – 7:00 pm

READING: Storyknife AWP Reading & Gathering

Location: First Draft DTLA, 1230 S Olive St., DTLA

Description: Storyknife will hold an AWP Offsite reading and gathering at First Draft in Los Angeles.

Speakers: Rowena Alegria, Jasmin An, and more StoryKnife alumnae.

Free

5:30 pm – 7:30 pm

READING: Mouthfeel Press AWP Offsite Reading

Location: The Treehouse at Freehand Hotel, 416 W 8th St, Los Angeles, CA 90014

Description: Come and meet our amazing authors and enjoy a relaxing evening with us. This reading is curated with Green Writers Press.

Speakers: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Anthony Huerta Velasuez, Chim Sher Ting, Reverie Koniecki, Jen Yanez-Alaniz

6:00 pm

WORKSHOP: 30ñera: 30 Years of the Macondo Writers Workshop

Location: LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, 501 N Main St, Los Angeles 90012

Description: Come celebrate the launch of our 30ñera: Thirty Years of the Macondo Writers Workshop in Los Angeles! The night will be filled with poetry, stories, and the spirit of Macondo, accompanied by light refreshments and snacks. Bring your friends and celebrate with us as we honor 30 years of the workshop LA style!
Speakers: Monica Palacios, Pat Alderete, Camilo Loaiza Bonilla, Ofelia Montelongo, Lori Anaya, Amelia Montes, Jonathan Ayala, Melissa Hidalgo, Natalia Treviño, Denise Tolan, René Colato Lainez, Lesley Téllez, Mona Alvarado Frazier, Adela Najarro, Sebha Sanwar, Karina Muñiz-Pagán, Jennifer Nguyen, Alex Espinoza


6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
FUNDRAISER:
The Offing’s 10th Birthday and LA Fire Recovery Fundraiser
Location: The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA-LA), 1717 East 7th Street Los Angeles, CA 90021
Description:
Come celebrate a decade of creativity, community, and culture. Join us for birthday cake, a toast, and the release of The Offing’s anniversary anthology! We will donate all proceeds from our $5 ticket sales to rebuilding the Palisades Public Library and repopulating books burned in Pasadena Unified School District libraries.
Cost $5 – $20

7:00

Celebrate 10 Years of Expo at AWP!

Location: Truly LA, 216 S. Alameda St., Los Angeles, CA 90012

Description: Exposition Review is turning 10! You are officially invited to Expo’s in-person, off-site, literary citizenship extravaganza. Let’s party, seltzer-style!

Free

7:00pm

Poetry at the Gate of Memory

Location: Japanese American National Museum, 100 North Central Avenue

Los Angeles, CA 90012

Description: Join poets Brynn Saito and traci kato-kiriyama for a reading celebrating the forthcoming April 2025 release of The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration. Edited by Saito and Brandon Shimoda, this poetry anthology explores the afterlife of the historical yet enduring injustice of World War II–era prisons and camps. Featured readers include David Mura, Heather Nagami, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, James Fujinami Moore, and others, with a special tribute to poet, educator, and activist Amy Uyematsu and Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan.

Free

FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2025

9:00 am – 10:15 am

PANEL: Beauty of the Unwanted: Exploring the New Literary Terrain of California

Location: Room 404AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: This panel represents distinct literary voices of several contemporary essayists from California who are drawn to re-envisioning “the spirit of a place” in ways that challenge and fulfill the literary imagination.

Panelists: Presenter: Ruth Nolan  Moderator: Carribean Fragoza  Presenter: Melissa Hidalgo  Presenter: Jenise Miller

10:35 am – 11:50 am

PANEL: Can I Write That? At the Crossroads of Social Change & Conscious Language

Location: Room 503, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: This session investigates how we can adopt inclusive, socially responsible approaches to creative projects. Presenters steeped in how writing inspires change will explore creative freedom and cultural sensitivity.

Panelists: Moderator: Stephanie Lenox  Presenter: Kavita Das  Presenter: Sonya Huber  Presenter: Paisley Rekdal  Presenter: Karen Yin

10:35 am – 11:50 am

PANEL: A Desert Full of Color: Creating & Supporting BIPOC Spaces in LA

Location: Room 411, Los Angeles Convention Center, Level Two

Description: Can a handful of established institutions serve the communities of a sprawling desert properly? Should BIPOC talent and labor be used to fight for access to PWI, or are we better served by creating and building our own spaces? Four writers, publishers, teachers, and community builders from the Los Angeles area discuss who benefits from inclusion into historically white spaces and whose work gets co-opted and ultimately wasted when BIPOC communities don’t build their own institutions.

Panelists: Hiram Sims, Peter Woods, Romeo Guzman, Sarah-Rafael Garcia, traci kato-kiriyama, moderated by Chiwan Choi

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

SIGNING: BREAKING PATTERN & STORIES ALL OUR OWN

Location: Inlandia Booth T1018, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguyilera will be signing her books Stories All Our Own and Breaking Pattern.

1:45 pm – 3:00 pm

PANEL: Alchemizing Belonging Outside of Academia: Writers Creating Careers Without MFAs

Location: Concourse Hall 152, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: This panel features cross-genre authors of color as they examine how to navigate the publishing industry on their own terms while alchemizing a code of belonging.

Panelists: Moderator: Camille Hernandez  Presenter: Elontra Hall  Presenter: Camari Hawkins  Presenter: Heidi Lepe

1:45 pm – 3:00 pm

PANEL: Making the Cut: What Judging Story Collection Contests Taught Us

Location: Room 404AB, Los Angeles Convention Center, Level Two

Description: The panel—which includes editors, reviewers, professors, and scholars—offers insight and advice for those working on or trying to publish story collections; trend observations; and thoughts on how and why reading for the contest altered their own work.

Panelists: Moderator: Lori Ostlund  Presenter: Jenny Shank  Presenter: Hasanthika Sirisena  Presenter: Michael Wang  Presenter: Toni Ann Johnson

1:45 pm – 3:00 pm

PANEL: The Ghosts That Haunt Us

Location: Room 502A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: How can hauntings be used to illustrate larger human stories? How can our own personal hauntings create and inspire stories that will haunt readers? From cities haunted by displacement and erasure, to haunted battlefields, to family ghost stories, five writers discuss how hauntings, real and metaphorical, have inspired their poetry and fiction.
Panelists: Presenter: Xochitl Bermejo  Moderator: Kate Maruyama  Presenter: Latoya Jordan  Presenter: Tanzila Ahmed  Presenter: Chiwan Choi

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

SIGNING: Andy Anderegg Signs PLUM

Location: Los Angeles Convention Center, Hub City Booth #730

5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

READING: House Party, a Tin House Prose Reading
Location: Other Books, Comics, and Zines, 2006 East Cesar E Chavez Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90033
Description:
Come hear nine authors from Tin House perform “lightning readings” in fiction and nonfiction! Author chats and a book-signing session available afterwards.
Speakers: Alisa Alering (Smothermoss), Myriam J.A. Chancy (Village Weavers), Talia Lakshmi Kolluri (What We Fed to the Manticore), Cleo Qian (LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO), Shze-Hui Tjoa (The Story Game: A Memoir), Lena Valencia (Mystery Lights), Elissa Washuta (White Magic), Jane Wong (Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City), and Ghassan Zeineddine (Dearborn)

7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

OPEN MIC: We Write, We Rise: An L.A. Community Open Mic

Location: Echo Park Writing Lab, 1714 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90026

Description: This event welcomes all 826LA community members, Angelenos, and visiting writers to engage with us during this pivotal moment. Whether you want to perform or simply listen, all are welcome to be part of this gathering.

Free

8:00 pm – 10:00 pm

PANEL: Unruly Bodies: A Community Reading

Location: Pieter Performance Space, 2701 North Broadway Los Angeles, CA 90031

Description: “All of us live in unruly bodies that we’re all trying to take care of as best we can.” —Roxane Gay Readers will share a story about their relationship with a body that refuses to act “as it should.” In a world that controls and punishes bodies that are queer, trans, disabled, mad, sick, fat, and/or racialized, how can we begin to celebrate our unruly bodies?

Speakers: Amanda Choo Quan, Arianne Ayu Alizio, Ashna Ali, Carolyn Collado, Fariha Roisin, Kai Cheng Thom, Lupita Limón Corrales, Margeaux Feldman, Raechel Anne Jolie, Tamar Bresge

Cost: $12.51 – $28.52

SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 2025

10:00 am – 11 a.m.

SIGNING: BREAKING PATTERN & STORIES ALL OUR OWN

Location: WWS/Macondo: booth 1027

Description: Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguyilera will be signing her books Stories All Our Own and Breaking Pattern.

10:35 am – 11:50 am

Poetry Reading: The Defiance of Pink Poetry Books

Location: Room 405, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: Celebrating titles that feature the color pink on their covers, poets will read work that highlights the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and identity, and discuss how pink came to be a prominent element of their book, and what the color means to them and their writing.

Speakers:  Presenter: Chen Chen  Moderator: Xochitl Bermejo  Presenter: Anatalia Vallez  Presenter: Zefyr Lisowski  Presenter: Cathy Linh Che

10:35 am – 11:50 am

Panel: Family Secrets: A Storyteller’s Bounty, or Curse?

Location: Room 403B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: In this panel, five award-winning fiction and nonfiction authors and screenwriters discuss the perils and rewards of writing around family secrets.

Panelists:  Moderator: Aimee Liu  Presenter: David Francis  Presenter: Elle Johnson  Presenter: Toni Ann Johnson  Presenter: Colette Sartor

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

BOOK SIGNING: An Accidental Pilgrim, a memoir in prose and verse by Maria Caponi

Location: Booth 319, Atmosphere Press, Los Angeles Convention Center

1:45 pm – 3:00 pm

PANEL: Out In Public: 5 LGBTQ+ Poets On Writing At One Of The Oldest Pride Parades

Location: Room 411, level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: These five poets representing LA’s diverse identities, including city poet laureates, examine queer community organizing through poetry. This combination discussion panel and reading will pair poems exploring poetry’s ability to hold space where trauma is prevalent and joy and delight are desperately needed.

Panelists: Moderator: Brian Sonia-Wallace  Presenter: Jireh Deng  Presenter: Jose Rios  Presenter: Carla Sameth  Presenter: Victor Yates

1:45 pm – 3:00 pm

PANEL: Strength in Numbers: Southern California Women & Femme Organizers in Action

Location: Room 515B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: Our panelists will offer insights on literary activism, identity complexities, collaboration pitfalls, and best practices. We hope to acknowledge the work of women and femmes and ignite a new cohort of community leaders, hosts, teaching artists, and organizers.

Panelists:  Presenter: bridgette bianca  Presenter: Danielle Mitchell  Moderator: Kelsey Bryan-Zwick  Presenter: Natalie Graham  Presenter: Jessica Wilson

3:20 pm – 4:35 pm

PANEL: Dwelling in Possibility: How Libraries Can Help Your Writing Career

Location: Room 410, Level Two, LA Convention Center

Descriptions: This multigenre panel of writer-librarians will share their knowledge, strategies, and best practices for how writers can connect with libraries and librarians for research, community, workshops, and book promotions.

Panelists: Moderator: Elizabeth Galoozis  Presenter: Lisa Eve Cheby  Presenter: Cybele García Kohel  Presenter: Lauren Salerno

3:20 pm – 4:35 pm

PANEL: What You’ve Heard Isn’t True: Crafting New Salvadoran Myths & Futurities

Location: LA Convention Center, Room 405, Level Two

Description: Contemporary writers of the Salvadoran diaspora use the speculative—the imaginative—to parse through the urgent sociopolitical issues affecting the US and El Salvador. If much of El Salvador’s past was documented by outsiders, its future will be written by these speculative writers and their contemporaries.

Panelists: Presenter: Ruben Reyes Jr.  Moderator: Janel Pineda  Presenter: Gina María Balibrera  Presenter: Leticia Hernández-Linares  Presenter: Reyes Ramirez

3:20 pm – 4:35 pm

PANEL: Writing with/about Unruly Bodies

Location: LA Convention Center, Level 2, Room 515B

Description: What does it mean to write about and from an unruly body? In a world that controls and punishes bodies that are queer, trans, disabled, mad, sick, fat, and/or racialized, writing about our unruly bodies can be an act of resistance—but that act can come at a cost. How do we write about our unruly bodies in a way that supports our flourishing? Is such a practice possible, and if not, what is needed to make it so?

Panelists: Moderator: Margeaux Feldman  Presenter: Amanda Choo Quan  Presenter: Carolyn Collado  Presenter: Fariha Roisin  Presenter: Kai Cheng Thom

5:30 pm – 7:30 pm

READING: WAWOG-LA: New York War Crimes Reading and Discussion

Location: Espacio 1839, 1839 1st St, Los Angeles, CA 90033

Description: Join us for a community reading and discussion across all 15 issues of the New York War Crimes during Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) week.

*Accessibility notes: Masks are required for this event. Masks will be provided for those without one at the event.

Limited metered street parking is available. Espacio is one block away from the A-line. (formerly Gold line) Mariachi Plaza metro station.

Free but (if you can) please bring cash for donations.

6:00 pm – 7:30 pm

SIGNING: Inlandia Books Road Show

Location: Beyond Baroque 681 Venice Blvd. Venice, CA 90291

Description: Close out your stay in L.A. with an event at the iconic Beyond Baroque with the Inlandia Books Road Show! Inlandia Books authors will share their work and you can meet and mingle and pick up signed copies of their books. Doors open at 5:30 pm and the event will begin promptly at 6 pm.

Speakers: Will Barnes, Elizabeth Cantwell, Lewis deSoto, Tiffany Elliott, Ellen Estilai, Elizabeth Galoozis, Stephanie Barbé Hammer, Jennifer MacKenzie, and Angelica Maria Barraza Tran. Emceed by Cati Porter.

Free

7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

READING: AWP offsite reading for LA fire relief: “Love + Community”

Location: Bar Franca, 438 Main Street Los Angeles, CA 90013

Description: A star-studded lineup of local poets read their life-giving work, in conjunction with the LA-based literary journal Exposition Review. Audience donations on the night will go towards 3 organizations aiding with fire relief: World Central Kitchen, Octavia’s Bookshelf, and the Tongva Nation Eaton Wildfire Recovery Fund. Author signings and chats afterwards.

Free

SUNDAY, MARCH 30, 2025

1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

SUBMISSION DRIVE: WWS SUBMIT ALL

Location: Figat7th Food Court, 925 W. 8th St. DTLA

Description: In celebration of the AWP Writers Conference being in Los Angeles, and with support from the California Arts Council, WWS is hosting an in-person submission drive. Join us with your computer, your list of journals and open calls gathered from the AWP Book Fair, and your drive to “hit send”!


WWS CERTIFIED AT THE 2025 AWP LOS ANGELES BOOK FAIR

In 2019, I walked into the book fair at AWP Portland and into complete overwhelm. The enormous convention space held presses big and large, writing programs both esteemed and unheard of and writers, agents, and publicists everywhere. The whole place was so big and white and male. I had no idea where I might feel welcome me, where my stories my find a home.

So, for those of you heading to AWP LA, here are 21 WWS vetted presses tabling at the book fair. They show an appreciation for diverse voices in their spaces by having at least 50% women and 50% POC on their mastheads. Check them out. Chat them up, and then, after AWP, submit your words.

By Noriko Nakada, WWS Board Member

1.     Abode Press – T848

2.     Chestnut Review – 1035

3.     Guernica – T352

4.     Host Publications – 628

5.     In-Na-Po – 904

6.     Inlandia Institute – T1018

7.     iō Literary Journal – T206

8.     June Road Press – T318

9.     Kaya Press at the Asian/American Book Fair – 637, 639, and 641

10.  Literary Namjooning – T905

11.  Macondo Writers Workshop – 1027

12.  Mizna – 355

13.  Mouthfeel Press – 635

14.  Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora – T366

15.  Santa Fe Writers Project – 563

16.  Spectrum Literary Journal – T1149

17.  Sundress Publications – T227

18.  VONA – 857

19.  Wayne State University Press – 529

20.  We Are Urban Haiku – 1049

21.  Yellow Arrow Publishing – T949

For more resources, be sure to visit Women Who Submit at Booth 1027!

SUBMIT 1: WWS Submission Drive & Fundraiser

Saturday, September 14, 2024 Women Who Submit (WWS) hosts our 11th annual SUBMIT 1 Submission Drive & Fundraiser. This marks the one day a year we encourage woman-identifying and nonbinary writers across the globe to send one of their most beloved pieces of writing to tier one journals as one community. 

As an act of solidarity, SUBMIT 1 dares to connect marginalized writers to top tier editors and publishers, widening the spectrum of voices reaching audiences and influencing arts and culture across the world. And you can help! 

HOW TO PARTICIPATE:

1. Before September 14th, study this list of “Top Ranked Journals of 2024” with current open calls to find a good fit for your work. BE SURE TO READ AND FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES. 

2. On September 14th, submit one of your most beloved pieces of writing to at least one tier one magazine from wherever you are in the world at any time of day.

3. Join one of the following SUBMIT 1 Meetups to submit as a community: 

WWS-Los Angeles
Saturday, September 14, 2024, 11am-2pm
Highland Park Brewing: 1220 N Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Bring computers and money for beer and snacks
Masks recommended & provided
Contact: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo (admin@womenwhosubmtilit.org)

WWS-Long Beach
Saturday, September 14, 2024 10am-12pm
The Hangar at LBX: 4150 McGowen St, Long Beach, CA 90808
Contact: Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley (lucy@lulustuff.com)

WWS-West Los Angeles
Saturday, September 14, 2024, 2pm-4pm 
West Hollywood Library: 625 N. San Vicente Blvd, West Hollywood
Contact: Angela Franklin (afrankone@gmail.com)

WWS-Bay Area
Saturday, September 14, 2024, 1-3pm
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94104
Contact: wwsl.bay.area@gmail.com

WWS-Austin, TX
Saturday, September 14, 2024 at 9:30am
Central market Cafe, Austin, TX
Contact: Ramona Reeves (ramona.reeves@gmail.com)

4. Tag @WomenWhoSubmit on Twitter (or X) and Instagram and use the hashtag #SUBMIT1, to share when you’ve submitted, so we can celebrate with you! 

5. After submitting, log your submissions with THIS FORM to help WWS track how many submissions were sent out as a community. 

HOW TO SUPPORT: 

In conjunction with SUBMIT 1, WWS is raising $5,000 to support projects like purchasing new technical equipment to ensure our hybrid workshops and panels are offering the best quality of online programming making professional development accessible to any writer in need and growing writers funds to help more writers offset the costs of starting and maintaining a writing career. 

By donating to the SUBMIT 1 Submission Drive & Fundraiser, and by sharing the fundraiser link and flier on social media and with your communities, you help spread the word on WWS’s mission to push the needle in publishing toward equity and inclusion as one

DONATE HERE!

Your support also allows WWS to continue to provide the following free services: 

WWS HISTORY: 

Inspired by the 2009 VIDA Count from VIDA, Women in Literary Arts, which published quantitative evidence illustrating the dearth of women’s voices in top tier publications, Women Who Submit was founded in 2011 to empower women writers to submit work for publication and help change those numbers. In September 2014, a group of writers gathered at Hermosillo Bar in Highland Park, CA for a day of beers, cheers, and literary submissions. It was the first time we called on our WWS community to submit to tier-one literary journals en masse as a nod to the original VIDA Count. SUBMIT 1 continues today as an annual event and call to action for equity and wider representation in publishing with submission drives hosted at public places across Los Angeles. From 2020-2023, we moved our annual gathering to the @WomenWhoSubmit Instagram, and this year we return to a focus on public meetups with online support. 

Eight women with laptops sit on either side of a long table, smiling at the camera
1st Annual Submission Drive – September, 2014

WWS Chapters – A Farewell & Welcome

Women Who Submit is proud to serve woman-identifying and nonbinary writers across the nation and the world through our Chapters program. Started in 2017 by cofounder, Ashaki M. Jackson, WWS Chapters has continued to grow under the leadership of Chapters Director, Ryane Granados with support from Chapters Liaison and WWS-Long Beach Chapter Lead, Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley. We thank Ryane and Lucy for their last four years of service. Together they have been essential in making WWS resources available and accessible to countless writers and community members.

Women Who Submit is excited to share that Ryane Granados’ first book, The Aves, won the 2023 Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize and is slated for publication in fall 2024! As she takes on this new chapter in her writing career, she bids farewell to WWS Chapters. WWS thanks Ryane for her commitment and grace and sends many claps and cheers for what’s to come! As we like to say in orientation, once a WWS member, always a WWS member!

Women Who Submit is proud to welcome our new Chapters Team! We happily announce as Chapters Director, our former Chapters Liaison, Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley, and introduce as Chapters Liaison, WWS member and collaborator, Thea Pueschel.

Please read below for a farewell message from Ryane and an introduction from Lucy and Thea.

Literary Play Cousins: A Farewell Message From Ryane Granados:

Black woman writers sitting in the sun, with her hand to her cheek and a smile on her face.

Recently my inquisitive middle son asked me why he had so many cousins. I only have one sister, so when I married my husband, I was drawn to his familial bonds that came with multiple siblings through biology and marriage. In addition to the cousins who carry the same surname, my son also has the privilege of play cousins. These enduring connections defined my childhood, and in turn they are enriching his. Play cousins are a mainstay in the Black community and they are bonds born from chosen family. These relationships transcend ancestral ties and date back to slavery when families were often torn apart. In my son’s case, his play cousins are the kids of our closest friends. The arrangement is best described as a braid with a group of threads crossing over and under each other into one. 

This same braided image comes to mind when I think of my role as Chapters Director for Women Who Submit. I accepted the role at a crossroads both professionally and personally. I had stepped down from a tenured teaching position to manage the medical needs of another one of my children, and I found myself in search of an identity that encompassed retired professor, overwhelmed mom, artist, activist, author, and hopeful community builder. This braid had a lot of threads, but what it was missing was the cultural continuity of close-knit networks. This is what I liken the development of our WWS chapters to be. Expanding our organizational reach was a worthy endeavor, but for me, it wasn’t purely altruistic. In all sincerity, I was in search of literary play cousins and as our chapters grew, I found them. In New Chapter Lead Orientations, I would often joke about the idea of meeting chapter leads all across the globe; a kindred connection of cousins with the shared mission of encouraging women and non-binary writers to submit their work for publication. 

I am grateful for my time as Chapters Director and after 4 plus years and 35 plus chapters, I find myself at a new crossroads. My gratitude for this journey is matched only by my appreciation for the partnership formed with my longtime Chapters Liaison, Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley. In the ongoing spirit of leadership development, another unexpected byproduct of WWS, I am excited to hand over the role of Chapters Director to Lucy. Additionally, she will be working in collaboration with Thea Pueschel, our new Chapters Liaison. Together they are exceptionally suited to help usher the chapters direction of Women Who Submit into a new and exciting season. 

As for me, I am stepping down to focus once again on family, professional commitments, and the launch of my forthcoming novella. I am also stepping out with an identity fortified by my braided connections and my multitude of literary play cousins. In my season as Chapters Director, I was given as much as I gave, and I hope that my interactions will leave a lasting impression on our ground-breaking artistic community. 

In Solidarity, 

Ryane Nicole Granados 

Outgoing WWS Chapters Director

WWS Member

Welcome

Q & A with the Chapters Team: Introducing Chapters Director, Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley and Chapters Liaison, Thea Pueschel

How and when did you first hear about Women Who Submit and how did you first become involved?

head shot of writer Lucy Rodriguez-Handley

LUCY RODRIGUEZ-HANLEY: In 2013 I took a memoir workshop with writer/editor Seth Fischer. He encouraged the women in the class to join Women Who Submit. At the time, I had no idea the positive impact this community would have in my life. I’ve gotten published by my sheroes; Vanessa Martir, Reyna Grande and Myriam Gurba. I have benefited from mentorship and a myriad of resources that have helped develop my voice as a writer. I have two young children and have found solidarity with other moms in the community. The people I’ve met have become favorite people and/or the most fantastic friends.

THEA PUESCHEL: I first heard about WWS from the Airing out Your Dirty Laundry Workshop I took at the 1888 Center in Orange, CA. The facilitator asked me if I had been submitting my work. I responded maybe once or twice a year just to validate that I am not a literary writer. She told me I needed to join the WWS. This was before the Lockdown times, and so I had to wait 6 months to attend an in-person orientation. The first time I submitted with WWS was May 11, 2019, according to Submittable.

What excites you about working with WWS Chapters?

LRH: I love community building and encouraging women and nonbinary writers to submit their work to publications. I am an optimist, every month I see the change this organization is making when our members get published, even the rejections count. Facilitating opportunities, spreading our mission and sharing resources with our chapters, like our upcoming 2024 Summer Workshops or soliciting submissions to our anthology or grants is very gratifying.  

TP: Helping others facilitate the magic of bringing more voices to the literary landscape.

What is something you wish people knew or understood about the WWS Chapters?

LRH: A chapter can be as simple as two writers getting together to submit their work to publications. You don’t need big numbers to be a successful chapter. As a Chapter Lead your sole duty is to host the gathering and cheer submissions on (most of us clap when a submission has gone out). You are not there to read someone’s work, facilitate a workshop or provide feedback. You can have multiple people leading a chapter, you can also have multiple chapters in the same region (Los Angeles and the Bay area both have multiple chapters).

TP: Each WWS chapter is a support network. A net to catch us when we get those hard-hitting rejections. A cheering squad for when we get those hard-won yeses. An audience to clap when we put our big kid chonies on and submit. For those of us humans that have come up as creative lone wolves for years and decades because we may not have the creative connections or known how to maneuver the literary world the WWS Chapters offer support. A village for us to walk on our two legs, to transform from lone wolf creatives to writers with a community. I think additionally, it’s such an important space particularly for those of us who grew up working class without connections whether we were the first generation to go to college or were bitten by the creative bug without formal education. WWS chapters bring experience, and resources.

Not all WWS Chapters are the same, but they are all worthwhile and community based.

If someone was interested in starting a chapter in their area, how might they begin that process and what does it look like?

LRH: If possible, I suggest attending a meeting to make sure it is something you want to take on. Ask yourself why you want to lead a chapter and what you’d like to gain from the experience. Do you want to lead alone or co-lead with one or two people? The process is simple, after filling out an application, we schedule an orientation where we share information, resources and best practices about the organization and the submission process. We also have a social media manager that can help you spread the word when you are ready to launch your chapter.

TP: It’s pretty easy peasy… 1. Check the WWS website for orientation dates, 2. Follow the direction and guidelines on the WWS website and submit your packet of interest to start a WWS Chapter, 3. Patiently wait while we analyze the materials, 4. Once you get your invite attend a WWS orientation, 5. Ask us questions!

We’re all writers and creatives first at WWS, what are you working on these days? Do you have any exciting news to share?

LRH: I am writing 500 words per day. The last six months have been hard for me on the creative front. I started a writing challenge this month led by fellow mom and WWS member, LiYun Alvarado. It’s a lot of shitty first drafts but I’m writing again! The goal is to get back to my memoir in May. I’m really happy about this and celebrating every day that I write a new page.

TP: Right now, I am in the process of having rehearsals for two plays that I am directing for the Short + Sweet Hollywood 10-minute play festival. I haven’t directed in a decade, so I am extremely excited about this.

In 2021, I had a solo exhibition of mixed media work at the Center in Orange. I realized that once the triptych of large format paintings stood next to each other I wasn’t pleased with how they looked. Separate I felt that the intention was clear, but when the series was lined up, I realized they just didn’t work. I like the foundation of the original paintings but feel that more is missing than my desired effect which is about displacement. I’ve been in the process of making smaller concept mockups and playing with color and design in my studio.

Monday, June 17th 6pm-7:30pm I am leading a FREE workshop Discovering Your Subconscious Thematic at the Cerritos Library in the Skylight Room. It’s a journey of personal discovery for writers. It provides a safe space to sift through the stories that attract us and analyze our own work. By discovering our personal theme, we are able to connect on a deeper level with our own work and create more generative flow.

TRANSFORMATION: A Women Who Submit Anthology

Join Women Who Submit in celebrating the publication of our third anthology, TRANSFORMATION! Thanks to the work of Managing Editors, Ryane Granados and Noriko Nakada, Advising Editor, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera, eight Genre Editors, Lorinda Toledo, Erin Anadkat, Flint, Laura Sturza, Luivette Resto, Hazel Kight Witham, Aruni Wijesinghe, Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley, and publisher Nikia Chaney and Jamii Publishing, our third anthology features poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and drama from 42 women and nonbinary writers from around the world.

“Given these perilous times of great global and local humanitarian
failures, cruel objectives cemented by morally repugnant mindsets,
and given the history of violence which has proven all too
predictable, I know my words may appear hugely insufficient in
protecting the most vulnerable, may prove never to be enough to
diminish the sorrow and suffering of others, and yet as a writer,
I continue to write.”

Inspired by these words by Helena Maria Viramontes, shared at her AWP 2020 keynote address, Women Who Submit’s third anthology, TRANSFORMATION, centers work that speaks to the ways writers and other artists can promote change in the world.

To order a copy, visit our partner and bookseller, Libromobile.

TRANSFORMATION BOOK RELEASE PARTY WITH WEHO ARTS

Saturday April 13, 2024, 2pm-5pm

Plummer Park: 7377 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90046, at the Great Hall patio

Readings by liz gonzález, Erika Ayón, Lisa Cheby, Sandy Yang, Aruni Wijesinghe, and Monona Wali

Hosted by Angela Franklin

Music by DJ Langosta

And now with a welcome from special guest, WeHo Poet Laureate, Jen Cheng.

The party will include snacks, book cake, and expo of LA literary orgs and booksellers.

This is a free event and open to all!

WWS at AWP Kansas City Guide

The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference is next week, and Women Who Submit is here to help you maneuver through the mayhem. If you’re unfamiliar with the AWP conference, it is the largest writers conference in the nation that lasts four days. It’s typically in the winter, and it moves around the country each year. Next year, AWP 2025 will be in Los Angeles! We’re already thinking about what fun event we can do to celebrate.

If you are attending AWP Kansas City, WWS hopes to help you with a list of events from our members as well as from writers, presses, schools, and orgs we love and support. Look through the listing and find the folks you’d like to link up with. My favorite thing to do at AWP is attend a couple of panels featuring my friends. It’s always nice to support your community, and seeing friendly faces at the front of the room is calming. Plus, I know I’ll never be disappointed (there’s a reason they’re my friends).

If the bookfair is where you like to spend your time, be sure to visit Women Who Submit at the Kaya Press table #838. We will be selling copies of our newest anthology TRANSFORMATION, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 9am-12pm. Come say hi!

A quick list of dos:

Drink water

Carry snacks

Take breaks outside the convention center

Say yes to invitations to coffee, lunch, or dinner

Support friends

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2024

PANEL: Embracing the Body: A Journey of Illness and Celebration

9:00 am to 10:00 am

Virtual

Panelists: Maria Maloney, Carolina Monsiváis, Elisa Garza, Katherine Hoerth, Laura Cesarco Eglin

Description: Throughout our lives, we encounter various health challenges and gender expectations on our bodies that test our physical and emotional well-being. However, there is beauty to be found in celebrating our bodies. This panel of poets shares and discusses poetry of resilience and celebration of our bodies to find meaning and perspective. The panel explores the transformative power of writing that honors the courage it takes to embrace the diversity of our bodies.

This virtual event was prerecorded. It will be available to watch on-demand online starting on Wednesday, February 7, 2024 through Thursday, March 7, 2024.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2024

PANEL: Navigating Stormy Waters: Telling your tales when they’re hard to tell

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Room 2209, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Juanita Mantz, Toni Ann Johnson, Hannah Sward, Nikia Chaney, and Laurie Markvart will read from their work and discuss writing about difficult topics based on themselves and their families.

Description: How do you write your tale with compassion and love when it is a hard story to tell? These five writers will read from their works of memoir and autobiographical fiction touching on their own stories and their family stories of addiction, mental illness, trauma, neglect, and chaos. After, they will talk about how they were able to navigate the choppy waters of truth telling in their books, and how they use their voices for change and to highlight their own stories of redemption and forgiveness.

PANEL: Sin Fronteras: Navigating, Representing, and Publishing Latine Authors

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Room 2215A, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Viktoria Valenzuela, Cloud Delfina Cardona, Carlos Espinoza, Maria Maloney, Edward Vidaurre 

Description: As the United States continues to diversify, state legislatures advance bills that target people of color and the LGBTQ+ community. Publishing is one of the only industries that gives a truer representation of the richly complex Latine populations in the U.S. and their contribution to culture, history, and literary landscape. This panel of independent publishers from the U.S.-Mexico border discusses the importance of publishing Latine, including LGBTQ+ Latine authors in Texas and the U.S..

PANEL: Speaking Mosaics: Hybrid Narratives & the Prism of Identity

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Room 2504AB, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 2

Panelists: Marissa Landrigan, Rajiv Mohabir, Monica Prince, Adriana Es Ramirez, Caitlyn Hunter

Description: Accustomed to wielding multiple perspectives, many BIPOC, queer, and neurodivergent writers are drawn to fragmented or hybrid forms: multimodal cross-genre mosaics of personal experience, and cultural, social, political, or natural history. Our panelists work across poetry, performance, nonfiction, and folklore, and will explore the craft and challenges of fragmented forms, offering inspiration and motivation to embrace hybridity as a way to claim space for historically marginalized communities.

BOOK SIGNING: Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites (Mouthfeel Press 2023) by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM

Mouthfeel Press Booth #3021

PANEL: Decolonizing American Literature: The Goals, Challenges, and Strategies of Writers

10:35 AM – 11:50 AM

Room 2502A, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 2

Panelists: GEMINI WAHHAJ, Sehba Sarwar, Oindrila Mukherjee, Namrata Poddar

Description: Four writers will discuss decolonizing American literature through the examples of literary works in the colonial languages of English and French from Black, brown, and Asian writers across the world, as well as literature in Indian languages, including Urdu and Bengali. Panelists will discuss the goals of decolonial anglophone literature and consider the challenges and strategies of writers confronting imperial patterns in American Literature.

PANEL: Getting Non-Writers to Write: Teaching Outside of the English Department

12:10 PM – 1:25 PM

Room 2103A, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, Deb Olin Unferth, Elline Lipkin, Mihaela Moscaliuc, and Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Description: “I’m not good at writing,” “I don’t know what to write,” and “My English isn’t good enough”—working with creative writers outside English departments requires shifts in expectations, approaches, and consciousness. This panel gathers those working in a variety of nontraditional settings: libraries, prisons, hospitals, and teacher certification programs. Each panelist addresses challenges they’ve encountered and strategies for success to teach with courage, creativity, and care.

PANEL: Poets Against Walls: An Anthology/Handbook for Writing Past the Checkpoints

1:45 PM – 3:00 PM

Room 2215C, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Cesar De Leon, Sehba Sarwar, Emmy Perez, Carolina Monsivais, Celina Gomez

Description: Poets Against Walls anthology/handbook features poetry and hybrid writings from the geopolitical spaces of the borderlands, along with a history of the collective’s social actions, discussions on craft, and writing prompts. In addition to reading short selections of their work and speaking on the value of writing directly about communities under attack, panelists will provide tips and strategies for writing what some may feel dissuaded from in workshop spaces: crafting work for social change.

PANEL: Reproductive Writes: Writing About Reproductive Choice, Loss, and Justice

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

Room 2105, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Jacqui Morton, Erika Meitner, Carla Sameth, Maria Novotny, Robin Silbergleid

Description: How do writers use poetry and nonfiction to explore reproductive choice, health, and loss? What are the unique challenges and risks raised in the act of writing about reproductive topics, including infertility, miscarriage, and abortion? How does the stigma of discussing the intimate emotional and bodily aspects of reproduction carry over to the page? How do these issues change across genre? Writers with a range of experiences and backgrounds will read from their work and engage these issues.

PANEL: To Keep or Not to Keep: Shifting Models in the Post-Pandemic Workshop

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

Room 2104B, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Sarah A Chavez, Ever Jones, Ching-In Chen, Rochelle Hurt

Description: This panel explores inclusive innovations in creative writing workshop learned from remote instruction during the pandemic. Since “getting back to normal,” an assumption has been made that we can and should return to previous pedagogical models. But should we? Has the traditional workshop model successfully served the growing diversity in classrooms? From varied subject positions and range of courses taught, panelists will elaborate on ways that workshop practices can and have shifted toward equity.

READING: TRANSFORMATION: A Women Who Submit Anthology – AWP Release Reading

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM

Kansas City Central Library: 14 West 10th Street Kansas City, MO 64105

Room: “The Vault”

Featuring Lisa Allen (WWS-KC), Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Carly Marie DeMento, Toni Ann Johnson, Noriko Nakada, and Nancy Lynée Woo

READING: Host Publications proudly presents “A Feminist Reading at AWP Kansas City’’ 

7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

BLK + BRWN.: 104 1/2 W 39th St, Kansas City, MO 64111

Featured readers: Stephanie Niu, m. mick powell, mónica teresa ortiz, cloud deflina cardona, Bianca Alyssa Pérez, lily someson, Ae Hee Lee, Jae Nichelle, and Ashley-Devon Williamston.

Description: Host Publications proudly presents “A Feminist Reading at AWP Kansas City’’ featuring nine women & non-binary authors. A special opportunity to celebrate our 2023/2024 chapbooks, threesome in the last Toyota Celica and Survived By at the independently owned Kansas City Bookstore BLK+BRWN.

READING: AWP Offsite Reading with Co•Im•Press, Green Writers Press, Mouthfeel Press, and Noemi Press

7:30 PM – 9:30 PM

Café Corazón: 110 Southwest Blvd

READING: Macondo Open Mic

8:00 PM – 10:00 PM

Mattie Rhodes Cultural Center: 1701 Jarboe St, Kansas City, MO 64108

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2024

BOOK SIGNING: Breaking Pattern (Inlandia Books 2023) by Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera & Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites (Mouthfeel Press 2023) by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

10:00 AM – 10:30 AM

Letras Latinas Table #830

PANEL: Should I Just Give Up?

12:10 PM – 1:25 PM

Room 2215A, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Michelle Otero, Anel Flores, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Jackie Cuevas, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera

Description: These Chicana/x feminist poets, memoirists, artists, administrators, and professors have invested a collective ninety years on projects that lingered long past their anticipated finish dates. Because we represent communities whose stories might not otherwise be heard, the writing process can be especially daunting. We’ll talk about how we got it done, the communities that supported us, how we handled rejection, how we navigated this long relationship, or how we finally let go and moved on.

BOOK SIGNING: Catastrophic Molting by Amy Shimshon-Santo

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

FlowerSong Press, Booth #T1051

Panel: Beyond Borderlands: Celebrating Essential Latinx Poetry from Texas Presses

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

Room 2104B, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Luivette Resto, Adrian Cepeda, Vincent Cooper, and Edward Vidaurre

Description: FlowerSong Press and Mouthfeel Press are just a small representation of the Latinx-owned independent presses creating vibrant work in the Borderlands. Both founded in Texas, these presses publish new, emerging, and established writers who’ve historically gone underrepresented, but whose words hold the power of resilience and transformation. This poetry reading celebrates contemporary Latinx poets and their books of struggle, truth, and hope as a call to elevate diverse voices and spread cultura.

PANEL: Too Small For the Patriarchy: Getting Girlhood Stories Past the Gatekeepers

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

Room 3501 EF, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 3

Panelists: Chaiti Sen, Toni Ann Johnson, Rose Smith, Magdalena Bartkowska, and Natalia Sylvester

Description: Who has the right to grow up in American literature? On this panel, authors discuss the joys, challenges, and importance of writing and publishing diverse narratives about American girlhoods. Getting these stories past the gatekeepers, who often misunderstand and reject them for being “too quiet” or “too small,” requires courage and persistence. When our own inner critics tell us such stories don’t truly matter, how do we push beyond our doubt and continue writing on a path to publication?

PANEL: Transformation: Creating Change Through Collaboration

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

Room 2104A, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Noriko Nakada, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera, Nikia Chaney, Sarah Rafael Garcia, Ryane Nicole Granados

Description: Inspired by Helena Maria Viramontes’s AWP 2020 keynote address, Women Who Submit’s third anthology, TRANSFORMATION, centers work that speaks to the ways writers and other artists can promote change in the world. By focusing on generosity and collaboration, shared leadership and mentorship, and inclusive partnerships, panelists discuss how Women Who Submit makes this change a reality not just in the writing they publish but in the ways they edit, publish, and promote their writers.

READING: A Dozen Nothing AWP Offsite Reading

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Vulpes Bastille: 1737 Locust St, Kansas City, MO 64108

READING: FlowerSong AWP Offsite Reading

6:05 PM

Habitat Contemporary: 2012 Baltimore Avenue

Featured readers: César de León, Amy Shimshon-Santo, Michelle Otero, and Eddie Vega.

Description: Friday, February 9, FlowerSong Press will be teaming up with CavanKerry Press, Acre Books, and Perugia Press for an AWP 2024 offsite reading at Habitat Contemporary. A big shout out to Dimitri Reyes for putting this together.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2024

PANEL: Una Mujer Peligrosa: Celebrating the Queer Work and Life of tatiana de la tierra

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Room 2104B, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Olga Garcia, Karleen Pendelton Jimenez, Amelia María de la Luz Montes, Myriam Gurba

Description: tatiana de la tierra (1961–2012) was a Latina lesbian writer and trailblazer. In the nineties, she cofounded Esto No Tiene Nombre and Conomoción magazines featuring Latina lesbians in the United States and abroad. She later authored her iconic For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology. In 2022, Redonda y radical: antología poética de tatiana de la tierra was published in Colombia (Sincronía Press). This panel features some of tatiana’s literary coconspirators to discuss her dangerously delicious life and works.

PANEL: Be Gay, Do Crime: Teaching Queer and Trans Poetics in Dangerous Times

10:35 AM – 11:50 AM

Room 2103A, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Meg Day, Oliver Bendorf, Donika Kelly, Ching-In Chen, Melissa Crowe

Description: Given our nation’s latest investment in suppressing both bodies and books, what is at stake—newly, historically—in the teaching of queer and trans poetics? Five seasoned poet-educators, working inside the classroom, libraries, and community centers, gather to discuss navigating threats on the poems they teach, the poems they make, and the bodies they occupy as they do both. Panelists will offer experiential commentary and strategies for protecting, generating, and sustaining queer and trans people and poems.

PANEL: Keeping It Lit: Nurturing a Literary Journal Program at Two-Year Colleges

10:35 AM – 11:50 AM

Room 2211, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: James Ducat, Melissa Ford Lucken, Mary Lannon, Phoebe Reeves

Description: This panel explores ways to shepherd a community college literary magazine with diverse, high-risk, low-income students. Topics of discussion include: staff recruitment, pedagogy, editing, layout, budget, advertising, submissions, course credit, and technological tools. The panelists reflect on obstacles—some common, some unique—and equity-minded solutions. Faculty advisors share experiences producing print and online student journals and fostering a vibrant literary community.

PANEL: Beyond Zoom: Building Vibrant Literary Communities in a New Hybrid Era

12:10 PM – 1:25 PM

Room 2104B, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Karina Muñiz-Pagán, Minal Hajratwala, Randy Winston, Maceo Nafisah Cabrera-Estevez, & Juanita E. Mantz (JEM)

Description: Community is essential to a writer’s growth, but what do you do when spaces are inhospitable to your community? Build your own! These innovative authors share how they’ve built thriving programs for diverse NYC fiction writers, global Muslim writers, women/nonbinary writers, domestic workers, and BIPOC+ authors. We share strategies and tools to empower anyone eager to create a nurturing space that centers writers of color, language justice, disability justice, and voices at the intersections.

TABLES & BOOTHS

Antioch University Los Angeles #825

Cave Canem Foundation, Inc. #719

Copper Canyon Press #1223, #1225

Feminist Press #737

FlowerSong Press #T1051

Kaya / Women Who Submit / Blaft #838

Kundiman #1330

Letras Latinas #830

Mouthfeel Press #3021

Noemi Press #1449

Santa Fe Writers Project #3124

Sundress Publications | Sundress Academy for the Arts | Best of the Net Anthology #1111

UCLA Extension Writers Program #831

Donate to Women Who Submit

This #GivingTuesday, please consider donating to Women Who Submit. 

In 2023 WWS was able to accomplish the following thanks to our donors and funding from the California Arts Council:

  • Raised speaker fees from $200 to $300 per workshop facilitator and $100 to $150 per panelist
  • Gifted $2,000 in individual writers’ grants through the Ashaki M. Jackson No Barrier Regrant and Kit Reed Travel Fund (a $500 increase from the previous year)
  • Returned to hybrid programming by hosting 8 public events across the city including our 10th annual SUBMIT 1 Submission drive at Pocha LA. 
  • Announced, curated, and edited the third WWS anthology, TRANSFORMATION, to be released by the new year in partnership with Jamii Publishing
  • Created mentorships for 9 of our members through a special opportunity with Reyna Grande
  • Established new WWS chapters in Portland, ME, Bloomington, IN, Austin, TX, and San Diego, CA with a Canada chapter launching in early 2024. 

A #GivingTuesday tax deductible donation from you will mean helping WWS financially support more writers in 2024, grow our in-person programming while staying committed to accessibility through virtual options, promote our writers to a wider community, and ensure marginalized writers receive the same free support.

Please donate by clicking here.

Thank you!