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.

Iโ€™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 themโ€”
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.

Somethingโ€™s swimming beneath the precision of languageโ€”
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 racializedย beforeย the 1978 Revolution, it was just that we were considered benign, exotic even, definitely not dangerous.

Aliโ€™s skin was lighter than mine, with the blue-green cast of an abalone shellโ€™s interior. His curly black hair, regal nose, and baby doll lashes might have made him attractive, but Aliโ€™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. Iโ€™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 newsletterย referred to an articleย 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, Iโ€™d taken a slew of courses on topics such as writing the proposal, publishing paths, and book marketing. And following Courtney Maumโ€™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 didnโ€™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.ย 

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 Whereโ€™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.
โ€˜Canโ€™t make it, watch out for ICE,โ€™ she said, fancying herself funny.

I go along with the joke as nothing will keep me
from stopping by the restaurant thatโ€™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 Newsโ€˜ Poetโ€™s Place seriesย . 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*

WWS at AWP-Baltimore

Blue flyer promoting a WWS meet up at AWP. Saturday, March 7 at the Hyatt Regency. The WWS logo is in the left corner with "DMV Chapter."

2026 WWS CERTIFIED

The WWS CERTIFIED list was first created for AWP-Los Angeles in 2025 by WWS Board member, Noriko Nakada. Of the list’s inception she said, โ€œIn 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 welcomed, where my stories may find a home.โ€ The goal was to find the spaces that illustrated a clear appreciation for diverse voices. She combed through the Bookfair list of exhibitors looking for two criteria: an editorial board, board of directors, or masthead that was at least 50% women and 50% POC.

Using these same criteria, WWS Board member, Ashton Cynthia Clarke has curated a new list for AWP-Baltimore. Below are 32 (11 more than last year!) literary magazines, journals, organizations, and writing programs that have at least 50% women and 50% POC on their mastheads and/or Boards. Check them out. Chat them up, and then, after AWP, submit your words.

  1. Abode Press – T627
  1. Aunt Lute Books – 1288
  1. Callaloo – T1160 
  1. Cave Canem – 1037
  1. Chestnut Review – 741 
  1. Clarkesworld Magazine – 442
  1. Columbia Journal – T1277  
  1. Gaudy Boy – T718 
  1. House of Amal – T512
  1. Host Publications – 1167 
  1. iล Literary Journal – T1289 
  1. Iska Press/Iskanchi Magazine – T720 
  1. Kelsey Street Press – 1280 
  1. Letras Latinas – 1072 
  1. Long River Review – T215 
  1. Macondo Writers Workshop – 418
  1. Mizna – 967 
  1. Nightboat Books – 1068 
  1. Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora – T211 
  1. Oye drum – 979 
  1. Oyster River Pages – 143
  1. Pinch at the University of Memphis – 428
  1. Prairie Schooner – 1067 
  1. Rhino – 1284
  1. Shล Poetry Journal – T605
  1. Tahoma Literary Review – 646
  1. Torch Literary Arts – 1264
  1. Transition Magazine – 967 
  1. University of Hawaii / Mฤnoa Journal – 517
  1. VONA (Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation) – 523
  1. Wayne State University Press – 842 
  1. Wendy’s Subway – 1278 

WWS @ AWP GUIDE

Each year Women Who Submit puts together a guide of all places you can find our writers, partners, and friends. See below for a list of panels, readings, and meetups where our writers are featured and use this list catch up with likeminded folks.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2026

READING: Wednesday Night Poetry

Location: Patterson Theater at Creative Alliance – 3134 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, MD, 21224

Time: 6:30pm – 10:30pm

Features: Hosted by Kai Coggen and with readings by Ching-In Chen, Brenda Vaca, Dahlia Aguilar, Donna Spruijt-Metz, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, and many others. 

READING: 32 Poems | Barrelhouse | Smartish Pace

Location: United Methodist Church – 10 E Mount Vernon Place

Description: Start your AWP on Wednesday night at this historic former church with 32poems, Barrelhouse, and Smartish Pace a 5 min drive from AWP in beautiful Mt. Vernon. Part of the fun of this event is seeing inside an iconic historic space in Baltimore: a long-shuttered 19th-century church at the inception point of being reimagined and renovated for the future. Itโ€™s really beautiful, but it means the venue is not ADA accessible and has quirky bathrooms. Admission is free.

Features: Amy Raasch, Emma De Lisle, Erin Oโ€™Luanaigh, Grace Gilbert, and many others.

THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2026

PANEL: Somos Xicanas: ร‰chale Tu Canto 

Location: Room 323, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Time: 9:00am – 10:15am

Description: The X in Xicana is the vital confluence of past with future marked by our present voices. Eighty contemporary Xicana writers make up Somos Xicanas, an anthology that connects those represented with future generations in a call to liberate all. โ€œร‰chale tu canto al viento, paโ€™ que llega mรกs lejos,โ€ writes editor Luz Schweig in the introduction. Join this panel with the anthologyโ€™s editor, publisher, and contributors to discuss from where those songs derive and just how far they can go.

Features: Dahlia Aguilar, Brenda Vaca, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, and Angela C Trudell Vasquez

PANEL: Writing Gender-Based Sexual Violence Is Difficult Enough, So How Do We Teach It?

Location: Room 329, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Time: 9:00am – 10:15am

Description: Excavating the gritty literary landscape of sexual violence is scary. By sharing how we write our dark emotional terrains, this diverse panel of women will discuss how we create safe spaces to teach students ways to approach trauma such as rape, sexual harassment, and incest. What role do content warnings play? While acknowledging potential triggers and navigating Title IX requirements, how do we equip our students with the tools they need to overcome resistance, shame, and silence?

Features: Nicole Walker, Karen Michelle Otero, Brooke Champagne, Sue William Silverman, and Jill Christman

BOOK SIGNING: The Beginners by Heidi Kasa

Location: Pen Parentis booth, T734

Time: 9:00am – 10:00am

TABLING: Lauren Oertel

Location: T516

Time: Thursday-Saturday

Description: Support for writers, at every step of the process: generating, editing, and submitting for publication

PANEL: Building the House – The Importance of a Community for Muslim Writers + Sham

Location: Room 328, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Time: 12:10pm – 1:25pm

Description: House of Amal is in its sixth year of community programming, teaching, mentorship, and publishing. Amid an uptick in global Islamophobia, it is vital to create spaces centered on both craft and community for aspiring Muslim writers who require a unique kind of mentorship. Bridging the overlap between the spiritual, literary, and artistic identities, House of Amal will share the lessons learned while crafting and recrafting our twelve-month Writing Residency curriculum and membership programming.

Features: Sara Bawany, Safiya Khan, Amal Kassir, and Salma Mohammad

PANEL: Writers of Bilad Al-Sham: A Reading for Palestine & Syria

Location: Room 301, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Time: 1:45pm – 3:00pm

Description: Writing has remained an essential practice for Levantine peoples, even during times of war. Spoken word poets from Syria and Palestine will perform powerful political poems inspired by their personal and familial experiences with loss through war, genocide, and settler colonialism. They discuss the intersection of their Muslim and Levant identities and the impact of the diaspora on their poetry, and further, how this influences their teaching of both craft and writing identity at House of Amal.

Features: Sara Bawany, Salma Mohammad, Amal Kassir

READING: Butterflies Over Land: Voices and Visions Resisting Anti-Immigrant Terror

Location: Angie’s Seafood, 1727 E Pratt St, Baltimore, MD 21231

Time: 5:30pm – 7:00pm

Description: Butterflies Over Land is an anthology co-edited by Jen Cheng and Camille Hernandez. Readers will be reading from the book and other work.

Come enjoy the world premiere and book launch party of a new immigrant rights anthology BUTTERFLIES OVER LAND: Voices and Visions Resisting Anti-Immigrant Terror. This book includes a mix of genres, from poetry to nonfiction personal essays and short fiction. This off-site event offers a conversation about immigrant rights from Southern California and nationwide.

Features: Our guest readers include co-editors Jen Cheng and Camille Hernandez, with readers Pallavi Dhawan, Nancy Lynรฉe Woo, Danez Smith, Saรบl Hernรกndez, Kevin Carson, Jalen Jones, Donato Martinez, and Sandy Yannone.

READING: Green Writers Press Reading 

Location: Angeli’s Pizzeria, 413 S High Street, Baltimore

Time: 5:30PM – 7:30PM

Description: We are really excited to introduce you all to our new poets and Joel Longโ€˜s essay collection! Please join us in Baltimore for our #AWP26 offsite reading. Angeliโ€™s is a short walk from the convention center and a chance to relax and enjoy great food in Baltimoreโ€™s Little Italy. We have reserved this great area all to ourselves, which is fully accessible.

Features: Krissy Kludt, Holly Johnsen, Natalya Sukhonos, VA Smith, and Joel Long

READING: Alice James Books & Persea Books Off-site AWP Poetry Reading

Location: Chesapeake Wine Company – 2400 Boston Street, suite 112

Time: 6:00pm – 7:45pm

Description: Join Alice James and Persea for a fabu offsite reading at the lovely Chesapeake Wine Company on Thursday March 5th, beginning at 6pm. Free appetizers, cash bar, and many memorable poems from new/recent books from both presses!

Features: Michelle Peรฑaloza, Carey Salerno, Cecily Parks, Elizabeth Bradfield, and others.

READING: Macondo Offsite Reading 

Location: Guest House by Good Neighbor – 3827 Falls Rd, Baltimore, MD 21211

Time: 7:00pm

Description: Macondo Writers Workshop comes to #AWP26 Baltimore on Thursday, March 5th at 7 p.m. for a night of readings with amazing Macondistas.

Features: Dahlia Aguilar, Pat Alderete, Jennifer Nguyen, Ofelia Mongelongo, and more

FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2026

PANEL: Words from the Deep, Dark Woods: Using Fairy Tales as Foil & Fuse

Location: Room 315, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Time: 9:00am – 10:15am

Description: As cultural touchstones, fairy tales and myths provide fertile creative ground. Leveraging their known settings, characters, and story arcs, writers can slip into ekphrasis, persona, narrative, and more. This panel will offer examples and prompts from poets and prose writers of diverse cultural backgrounds who have used tales and myths to process grief; explore emigration and culture; and question gender, power, and neurodivergence, while using the familiar as a palimpsest to write something new.

Features: Emily Perez, Oliver de la Paz, Kate Bernheimer, and Jessica Q. Stark, and Elline Lipkin

PANEL: Poetry Community Leaders: A Letras Latinas Reading and Discussion

Location: Ballroom II, Baltimore Convention Center, Level 400

Time: 10:35am – 11:50am

Description: When you are active in your local literary community, how do you carve out time to maintain a writing practice? After reading from their work, the poet laureate of Wisconsin, the cofounder of a vibrant reading series in Philadelphia, and the executive director of a community-based literary organization in California will share insights on the challenges of balancing their artistic practice while also serving their local communities.

Features:  Raina Leon, Brenda Cardenas, Karla Cordero, and Cloud Delfina Cardona

PANEL: Beyond the Literary Reading: Performance as Possibility & Community

Location: Room 318-319, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Time: 10:35am – 11:50am

Description: Moving off the page and through the body, five multigenre writers activate possibilities for witness, solidarity, and transformation through performance. The panel celebrates performance as a vital leap from the public literary reading, a meeting of form and content that builds community through practices of ritual, generative discomfort, and care. Panelists within and outside the academy will share and discuss their work to provoke writers toward expansive, liberatory creative practices.

Features: Crystal Odelle, Ching-In Chen, Gabrielle Civil, Joss Barton, and Ali Gali

PANEL: Staging Resistance: Black Social Justice Novels from Page to Stage

Location: Room 315, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Time: 12:10pm – 1:25pm

Description: It is imperative that our social justice novels live anew on stage. This panel explores the stage adaptation of Keenan Norrisโ€™s award-winning novel The Confession of Copeland Cane, examining social realism as an enduring genre and the systemic inequities limiting such works by Black authors. Featuring authors, playwrights, and educators and casting audience members as โ€œspect-actors,โ€ this panel will model the transformative power of collective performance in bringing social justice narratives from page to stage.

Features: Tommy Mouton, Deborah Mouton, Toni Ann Johnson, Keenan Norris, and Timmia DeRoy

BOOK SIGNING: Elline Lipkin

Location: Trio House Press Booth, #1148

Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm 

READING: Where Our Voices Meet

Location: Baltimore Brewhouse 511 W Pratt St, Baltimore, MD 21201

Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Description: There are moments when stories are not just read but truly shared. Where Our Voices Meet is one of those moments. Each poet carries their own rhythm and lived experience, and each voice reflects a different way of seeing the world. When they come together in the same space, something meaningful happens.

Features: Stella the Poet, Peter Lechuga, Hope Cerna, Jefferey Martin, Cherice Cameron, Donato Martinez, and Erica Castro

BOOK SIGNING: The Beginners by Heidi Kasa

Location: Digging Press booth, T138

Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm

SATURDAY, MARCH 7, 2026

PANEL: Towards Text: Alternate Gateways Into Writing 

Location: Baltimore Convention Center – Room: 308, Level 300

Time: 10:15am – 11:30am

Description: Writerโ€™s block is a perpetual problem. Confronted with an ominous blank page, what is a writer to do? This craft panel explores the ways in which creative practices outside of writingโ€”film, painting, dance, and performanceโ€”can bring us deeper into writing. Books are not born from vacuum. The panel seeks to uncover how engagement with media outside of text can, in fact, be a powerful gateway into writing books and beyond. A presentation of each writerโ€™s work concludes the craft panel.

Features: Cathy Linh Che, Elisabeth Houston, Serena Chopra, Jackie Wang, and Gabrielle Civil

PANEL: It’s Not Okay

Location: Bookfair Stage, Hall A-D, Level 100, Baltimore Convention Center

Time: 12:10 PM – 1:25 PM EST

Description: โ€œItโ€™s Not Okayโ€ is a poetry event featuring powerful voices speaking out against injustice. These poets will share work about the impact of immigration policies on families, the violence in Gaza, and the pain and frustration so many are feeling. Poets will read about the injustices of our current administration in order to bring light and connect with the audience regarding these issues. Published poets: Cherice Cameron, Peter Lechuga, Clara Roque-Wagner, Erica Castro, and Jeffery Martin.

Features: Peter Lechuga, Jeffrey Martin, Cherice Cameron, and Erica Lopez

READING: Political Passionate Personal: FlowerSong Press Poetry Reading & Book Party 

Location: Wet City Brewing, 223 W Chase Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Time: 2:00pm – 4:00pm

Description: A reading celebrating FlowerSong Press authors. 

Features: John Compton, Tatian Figueroa Ramirez, Eddie Vega, Michelle Otero, Luivette Resto, Sarah Browning, Natalia Treviรฑo, Genevieve Betts, and Joseph Ross

MEETUP: Gathering for Women Who Submit @ AWP 

Location: Hyatt Regency Lobby Area – 300 Light St, Baltimore, MD 21202

Time: 5:00pm – 7:00pm

Description: Hosted by the WWS-DMV chapter, come and meet up with other Women Who Submit members throughout the nation and the world. Say hello, debrief with other writers on your conference experience, and share publication goals! 

Blue flyer promoting a WWS meet up at AWP. Saturday, March 7 at the Hyatt Regency. The WWS logo is in the left corner with "DMV Chapter."
Screenshot

READING: Coast to Coast in Changing the World

Location: Mystique Barrel Brewing – 912 Washington Blvd. Baltimore, MD 21230

Time: 5:30pm – 7:30pm

Description: Join Daxson Publishing for an essential after hours reading exploring liberation in a changing landscape. Featuring a diverse lineup of West Coast voices, this event explores the intersection of identity, geography, and the navigation of a rapidly changing world.

Features: Cherice Cameron, Donator Martinez, Erica Castro, Jeffery Martin, Hope Cerna, Peter Lechuga, and Stella the Poet

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.

Iโ€™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 Isโ€ฆ” 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 โ€œSucculents Saved Their Homeโ€ end
with or without a question mark

Last night, distillations beneath a live oakโ€™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

platypusย ย ย ย plap plap plap

bump on my eardrumย ย ย ย 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 ย ย ย ย ย ย (it asks whyย ย ย ย ย  forever)

Major props to Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley whose memoir piece “El Desahogoโ€”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 โ€œMi amor.โ€ 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 didnโ€™t earn it but because her kids didnโ€™t deserve its side effects. I stayed quiet and let her vent while my siblings talked back.

โ€œYo tengo derecho a desahogarme,โ€ 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 couldnโ€™t afford her medical care, according to Maddie Lederer, an adoption counselor at the Montgomery County Animal Services and Adoption Center in Derwood, Maryland.

โ€œWe looked at her records and saw she had a history of bladder stones,โ€ Lederer said. โ€œWe were able to treat her and put her on prescription diet food, so she hopefully wouldnโ€™t have a recurrence.โ€

Lucy quickly became a favorite among staff and volunteers, who described her as a โ€œpurring machineโ€ and a โ€œprofessional loafer with a cute face.โ€ Despite those endearing qualities, though, Lucy was overlooked by prospective adoptive families because of her age and medical condition.

Shoutout to Jesenia Chรกvez whose poem “i think my mom has been grieving since she was a kid” was featured in Chillona: the zine, produced by writer Sofรญa 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 youโ€™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-mรขchรฉ 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 momโ€™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 hopeโ€“just for a little while, anyway.

I donโ€™t remember Christmas before we moved into that house. Before, my older brother’s and Iโ€™s nights would involve making ourselves comfortable in two folding chairs with someoneโ€™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 Deliaโ€™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 Deliaโ€™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 isnโ€™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 doctorโ€™s appointment, itโ€™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.

Iโ€™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 IHOPยฎ 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 Iโ€™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: $โˆž.

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. Itโ€™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 โ€œyou.โ€ Itโ€™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: โ€œWhenever a single woman over forty brings up the topic of love, again and again the assumption, rooted in sexist thinking, is that she is โ€˜desperateโ€™ for a man.โ€ When I was teen, all my poems were about boys and heartbreak. When I became a โ€œserious poet,โ€ my inner critic said such things were silly. It didnโ€™t stop me from writing them, but I did worry, why would anyone care?

*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.ย Four of our committed members heard about an opportunity through WWS programming and/or another member.

Iโ€™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 Editorโ€™s Award for Poetry.

I heard Leonard Cohenโ€™s โ€œHallelujahโ€ sung
in Spanish at a funeral last week, twice โ€”
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 Dรฉsirรฉe 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 writersโ€™ 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 piรฑa cream paletas from Salโ€™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 โ€œthe maid,โ€ 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. Iโ€™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.

Iโ€™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 Fridaโ€™s Sister Rose” in Image Journal.

Dear Rose,

From his balcony, the night sky is a portal to a pinhole
of other livesโ€”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 Countyโ€ in Citric Acid of Women in a Gold State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond, an anthology collection which features many WWS members’ work.

Iโ€™ve been an Orange County woman since 1966 when I was fourteen and my fatherโ€™s aerospace job transferred him to Santa Monica from Charlotte, North Carolina. The Beach Boys sang about โ€œCalifornia Girlsโ€ on the radio as we drove across the country. I couldnโ€™t wait to be one, but when we settled in Fountain Valley, California, I realized I didnโ€™t quite fit the profile. I wasnโ€™t blond, my skin never tanned, and I wasnโ€™t allowed to wear a French bikini.

Iโ€™ve never felt like a true California girl, but almost sixty years later, California is still my home. And now, as โ€œa woman of a certain age in youth-obsessed California,โ€ Iโ€™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 didnโ€™t scrape like sandpaper against the sunburn Iโ€™d acquired the day before at Will Rogers State Beach. For close to ten days, weโ€™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 heโ€™d dubbed โ€œDaedalus.โ€ 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. Weโ€™d been to Disneyland and Knottโ€™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, artistsโ€™ 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 armโ€™s length away from smaller islands
โ€“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 Chรกvez 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 momโ€™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 didnโ€™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 canโ€™t fix cars or build shelves
and Iโ€™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, PRSAโ€™s Los Angeles Chapter President Marisol Barrios Perez, APR, wrote, โ€œI urge our PR community to do what we do best: Raise our voices. Because when we speak together โ€” with purpose, with clarity and with courage โ€” we shape the narrative. And we stand on the right side of history.โ€

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 stateโ€™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, itโ€™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 Iโ€™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 Delphiโ€™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 orchestraโ€™s center.

โ€œQuiet,โ€ she said, the word harnessing power as it glided up to the seats Justine and I had claimed. โ€œOne of you will read a poem to the rest of the class, who will li-sten,โ€ she over-articulated as if the concept couldnโ€™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*

April 2025 Publication Roundup

The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during April 2025. Five our committed members heard about an opportunity through WWS programming and/or another member.

Iโ€™ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety. Please take a moment to extend congratulations to our members who had their work published this month. Thank you and happy submitting!

Let’s begin by congratulating Amy Raasch who placed two poems โ€œWhy I Am Not a Gravediggerโ€ and โ€œAshesโ€ in the anthology Angel City Review: Ten Years of Poetry in L.A. Excerpt of the the former is available below:

I like to go to the diner, drink coffee,
and listen to Barbara talk shit. Barbara
doesnโ€™t work the graveyard shift.
I tell her, church basement flooded
so we held the reception at the house.
I tell her nobody will sit
in my motherโ€™s kitchen chair;
the air is too thick with her
unanswered questions.

Kudos to Romaine Washington who published a poem in Cholla Needles 100 produced by Cholla Needles Publishing.

Shoutout to Ronna Magy who published a poem entitled “Ode to the Female Body” with Sinister Wisdom 136: Icons.

Congratulations to Natalie Warther whose flash fiction pieces “Four Dads” and “Even the Horses” were featured in Had Journal. She also published fiction piece “Outside Husband” in Xray Literary Magazine (see excerpt of the latter below).

The survivalist stuff started as a hobby for my husband. An attempt to disconnect from the tech-dependent modern world. But quickly, our renovated backyard started looking more like a trash dump than a place to entertain the neighbors. He just kept making โ€œtools.โ€ Dental floss snares. Crayon candles. Pantyhose fishing nets. Dryer lint tinder. Maple syrup mouse traps. He used every single trash bag in the house for the water collection system.  

Huge shoutout to Elizabeth Galoozis whose book Law of the Letter has been published with Inlandia Institute.

Please join me in congratulating Jacqueline Lyons whose hybrid creative nonfiction piece “Dialogic: Except the Rain” appeared in Eastern Iowa Review.

Dear John,
ย 
A new year, and time to dialogueโ€”the opposite of breaking upโ€”with the elements. Especially water. The elements speak with such singularity and purpose, ferrying blue glyphs as the crow flies, while human nerve bundles shoulder a mix of fear and longing, more list than image. All of us, most of the time, of at least two minds. Giant Sequoia, Sparrows, and Sharks too.
ย 
Except for the taco truck near the intersection of Los Angeles Avenue and Somis Road that concentrates its powers inward and births an illuminated island,ย anย horchataย oasis, a candle in the window radiant after 9 pm. Committed, they do not offerย combinaciรณnย plates.

Kudos to Valerie Anne Burns whose memoir piece “Does God Visit Santa Barbara” was featured in “Women in a Golden State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond.

Shoutout to Marya Summers who published a poem “On the Dunes of Manchester Beach, Five Years without Housing” in Pensive Journal’s tenth issue.

Big congratulations to Kate Maruyama who published her novel Alterations with Running Wild Press.

Kudos to Ashton Cynthia Clarke who published creative nonfiction piece “A Writerโ€™s Life in Altadena: In the Line of Arts and the Eaton Fire” in Los Angeles Literature.

I almost died in that house in the foothills.

But my story differs from others you may have read regarding African American homeowners in Altadena, who were devastated by the Eaton Fire.

Twenty-five years ago, the arms wrapped around mine, which were wrapped around my own shivering frame, belonged to my soon-to-be husband, Phillip. โ€œWhere are we?โ€ I asked. I hadnโ€™t seen my breath hang in the air since my last camping trip to the Angeles National Forest.

Shoutout to Lauren Eggert-Crowe whose poem “Persephone watches Buffy the Vampire Slayer” appeared in Mayday Magazine.

I, too, have known the dark
chocolate thrill of a kiss against the wall
of a mausoleum. Our hunger pangs caused us

trouble โ€” the semiotics of leather jackets,
animal prints. Night smudges the lines,
sexual and otherwise. I know how lonely it is

to grow beside a lover who remains dead
inside the narrative he chose.
You think I donโ€™t watch

Kudos to Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo whose poem “Motherless Mothers and the Daughters They Bear” was also featured in in Mayday Magazine.

I mother myself gentle because my motherโ€™s hands
were rough, cracked, and ruby ringed.

When her mother died, she kept all the jewelry and left me
nothing. Maybe when your mother never mothers you,

it makes you a hoarder. Motherโ€™s Day commemorative plates
from the 70s to the 90s collect dust on the family piano

that never feels fingers along its keys. A behemoth stand
for porcelain plates mocking images of mothering

she never saw.

Congratulations to Michelle Y. Smith who published poems “Windows of My Soul” and “Peace” with Four Feathers Press. Her poem “There is a Sunflower” was also featured in LA Art News’ April Poets Place (excerpt of the latter available below).

His brown coffee
Countenance
Of disk florets 
Is framed with maize petals
Cheery and happy-go-lucky
Spirit pollinates
Where he goes
He laughter contagious

*Feature image credit to Margaret Gallagher*

March 2025 Publication Roundup

Happy spring and post-AWP festivities! I greatly enjoyed building community and connecting with so many of you at AWP. It is my honor and pleasure to present this publication roundup featuring so many wonderful writers. The Women Who Submit members included in this post published their work in amazing places during March 2025. One member heard about an opportunity through WWS programming and/or another member. Thank you and happy submitting!

Iโ€™ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety. Please take a moment to extend congratulations to our members who had their work published this month.

Let’s begin by congratulating Danielle Lauren for her fiction piece “Mya Ditches School” being published in Funny Pearls.

โ€˜Mr. Sinclair, get to class.โ€™

I still remember Mr. Andersonโ€™s voice that day. High-pitched and dripping with impatience. Uptown rolled his eyes so hard I thought they might stick. I nudged Uptown and he fixed his face before turning around.

โ€˜My bad, Mr. Anderson, we was just trying to find my math book.โ€™

โ€˜And what does your math book have to do with Ms. Monroe?โ€™ Mr. Anderson said.

Big kudos to Donna Spruijt-Metz who published her book entitled To Phrase a Prayer for Peace with Wildhouse Publishing.

Shoutout to Amy Raasch whose poem “Blue Star Coffee” was featured in Rose Books Reader – Volume 1.

Congratulations to Sara Ellen Fowler whose poem “Good Mare” appeared in Poetry Daily.

    That I was
    your simple bit

            a bride of pressure and prayer you ground
            grinding down

    The one who taps your teeth to get you to open

โ€”to be led be led

Shoutout to Anais Godard who published a creative nonfiction piece “How to Cremate your Pet Squirrel” with The Letter Review, which won their prize for nonfiction.

Albert was no ordinary squirrel; he was more like a surrogate child to me, a hairy one who didnโ€™t require a college fund. I had found him at a particularly dark time, right after my first miscarriage and long before the twins came along, at the foot of a giant sequoia. A tiny, shivering ball of fur that looked more like a discarded fetus than a woodland critter. It was love at first sight.ย 

Kudos to Melissa Chadburn whose hybrid feature “Not Monsters: On Las Azules and Structural Critique” appeared in ASAP/Review.

Apple TV+โ€™s Spanish language seriesย Las Azulesย (Women in Blue) is set in 1971 and depicts Mexico Cityโ€™s first female police force.1ย Itโ€™s stunning to look at with the delightful โ€˜70s wardrobe, the vintage-inspired color intensity, the midcentury architecture.ย Las Azulesย shares the aesthetic of crรณnica roja, a Latin American branch of contemporary literary journalism. Narratives with blood running through it. The red chronicle searches for ways to express the despair and political frustration of the time, the grittier side of documentarian work. But whereย Las Azulesย really shines is in how it moves beyond prior genres and narrative tropes in its interrogation of intergenerational cycles of violence, how it tries to provide an account of violence against women that is neither sentimental nor noir, but something more like analysis.ย 

Congratulations to ย Diosa Xochiquetzalcรณatl who published a poem “En una ocasiรณn/On One Occasion” in the 2024-2025 San Diego Poetry Annual: Bilingual Edition.

Kudos to .CHISARAOKWU. whose creative nonfiction piece “A Brief History of Painโ€ was featured in midnight & indigo.

My origin story begins with pain, or, at the very least, an attempt to avoid it. I was born by cesarean, the doctor believing my size too painful for my mother to push through. Since then, Iโ€™ve lived to avoid painโ€”no diving into a lake or pool for fear Iโ€™d hit the bottom and break both legs, quitting volleyball because the ball jammed my piano-playing fingers, staying away from action films because every punch or crash would send intense pain sensations through my body. Avoiding pain was a preoccupation; not wanting to cause pain or discomfort to anyone became a skill.

Shoutout to Jay O’Shea who published a fiction piece entitled “An Unchanged History” with 96th of October: Tales of the Extraordinary.

It doesnโ€™t trouble me when my mother forgets my name. Sheโ€™s 83 and has been in the nursing home for months. A battery of health problems brought her in, but cognitive decline was right up there. The doctors recently switched to calling it dementia.

Her face brightens when I arrive. Then comes a stumble: she calls me Leslie, the name of a cousin long dead. A terrified look crosses her face.

โ€œLorna,โ€ I offer.

She bounces back, diving into a story Iโ€™ve heard dozens of times about a road trip we took when I was in fourth grade, about the locks on the Erie Canal and how I turned cartwheels on the dock. Thatโ€™s not that odd. Old people live in the past. The rest of us live in the future. The present is where none of us want to be.

Big congratulations to Andy Anderegg whose fiction book entitled “Plum” was published with Hub City Writers Project.

Big shoutout to Michelle Smith whose poem “Escalate & Elevate” was published by Four Feathers Press. Her other poem “There’s a Sunflower” was also chosen as their print poetry awards nominee.

*Feature image creditย to Margaret Gallagher*

WWS at AWP Los Angeles

WWS @ AWP GUIDE

Itโ€™s almost time! LA will play host to the iconic writerโ€™s conference, AWP from March 26 – 29th, 2025. So many panels, readings, and off-site gatherings, itโ€™s a lot for a group not especially known as extroverts. Iโ€™m looking at you, fellow writers. But donโ€™t worry, weโ€™ve got you covered.

Weโ€™ve put together a list to help you connect with other members of Women Who Submit. Itโ€™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 canโ€™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 Sรกenz, Melinda Palacio, Vickie Vรฉrtiz, Antonieta Villamil, Luis J. Rodriguez, Hosts: Rey M. Rodrรญguez and Jorge H. Rodrรญguez

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 Angรฉlica Villarreal (Magical Realism), Annie Liontas (Sex With a Brain Injury), Shze-Hui Tjoa (The Story Game), Grace Loh Prasad (The Translatorโ€™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 โ€œtraditionalโ€ 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 Xochiquetzalcรณatl

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

Description: Conversaciones con los difuntos / Conversations with the Dead is Diosa Xochiquetzacรณatlโ€™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 cityโ€™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 Angelesโ€™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 Wayโ€: 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 soโ€”while also taking into consideration the roles of culture and institutionsโ€”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

11:00 am – 12:30 pm

BOOK SIGNING: West of the Santa Ana and Other Sacred Places by Diosa Xochiquetzalcรณatl

Location:  Riot of Roses Booth 1235

12:30 pm – 1:30 pm

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

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

1:30 pm – 3:30 pm

READING: Cรญrculo de poetas and Writers Reading

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

Description: Diosa Xochiquetzalcรณatl along with other Cรญrculo 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 oneโ€™s identity and subjectivity through racial and historical lenses, as in the extinction of 150 species in an average day, and how poets can โ€œknock on silence,โ€ 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

30รฑera: 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 30รฑera: 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 Treviรฑo, Denise Tolan, Renรฉ Colato Lainez, Lesley Tรฉllez, Mona Alvarado Frazier, Adela Najarro, Sebha Sanwar, Karina Muรฑiz-Pagรกn, 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 Expoโ€™s in-person, off-site, literary citizenship extravaganza. Letโ€™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 IIโ€“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 โ€œthe spirit of a placeโ€ 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 donโ€™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 panelโ€”which includes editors, reviewers, professors, and scholarsโ€”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 โ€œlightning readingsโ€ 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 (LETโ€™S GO LETโ€™S GO LETโ€™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

7:00pm – 10pm

Host Publications Presents Poetics of Liberation: Reading & Community Gathering

Location: The Count’s Den1039 South Olive Street Los Angeles, CA 90015

Description: Poetics of Liberationย is an intersectional feminist reading and community gathering celebrating radical and queer writers whose work inspires social transformation. Hosted at The Count’s Denโ€”a stunning, vampiresque theater in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles.

Speakers: Amanda Johnston, heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, mรณnica teresa ortiz, m. mick powell, Lily Someson, Stephanie Niu, Cloud Delfina Cardona, Jae Nichelle, Tala Khanmalek, Ari Kelly, Em Palughi, andย Anel I. Flores

8:00 pm – 10:00 pm

Unruly Bodies: A Community Reading

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

Description: โ€œAll of us live in unruly bodies that weโ€™re all trying to take care of as best we can.” โ€”Roxane Gay Readers will share a story about their relationship with a body that refuses to act โ€œas it should.โ€ 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 Limรณn Corrales, Margeaux Feldman, Raechel Anne Jolie, Tamar Bresge

Cost: $12.51 – $28.52

SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 2025

9:00am – 10:15am

Panel: Filipino Women Writing Nonfiction
Location: Room 511AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

Description: What craft techniques, including storytelling styles from our own culture, can we utilize to write into and around truth(s)? How can nonfiction subvert or defy expectations imposed on us as women and nonbinary people in underrepresented communities? Filipino women and femme nonfiction writers discuss the complexities and nuances of sharing their experiences, while confronting the uncomfortable truths of a culture that hasnโ€™t always looked favorably on the act of public disclosure.

Speakers: Jen Palmares Meadows, Anna Cabe, Melissa Chadburn, Laurel Flores Fantauzzo, and Anna Cabe

10:00 am – 11 am

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 Storytellerโ€™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 LAโ€™s diverse identities, including city poet laureates, examine queer community organizing through poetry. This combination discussion panel and reading will pair poems exploring poetryโ€™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 Garcรญa Kohel  Presenter: Lauren Salerno

3:20 pm – 4:35 pm

PANEL: What Youโ€™ve Heard Isnโ€™t True: Crafting New Salvadoran Myths & Futurities

Location: LA Convention Center, Room 405, Level Two

Description: Contemporary writers of the Salvadoran diaspora use the speculativeโ€”the imaginativeโ€”to parse through the urgent sociopolitical issues affecting the US and El Salvador. If much of El Salvadorโ€™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 Marรญa Balibrera  Presenter: Leticia Hernรกndez-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 resistanceโ€”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 Barbรฉ 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: โ€œLove + Communityโ€

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.     iล 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 โ€œTop Ranked Journals of 2024โ€ 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-4pmย 
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 youโ€™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 WWSโ€™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 womenโ€™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 โ€“ September, 2014