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March 1, 2016

A WWS PUBLICATION ROUND UP FOR FEBRUARY

February was a banner month for WWS members getting their work into the world. Here is a brief look at the work published and awards won this month.

From “Tract Home Take Down” by Rachel Sona Reed published at Angels Flight Literary West:

A house like ours
is a pile of rubble
is a new foundation
is a giant skeleton
is a mess of noises
is an empty stucco signifier
is a nameless neighbor
is a neighborhood renewed
is a house no more.

Also from Rachel Sona Reed, “The Medical Procedure that ‘The Blacklist’ Blacklisted,” published at Hello Giggles:

Yet after the shock of finding herself pregnant by her (fake) ex-husband, Elizabeth spends exactly one episode in tearful contemplation before calling an adoption agency. Perceptive viewers will note that this decision still exposes the baby to the occupational hazards of her life, if only for nine months or so.

Notably absent from Elizabeth’s calculus is abortion. It’s not that it would be in character for her to elect an abortion, but it’s difficult to believe that this character wouldn’t even consider it.

From Tisha Reichle’s “South of Resurrection” published at Annotation Nation:

Before I sign up for a workshop or class with any writer, I always read at least one of her books. If she has multiple novels, I choose the one that has some element similar to what I’m doing with my own writing. I selected South of Resurrection by Jonis Agee because it is in a rural setting with characters who are not wealthy; these are the people of my childhood. The characters also battle nature and a history of racism; this has been the chaos of my adulthood.

Tisha also received an acceptance from Ghost Town (Issue 9) for her story “An Argument Against Old Cheese.” Great news!

For ten weeks, Cultural Weekly will publish one poem per week from Ashaki M. Jackson’s chapbook, Surveillance, forthcoming from WritLarge Press. In February, “Professional Wrestling Holds,” “The Public Examines Black Resilience and Is Dissatisfied” and “The Public Confuses Death with Pornography” were published.

From “The Public Confuses Death with Pornography”:

You sit in the violence Teeter
into the video from your safety
You are – each time – unsure
of what you’re viewing: Videos
of Black bodies crumbling so primitively
it is convincing

From Lauren Eggert-Crowe‘s poem “Things I Have Burned Intentionally” published at Horse Less Press:

Come June, we gathered our papers. Flung them in
unmemorized. We children, we lit fires.

Look forward to “Supercuts” from Kate Maruyama upcoming in Duende magazine and “Traces” upcoming in F(r)iction.

Toni Ann Johnson’s short story “Time Travel” will soon be featured on the podcast Reading Out Loud.

Carla Sameth‘s “Donor X” is forthcoming in MUTHA Magazine.

Jay O’Shea was invited to give a TEDxUCLA talk called “A Crisis of Play: Kinetic Experience in a Viewing Society,” a presentation focusing on the importance of physical, informal, competitive and cooperative recreation for the individual and the larger society.

Lots of great news for Elline Lipkin who was accepted to a July residency at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony and also had a poem, “Florida,” come out this month in Cherry Tree. Look for her poem “Among Mothers” in TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics in March.

Last but certainly not least, Antonia Crane received a string of acceptances this month:

an article (title pending) in Buzzfeed for a column called “Concepts of Home”
two articles in a new publication called PrimeMind: “White Hat, Black Stilettos: An Interview with Violet Blue” about the connection between sex workers and hackers AND an interview with neuroscientist Dr. Nicole Prause about the effect of pornography on the human brain
two articles in Tabu, a new publication about sexual health and wellness, which encourages women to feel empowered in their unique sexualities (coming in March)

Congratulations to all of you! Truly inspiring.

February 24, 2016

How to Look at a Solar Eclipse: A Trick on Writing for Social Change

by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

Every Wednesday we publish writing advice for women in our “Closing the Gap” series. This week we take a slight side-step to cross-post a piece with our friends at inspiration2publication.com. Starting in March, “Claps and Cheers,” “Behind the Editor’s Desk,” and “Submissions in Review” will also become regular series.

I remember when George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin. I remember being devastated and posting the news announcement on my Facebook with the caption, “No words.” I couldn’t stop thinking about how Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old kid walking back from a convenience store with a bag of Skittles and an Arizona Ice Tea, never made it back to his father’s house, and how wrong that was. I had no words.

But then another poet commented on my post with something to the effect of, This is exactly when we need words. Write.

When writing about a societal injustice, I see two hurdles: one, finding a way to spend time with a tragedy that is hard to face long enough to write about it, and two, figuring out how to hook readers into spending time with you too.

For the first, my advice is to trick your mind.

Some tragedies are so heartbreaking that to take a long look at them hurts the soul and can even physically turn a person ill. Sometimes the only way to write about injustice is to play a trick on yourself. “Tell it slant” is how Emily Dickinson put it: “The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind—”

When I was a kid I experienced my first solar eclipse. My father was with me, and he let me wear his giant welding mask and made me a pinhole projector out of a cardboard box. I remember standing barefoot on my front lawn, my face pointing to the sky, the heavy mask pressing down on me, preferring its tinted glass and weight to the tiny hole and shadows on cardboard. Going slant can be like finding your welding mask, or making a pinhole projector. In poetry, this can be playing with a classic form, counting syllables, using a rhyme scheme, or arranging a found poem. These tricks can free, or protect, the poet from the subject—acting more like a game than a duty—long enough to write about it. To be clear, I’m not saying to make light of something serious. If you are reading this article, and you are looking for tips on how to write for social justice, then it is clear you are a person who cares, so what I’m saying is, give yourself a break.

In August 2011, I traveled out to the Sonoran desert to volunteer as a desert aid worker with the direct humanitarian organization, No More Deaths. For nine days I camped in the desert along the Arizona-Mexico border in 100+ degree temperatures. I often worried for my safety, but I knew it was nothing compared to what the people crossing into this country were experiencing. Everyday my heart broke with what I saw and heard, and every night I cried myself to sleep. I volunteered with the intention of writing about the border, but when I got back my home, writing was the last thing I wanted to do. It took me six months to a year to finally start writing poems, and when I did, I played tricks. I wrote a villanelle, I played with repetition, and in one poem I stole lyrics from a Katy Perry song. I was in part inspired by Kate Durbin’s collection The Ravenous Audience, which is teeming with different forms. Her collection showed me what could happen with a little experimentation.

“Our Lady of the Water Gallons” is a poem I wrote about the process of leaving fresh water on migrant trails. All summer long volunteers patrol the desert borderlands looking for people in distress and placing fresh water supplies in strategic locations. Volunteers write messages in Spanish and draw images like butterflies and crosses on the water gallons to communicate to those crossing that the water is safe to drink and not a border patrol trap. I found my way into this poem by experimenting with a made up long form created by my friend and formalist poet, Scott Miller, that uses repetition similar to a crown of sonnets.

To this day, anytime I know I’m going to read this poem in public, I have to practice it several times at home so I don’t cry, but I kind of hope every once in a while someone hears it and is inspired to donate money to humanitarian border causes, or even volunteer.

For more pinhole tricks and for strategies on hooking your reader, join my workshop on Writing Poetry for Social Change with inspiration2publication on March 5, 2016 at 10am on the Antioch Campus. We will be writing poems inspired by the poetry of Martin Espada and Carolyn Forche, and taking a look at social media/poetry movements such as #blackpoetsspeakout and Poets Responding to SB1070.

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the 2013 Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange poetry winner and a 2015 Barbara Deming Fund grantee. She has work published in American Poetry Review, crazyhorse, CALYX, and Acentos Review among others. A short dramatization of her poem “Our Lady of the Water Gallons,” directed by Chicano activist and Hollywood director, Jesús Salvador Treviño can be viewed at latinopia.com. She curates the quarterly reading series HITCHED and co-founded Women Who Submit. Her debut poetry collection, Built with Safe Spaces, is forthcoming from Sundress Publications.

February 16, 2016

Submit Like A Man: How Women Writers Can Become More Successful

by Kelli Russell Agodon

Reposted with permission from Ms. Agodon. This article was first published at Medium.com on May 24, 2015.

For six years, I worked as Co-Editor-in-Chief at a small literary journal in the Northwest, Crab Creek Review.

If I had to make one general statement about what I most learned at the press as an editor, the big revelation was that men and women submit their work differently.

Here is what I noticed —

If an editor of our press rejected work from a male writer, but wrote something like, “This came close. We’d like to see more of your work, please send us more poems” on the rejection note — we would usually receive another submission from the male writer within the same month and sometimes even within a few days after he received his rejection.
When we sent this same note to a woman writer, she might resubmit her work in 3–6 months, but more likely, we would not hear from her until over six months to a year later. Sometimes, she will not resubmit at all.
I don’t fully understand why this is, but as a woman writer who grew up in the age of not imposing on people or the fear of being a bother or “too pushy,” here’s my guess to why this happens —

When we send a rejection to a man and ask a man to resubmit, he thinks, “They like my work and they want more; I better get it to them soon before they don’t want it anymore.” And the submission is sent. (Right now, there’s that cliche’ line about men “wanting to spread their seed” going through my head.)

When we ask a woman to resubmit she thinks, “When would be the best time to resubmit? I don’t want to seem pushy, but I do want to get them my work. Maybe I should wait a few months so I don’t seem desperate or so I don’t irritate them by submitting so fast. Do they really want to see more work, or were they just being nice? I’m sure they want to see more work, but I should probably wait a few months, I wouldn’t want to be an imposition and it would be better manners and more respectful to wait a bit. Or should I? Yes, I’ll play it cool and wait a few months. I wouldn’t want to impose.”

And then the woman writer waits or forgets or sends out her submission a few months to a year later (The generalization of women over-thinking things is going through my head right now.)

I know some of what I write here is a big generalization — some women when asked to send more work, do so and do so quickly. But so far as being an editor (and a woman writer) this has been my overall experience — women do not resubmit as quickly (and perhaps as much) as male writers do.

I have even done this self-sabotage dance more than once myself. Once I was so happy with the handwritten rejection from the New Yorker, where Alice Quinn handwrote on my rejection a personal note,“We’d like to see more of your work,” I didn’t resubmit for years because an almost from the New Yorker was a win; it was good enough for me. And in fact, by resubmitting to the New Yorker, I might actually fail — I might get back a blank rejection as opposed to this feel-good-rejection-note I had just received. Why trade mediocrity for possible rejection? I must have been thinking. This thinking does not help any writer, as an almost is not a “win” in publication credits.

For many years, when I received a note saying, “We’d like to see more of your work. We liked what we saw, please resubmit,” my response was to wait until the next year to send again because I didn’t want to send too soon. Or many times, I just wouldn’t resubmit.

After working as an editor (and now as an editor at Two Sylvias Press), I no longer do that. Why? Because I realize how easy it is to forget a writer. Now, if someone likes my work and wants to see more (and it’s a journal I want to be published in), I send them more work within a month of receiving their note.

So Ladies, Women Writers, Sisters of Poetry and Prose —

When an editor tells you they like your work and asks you to resubmit, do so and do so soon after.

The men have it right — the editors do want to see your work and you want to submit before they forget about you and your work. You want your name to be on the tip of their tongues and not hiding in the back of their mind.

This is where many of our “have good manners and think about other’s feelings” good-girl childhoods do not serve us well.

I know when we said at Crab Creek Review that we wanted to see more of a writer’s work, we did. We weren’t just saying it to be nice. And we don’t say it to everyone. If we did, we’d be creating a lot of unneeded work for ourselves.

So let’s say it together — If an editor says they want to see more of your work, they want to see more of your work — they are not just saying it to be nice.

And if you get this note on your rejection slip, send them more work and within the next two months of receiving the note. No later. I mean it. You have permission to respond quickly and professionally. And no one thinks anything bad of you. Promise.

You are not being pushy or rude, you are taking care of your writing life.

And to the Gentlemen who are reading —

Men, Good Chaps, Brothers of Poetry & Prose —

Keep doing what you’re doing. But fewer poems about killing frogs when you were a boy. And less epic work, we like your one-to-two page poems best.

P.S. And to anyone who got to this article because they googled “submit like a man” — you are probably very disappointed right now. . .

Kelli Russell Agodon (@kelliagodon) is a poet, writer, editor, book designer, & cofounder of Two Sylvias Press living in the Seattle area.

She was the Winner of Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year Prize in Poetry as well as a two-time Finalist for the Washington State Book Awards. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, New England Review, and O, The Oprah Magazine.

She is currently working on her fourth collection of poems and finishing a memoir.

February 1, 2016

A WWS Publication Round Up for January

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 13, 2016

On Getting Into The Huffington Post: Approach from Another Angle

by Alana Saltz

When I first started writing essays, I knew that I wanted to become a contributing blogger for The Huffington Post. It’s one of the largest and most trafficked publications in the world, providing an invaluable platform for a fledgling writer like myself.

But getting into HuffPo wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Unlike other publications I’ve managed to get my work in, it would take several attempts—as well as a few different tactics—to land that coveted “Contributing Blogger” title.

When I started submitting essays to The Huffington Post, I used my standard approach. I submitted an article, waited a few weeks, and then submitted another. When a few more weeks passed with no response, I tried one more time.

Each submission was sent to the same category, “Healthy Living,” because my writing at the time focused on mental health. And each time I submitted an article, I received no response whatsoever.

I realized that it was time to approach the situation from another angle. My mother happens to be a contributing blogger for HuffPo after getting connected with an editor through one of her contacts. I decided to try out the same approach and asked her to connect me with her editor. We exchanged a couple of emails, and the editor assured me that my articles were being passed on to the right people at “Healthy Living.” After two months of waiting, there was still absolutely no response.

I was ready to give up hope. I told myself that HuffPo wasn’t the right fit for me. They didn’t like my writing. I wasn’t marketable enough. I should just stop trying. I should give up.

But then I wrote an article that was different than the kinds of articles I’d been writing before. It was about the Netflix series, Orange is the New Black, and how the newest season dealt with the subject of depression. After getting the pitch rejected from Salon, I decided I might as well send it off to HuffPo because it seemed like it would be a good fit.

I chose “Entertainment” as my category for the post and sent it off at a Women Who Submit meeting without any expectations. A few days later, I received an email from an “Entertainment” editor informing me that my piece was going to be published. She sent me the information to set up my account, and I officially became a Huffington Post Contributing Blogger. I was absolutely thrilled.

Once my article, “What Orange is the New Black Gets Right About Depression,” was posted, I submitted an article that had previously been rejected by the “Healthy Living” section. To my surprise, it was also published a few days later…in the “Healthy Living” section. I’m now able to submit pretty much any article I want, and as a contributor, it goes right through.

The entire process from first submission to eventual publication took about eight months and six separate essay submissions. It would have been easy to give up on becoming a HuffPo contributor after any of these attempts and approaches failed. It took rethinking my approach and submitting a different kind of piece to a different set of editors to finally get published on the site.

The thing I’ve learned about getting published is that it’s not just about trying again and again. Persistence and patience aren’t always enough. Sometimes you need to switch gears and approach something from a new angle to get your foot in the door.

Alana Saltz is a writer, freelance editor, and occasional ukulele rocker residing in Los Angeles. Her essays can be found in The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, HelloGiggles, RoleReboot, The Manifest-Station, and more. You can visit her website at alanasaltz.com and follow her on Twitter @alanasaltz.

December 9, 2015

Interview with Ashaki M. Jackson

Ashaki M. Jackson is a poet and social psychologist residing in Los Angeles. Her poem “An American Paratrooper” appears in [r.kv.r.y. quarterly‘s] April 2014 issue. Noted authors and Ashaki confidants Khadijah Queen (www.khadijahqueen.com) and Kima Jones (www.thenotoriouskima.com) recently pitched a few questions to her about her work – an ongoing reflection on grief, coping, and defunct mortuary rites grounded in her grandmother’s death.

This interview is reposted with permission from the editors of r.kv.r.y. quarterly where it was first published.

Khadijah Queen (KQ) begins a little late but gracefully: Snap! I got distracted by YouTube and middle school homework and cake and hot dogs… What distracts you most from your creative work, and how do you overcome said distraction(s) and/or use them to your advantage?

Ashaki Jackson (AJ): This day-to-day thing. I’m responding from bed while deep-conditioning my hair and jotting a To Do list for the next four hours.

Chicken is marinating. Dishes still aren’t going to wash themselves. This basket of clean laundry is giving me the side-eye. It is 5:30 PM.

Being swallowed by the mundane is very comforting to me. My writing revolves around personal loss — mainly that of my grandmother. I still reside in her memory and fold into my grief when I evoke her in poems. The feelings are oppressive even when I write about my broader reflection on loss as I did with An American Paratrooper. Inundating myself with a Big Bang Theory-spring cleaning-pedicure session or reading books in a loud restaurant gives me respite. It gives me spaces to tuck my grief until I’m ready to see it again.

KQ: Talk about the bodied-ness of your poems. How central, tangential, and/or inextricable are the physical and the linguistic?

AJ: I have bodies. Many bodies. Other peoples’ bodies. Loved ones’ bodies.

Sometimes it is the thought of the last state in which I saw a late loved one that pops into my mind.

This is a painful but helpful entry into my drafts. I also spent quite a bit of time studying anthropologists’ articles about mortuary rites. Cecilia McCallum, Ph.D., is a lasting favorite. She documents the care with which certain South American tribe members once treated their deceased family members’ bodies before consuming them.

I learned that mourning isn’t merely psychological; it is a ceremony, a meal, something that lingers on the palate. The language of consumption in relation to the lingering sense of loss underpins many of my pieces—devouring, preservation, and that sense of never being sate. Some of my poems read as if words are falling out of the mouth haphazardly. Others read as if I’m choking on the grief. I’m not able to articulate the craft, but thematically I might refer to it as written keening.

Kima Jones (KJ): Essentially, form is choosing skin, so I want to revisit Khadijah’s question on bodied-ness: Which form, which body do you like to take on most? And for your grandmother?

AJ: My good friend, Noah, mentioned that some of us “like to wear each other’s bodies.” We were speaking about recent travesties — Malaysian Flight 370, MV Sewol in South Korea, the Chibok girls. For all of those bodies lost, families only received apologies from officials — the emptiest gesture. Like gristle.

I think you crave a body — living or dead — particularly when you do not have one.

Bodies are tangible and to be cared for. That care is some kind of ritual.

My work doesn’t have a particular body. Forms are rare in my work. However, I allow my lines to occupy the page in non-traditional ways. One poem is written in the choppiness of a choking cry. In a different piece, the words collide at the bottom of the page – a visual homage to hopelessness in grief. The reader should want to gather words from these pieces, scrape them from the ground, and comfort them.

I spend a good amount of time thinking on my late grandmother’s passing. It aides my coping to wade through the memories, but it also gives me access to a dialect of grief that others might make use of in the future. In my manuscript, I write about her transition in various forms with the same sentiment about the body. She should be home, with us, and cared for. I don’t know if it’s the best I can do to evoke her in my pages as if my manuscript is her portable body. It is a start for me.

KJ: There is always something hiding, even in the uncovering and undoing. I am wondering how Ashaki keeps the secret things hidden during the excavation, the mining of all those graves?

AJ: I’m of the mind that the reader does not need to know me to enter, understand, experience, or relate to the work. Few books would ever be read with this requirement. What I need from the reader: trust. I might not hand you my articulated grief or reveal everything I’ve had to unearth to write a piece, but I’ll share work that will resonate in some way with the reader–that will rub the reader’s bruises just as my ache is continually touched.

KJ: It’s a question I’m turning over more and more in my head in regard to my own heart and my own good feeling, so I ask you, what is the use of the love poem?

AJ: Use of the love poem: praise for a body; idolatry; celebration of the mind’s fire; a method of serenading; to fully taste; to build a word altar to a moment; to sustain a beautiful feeling; to tuck a piece of candy in my pillowcase for later; to be reckless in my selfishness by flaunting; to maintain my warmth; to serve me.

I think that’s broad enough to comfortably fit my poems on grief and loss and loose enough to include the poems I have yet to write for the loves I have yet to know.

The-Body-of-a-Soldier

KQ: Truth & honesty– where on the spectrum when dealing with loss/grief do these consciously figure? Are they seeds or threads? Both? How much gives way to metaphor or story or construct?

AJ: I think Kima’s question about the use of a love poem is relevant here. If I were to write a love poem — let’s say “romantic” in some way — my approach could be seen as dishonest because I haven’t known love. I’d tell you that in the poem. I’m pretty forthcoming with what I don’t know. But, it would still be a decent poem because lies are often the most interesting genre.

When dealing with loss, I am more honest about what I have experienced than what I have not. I think my feelings are evident and even resounding when I write about personal loss because I know its labyrinth. I become the omniscient tour guide. When writing others’ losses: my empathy might seem insufficient. My feelings about documenting grief are still true and perhaps a projection of my mourning. But, I don’t know others’ specific pains, which are rooted in long relationships, family, home, and hopes for the future.

The lyric fills in those hollows. The poem becomes indigenous to its characters — not me. I am honest until my imagination converts a paratrooper’s body being retrieved from Cambodia into a native stork.

Ashaki-Jackson-300x224

Dr. Ashaki M. Jackson is a social psychologist and poet who has worked with post-incarceration youth through research, evaluation and creative arts mentoring for over one decade. She is a Cave Canem and VONA alumna. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Rkvry Quarterly and CURA Magazine, among others. Miel Books will publish her chapbook, Language Lesson, in fall 2016. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

December 2, 2015

Women Who Share: Désirée Zamorano on Daily Goals and the Power of Conferences

In 1997, more years ago than I care to admit to, I attended a Bouchercon mystery conference and listened to the writer Patricia Sprinkle speak about the “seasons” in a writer’s life. At that time I had two small children, taught 5th grade, and had committed myself to carve time out of my day to write. But, I had given myself a daily quota that I was daily unable to make. I goaded, scolded and loathed myself for not accomplishing my daily goal, day after day after day. When Ms. Sprinkle spoke, she reminded her audience of the different seasons in our lives, to recognize and honor them. I took her words in, deeply. I vowed not to beat myself up for missing arbitrary targets.

Continue reading “Women Who Share: Désirée Zamorano on Daily Goals and the Power of Conferences”

September 11, 2015

Celebration Blitzes

by Ramona Pilar

Who: Women Who Submit
Where: ONLINE In the comfort of wherever you, your computer and wifi wanna be.
L.A. METRO AREA: The Little Easy – 216 W. 5th Street, DTLA, CA 90013
What: Women Who Submit’s 2nd Annual SUBMISSION BLITZ (and L.A. Meetup)
When: Saturday September 12, 2015
ONLINE: Beginning at 12:01am – 11:59pm
L.A. METRO AREA: 12:00pm – 4:00pm

Why?

The channeling of writing is done in solitude. Whether alone in the quiet before dawn – a soundtrack of scattering the only rush hour you hear – or squished into a seat on a light rail train or subway at rush hour, a veritable contortionist, angling your writing arm, wrist and fingers however you can in order to transmute those stories, verses, and images into a collection of words.

Purple Lady Metro — La Viejita Morada – 2013

But that channeling – that creativity – isn’t necessarily the whole of what it means to be a writer. As a storyteller, one is urged, pushed, cajoled or challenged by something inside of you to pluck those passing thoughts from the din of the thousands that flow through your mind on a daily basis and give them form, genre, emotion – voice. As a writer, you are further compelled to share these stories and contribute to the larger story of your community – however many you claim – tells about itself to itself.

Women Who Submit is just one of several groups of writers who have organized around supporting and amplifying the stories of people who have been bit players at best in the story contemporary literature and publishing tells about itself to itself.

WWS’s First Submission Blitz took place in a bar/restaurant at the deadest part of the day: early afternoon. As patrons trickled in and saw a group of women sitting around a table with laptops, they were curious. The more they drank, the bolder they got until they asked what we were doing. Each time we explained, the response was, “Oh, wow! That’s such a good idea!” And as each writer submitted her work, we cheered, and they cheered along with us.

1st Annual Submission Blitz - 2014 Somewhere in Northeast L.A. — 1st Annual Submission Blitz – 2014

This year’s Submission Blitz will take place at The Little Easy in Downtown Los Angeles. It’s reminiscent of a speakeasy, Parisian parlor and Disney’s Blue Bayou restaurant (without the old water smell from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride). There’s a wooden fenced mezzanine with ivy-strewn awnings and a gazebo-ed fountain in the main part of the restaurant. It’s the best kind of whimsical a restaurant/bar could be.

Writing can be serious work. Sharing that writing doesn’t have to be. At a submission party, your submission receives the amount of fanfare and hoopla your hard work deserves. At our annual Submission Blitz, we target the top five Top Tiered journals currently publishing work. Hell yeah it deserves a venue that features a 3 foot painting of the general manager dressed as Napoleon. Sharing your stories and celebrating your community(ies) sharing theirs is just as much a part of being a writer as the words on the page.

* * * * * * *

TO SUBMIT

Let’s inundate these top journals with our best work and shake up their slush piles.

Here are five tier 1 journals with current open readings. Be sure to check out their guidelines.

Agni
http://www.bu.edu/agni/submit.html

Georgia Review
http://garev.uga.edu/submissions.html

Gulf Coast
http://gulfcoastmag.org/submit/

Iowa Review
http://iowareview.org/content/writers-guidelines

Zyzzyva
http://www.zyzzyva.org/about/submissions/

TRANSPORT

TAKE METRO: to Pershing Square Station, exit 5th and Hill street side, walk one block east. Destination will be on the South side.

PARKING: There are some $5-$7 lots on Spring between 4th and 6th streets.

August 31, 2015

Claps and Cheers: Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero

by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

Gabi, a Girl in Pieces (Cinco Punto Press), the debut YA novel from Inland Empire poet, Isabel Quintero, reminds me of myself at 17; Gabi is too fat, watches too much “I Love Lucy,” and has too many feelings she can’t seem to make go away. But armed with her journal, a canon of poets including Michele Serros, Sandra Cisneros, and Pablo Neruda, and her special beef jerky she has flown in from Mexico, she is determined to fight the injustices of the world starting with the “boys will be boys” double standard.

We meet Gabi at the opening of her senior year of high school just as she discovers one best friend is pregnant and the other has been kicked out of his house for being gay. We follow her through a year of self-discovery that includes a couple of satisfying smack downs before she is able to find inner-strength and self-acceptance.

Laugh or cry, it’s hard not to be charmed by Gabi’s mix of self-deprecation and humor, and it is no surprise she has earned Quintero quite a few accolades over the past year. Gabi a Girl in Pieces is the 2015 Winner of the William C. Morris Award for YA Debut Novel, and continues to make “best of” reading lists. The latest, “Ten must-read YA novels you’ve probably never heard of” from The Guardian said, “Told through Gabi’s diary, the book is tragic, hilarious, and always whip-smart. It’s also, I’m sure, one of the most diverse and all-encompassing YA novels out there.”

Congratulations to Isabel Quintero on a debut novel that is smart, honest, and full of teenage passion. If I took one thing away from Gabi, it was that I’m not the only one. Even as a 35 year-old, the life of a poet can feel lonely and without much understanding or appreciation (not unlike the life of a 17 year-old). But when Gabi gets a crush on a boy in her poetry class and proclaims, “I think I love Martin Espada,” (named after the famed poet), I beamed with excitement and thought, I love Martín Espada too! In that moment, it was like Gabi was a book meant for me, another Southern California gordita poet. I have no doubt that many other “gorditas, flaquitas, and inbetween girls” will discover Gabi and feel less alone too.

To the gorditas y flaquitas! To the poets! To Gabi! To Isabel Quintero!

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo has work most recently published in Lumen Magazine, Lunch Ticket, and The James Franco Review. She is a co-founding member of Women Who Submit.