As Women Who Submit prepares to launch our second anthology, Gathering, we will be featuring WWS authors across the genres and highlighting their forthcoming work.
Students in Los Angeles celebrate Dia de los Muertos.
Our first featured writer is poet, Marisol Cortez, a member from San Antonio. We celebrate this poem on its one-year anniversary, long before the winter surge, the election, and the Delta variant. It reminds us that although so many days from the past year/month/days bleed together, the past also contains distinct moments. This excerpt reminds us what life was like 365 days ago as well as what life is and has always been. It expands on the idea of loyalty and allegiance; connecting and reflecting upon this fast-changing and forever constant world.
Loyalty Oath: Dia de los Muertos 2020
by Marisol Cortez
I pledge allegiance to birds and Black birders I pledge allegiance to sea turtles and silly gulls I pledge allegiance to yard sales, plate sales, voguing, ancient foraging circuits: nuez, tuna, nopal, yuca All the gifts of this land we once wandered, not lost like Cabeza de Vaca, but logically seasonally ecologically moving. I pledge allegiance to dewberries growing on the banks of the lake the Army Corps made from dammed up river and the red hornets who live there too, whose protective sting to my brow while foraging sends me reeling, falling backwards with the force of a strike
I pledge allegiance to sacred springs I pledge allegiance to every wetland and swamp that hid runaway slaves and Native boarding school children. May every effort to drain you fail, may we fill you up again instead, restore you, so that no White House built beneath the lash may comfortably occupy your Potomac slough.
I pledge allegiance to rivers that swallow up ill-gotten walls and the lies that built them I pledge allegiance to the burning forests— Amazonian, ancient redwood and all alveoli everywhere: from Floyd’s breath extinguished beneath boot and badge on a hot Minneapolis sidewalk to the breaths of elders artificially inflated by ventilators down in the RGV: I pledge allegiance to all lungs, all breath, arboreal or mammalian, Aeolian winds of the body which resist just by inspiring exhaling surviving
To read this poem in its stunning and expansive entirety, look for Gathering: a Women Who Submit Anthology. Preorder Gatheringhere!
Rooted in San Antonio, Marisol Cortez writes across genre about place and power for all the other borderwalking weirdos out there. Always a poet, for a time she strayed into an academic career, earning a Ph.D. in cultural studies before returning to San Antonio to write in service of movements to protect la madre tierra. A mama of two, she currently juggles writing, parenting, and co-editing responsibilities for Deceleration, an online journal of environmental justice thought and praxis.
In 2020 she published her debut novel Luz at Midnight (FlowerSong Press 2020), which in 2021 won the Texas Institute of Letter’s Sergio Troncoso Award for First Book of Fiction. She is also the author of I Call on the Earth(Double Drop Press 2019), a chapbook of documentary poetry, and “Making Displacement Visible: A Case Study Analysis of the ‘Mission Trail of Tears,’” which together bear witness to the forced removal of Mission Trails Mobile Home Community. Other poems and prose have appeared in Mutha Magazine, About Place Journal, Orion, Vice Canada, Caigibi, Metafore Magazine, Outsider Poetry, Voices de la Luna, and La Voz de Esperanza, among other anthologies and journals. For updates on projects and publications, visit mcortez.net.
It’s Halloween, which signals October’s close, and our WWS members continue to send out their work and publish in amazing places.
This month we’re celebrating the WWS members whose work was published during October of 2021. I’ve included an excerpt from their published pieces (if available) or a blurb if the publication is a book, and a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in October!
Self-promotion is a full-time job. Large publishing companies have entire PR teams to promote an author’s work. If the writer signs with a small press the weight of promotion falls on the author who can chose one of three options. A. Do not promote at all. Bring the book into the world and allow the universe to do its thing. B. Hire the services of a PR company which can go anywhere from $1800 to $3000. C. Blow your own horn and blow loud.
After all, books are like children. We conceive them. We care for them when they are gestating. But once they are born, it is our responsibility as word artists to nurture their growth. I am proud of all my children: the two human and the three books. As much as I have been/am a committed mother, I refuse to just put a book out and abandon it to its luck.
The cost associated with self-promotion can skyrocket. It will cost a couple of hundred dollars to learn to design a website. Li Yun Alvarado does an excellent job. There are fees associated to purchasing and keeping a domain. You will need a few author pics to use for submissions, events, and social media graphics. At minimum that would be another $250. Melissa Johnson offers budget sensitive photo shoots.
Then there is the issue of advertising on social media platforms. Pay anywhere from $15 to $30 to boost a post. Pay fees to store graphics in Planoly or any other social media friendly archive. There is also the opportunity of paying somebody just for the task of posting on social media, which is not cost effective but can take time off your shoulders. I have temporary hired designers to do this for me, but only for short periods of time. Camari Hawkins and JT have helped me design graphic concepts and update my website. Graphics must meet social media constrains, which will require fees if you want a sophisticated job.
In the end, the only low-cost option is a DIY approach. My choice is always to go for the most basic. But even when spending the minimum, the time spent in advertising your forthcoming or just released book takes a toll on the individual. I do not wish to exhaust my readers with a mile long to-do list of items required for a book release campaign. Know that it requires hours of careful planning. These include but are not limited to: writing press releases, sending letters, contacting reading series, calling radio stations, organizing events, contacting libraries, getting a zoom account, purchasing your own books to sign to readers, writing emails back and forth, designing graphics for social media and cross posting everywhere possible to avoid boosting fees, or updating a website that is far from perfect. It is unpaid time in a long process that can last a whole year leaving even the most committed writer with no space to develop new content.
Don’t get me wrong. It is gratifying too. I feel proud knowing that I have done this on my own, with the help of friends who retweet/repost, or encourage me, or offer their venues to host an event, or simply offer fresh ideas. Even when three people show up for an event, I am happy to know that I reached new readers, and they are now aware of my work as a poet.
I am nowhere close to be an established writer even when I can no longer claim to be emerging. But in the last five years, I have worked day and night learning, writing, and making myself known. Yes, I am grateful for all the support I have received along the way from the extraordinary talented community of Women Who Submit and others in LA for they have have welcome me and my craft. But I thank me first for the hard work I put raising my babies.
Lisbeth Coiman is an author, poet, educator, cultural worker, and rezandera born in Venezuela. Coiman’s wanderlust spirit landed her to three countries—from her birthplace to Canada, and finally the USA, where she self-published her first book, I Asked the Blue Heron: A Memoir (2017). She dedicated her bilingual poetry collection, Uprising / Alzamiento, Finishing Line Press( Sept. 2021) to her homeland, Venezuela. An avid hiker, and teacher of English as a Second Language, Coiman lives in Los Angeles, CA.
September has ended, bringing us even closer to the end of 2021, a year that has felt as unreal, uneasy, and unresolved as 2020. Yet our WWS members continue to send out their work and publish in amazing places.
This month we’re celebrating the WWS members whose work was published during September of 2021. I’ve included an excerpt from their published pieces (if available) or a blurb if the publication is a book, and a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Let’s celebrate our members who published in September!
The past Tuesday, I woke up at 2:30 am when my COVID test results came in. I was negative, but I couldn’t fall back asleep. I was thinking about the email from a parent questioning the social justice lens of my instruction. I was thinking about how my first-grader was worried about catching COVID because he’d touched his own poop. I was thinking about the phone call with my college roommate who told me about her colon cancer diagnosis. I stared into the dark, trying to bring back sleep, but I couldn’t stop my mind from spinning around it all. I pulled myself out of bed, got a work out in, and attempted to breathe. Then, I sat at the page and wrote a few lines about teaching, living through a pandemic, and processing grief.
Wednesday morning, I woke up before my alarm. The day sat heavily in my belly, but a full night’s sleep had me like a knife: sharp and ready. I was going to need to be like that blade in order to teach in a pandemic, to coach soccer in a pandemic, to parent in a pandemic, to write in a pandemic. My first grader was home for the week after a someone from his class tested positive. It was our family’s first close contact. A dear friend from college was having surgery, and I was waiting on news. Family memorials for an aunt and cousin who had passed during this year of isolation loomed along the horizon. I made my way from bed and into some yoga, because even inside the chaos, I can choose to breathe. In that breath, I forced myself to see the good: the gubernatorial recall had failed, a school voucher funding scheme had been tabled; the Oregon football team was ranked number four in the nation. Soon, I would be hosting all of my vaccinated siblings.
A week later, I woke up to the full moon shining through the bedroom window. The first grader was still home even though we all tested negative. I was bleeding again after a few months when I believed I had reached menopause. But this pandemic is like waiting for menopause. You think the end has arrived, but then the cramps, bleeding, and discomfort come back. Somehow the pain is worse than you remember, and you wonder how you’ve survived all this time. You wonder how long it will last. You wonder if you will be able to make it. But making it to menopause means surviving, and to making it through a global pandemic, despite close contacts and shifting CDC guidelines, means you keep get up in the morning and keep breathing.
I wake up. I keep going every day, and look for the good: Women Who Submit continues to submit work. We’ve released books, opened art exhibits, and come together on IG live, Zoom, and in-person to celebrate. We continue to support and lift one another up, because that’s how the WWS community makes its way through this pandemic. We seek out brave ways to be in close contact, even when it’s from a distance, and we stay breathing.
Noriko Nakada is a multi-racial Asian American who creates fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art to capture the stories she has been told not to talk about. She is the author of the Through Eyes Like Mine memoir series. Excerpts, essays, and poetry have been published in Hippocampus, Catapult, Linden Ave, and elsewhere.
I have a confession to make: I am in love with my budget. Yes, my budget. Those five letters that usually spell constriction, that have always sounded like a stern math teacher glaring over her glasses growling “No,” have become an exciting almost magical portal to possibility and peace of mind.
As a freelance writer, budgets always scared me. They took the long view: what do you make in a year and what do you spend? Because I didn’t know the answer to the first question, I was afraid to look at the second.
Then a poet friend announced that she had eliminated $10,000 of debt with a program called YNAB (You Need a Budget). Interest piqued, I jumped in. More than a budgeting program, it was a philosophy. It was also an educational system & community. The key questions were how much money I had now and what were my plans for it. Forecasting was discouraged (what if that check never comes?). The goal was to stay current, clear-eyed, and flexible because life happens. My first goal was total awareness…which suddenly felt doable and kind. I started to understand my finances, what they could and could not do. I now only budget money that is actually in my account. I give every dollar a job and only one job (because, unlike me, my money can’t moonlight). The sheer sobriety of this approach washes over my financial fires like spring water. I can’t wait to allocate my paycheck each month, and I breathe easy when I pay bills because I know the money is waiting.
So, inspired by the elegance of clear numbers, I turned the budgeting lens onto my overwhelming schedule. I opened a new file and named it “TimeNab.” Every day, I deposited $24 and, for a few weeks, tracked where I “spent” it. Total awareness struck again. With travel and prep, my four-hour teaching assignment ate up eight full hours of my workday. Sleep took another eight, which left the remaining eight to cook, clean, write, exercise, socialize, watch TV, shop, and attend medical appointments, not to mention driving there. I was not lazy! I was trying to pack three weeks of clothing into an overnight bag; it just didn’t fit.
Sometimes time is money…although what it’s worth will vary by who is paying me. Sometimes money can buy time, like paying someone else to do something I hate or can’t do. The value in both is in the life they allow me.
As writers, we negotiate time to write, to edit, to research, and submit. And while writing is one of the least expensive arts, we still pay for supplies, submission fees, and workshops. Having both as realistic budget categories puts us in the driver’s seat.
This month’s destination is the 8th Annual WWS Submission Drive, so it’s time to check my budget. When will I polish my pieces? When will I research target markets? How much can I spend on submission fees while respecting my other goals? Those questions are like gas in my tank: they tell me how far I can go. But they do more than that. Each decision I make with time and money is a decision about where I want to go, where I plan to go. It’s like casting a spell to make it happen. Who could not love that?
Deborah Edler Brown was born in Brazil and raised in Pittsburgh. Her poem “Cubism” won Kalliope’s Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Prize, her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart, and she was 1998 Head-to-Head Haiku Slam Champion. She lives in LA, where she teaches reading to adults and dances daily.
In 2021, I was admitted to workshops and received fellowships with Tin House, Macondo, VONA, and the Authentic Voices program via the National Women’s Book Association, my poems and essays were accepted for publication in various venues, and I completed the first full draft of my creative nonfiction manuscript. I somehow did this while surviving a pandemic, working from home with no childcare, and being a single parent/teacher/everything to a fifth grader who was distance learning. And as we shift to a “new normal” this fall, I am still exhausted. There is still so much that is unsaid and unfelt. And yet, I remain hopeful that many of us will retain our virtual communities of care, including our writing communities. That is the way that I survived.
When the world panicked in March 2020, I had nowhere to go but online. I joined Women Who Submit and began attending the weekly Saturday meetings. At first, I doubted whether I truly belonged there because I had internalized the belief that I had to “prove” myself as a writer with external accomplishments, such as publications or awards. But I slowly learned to challenge my mindset. At WWS, rejection letters became “motivation letters” and we applauded each other for writing and for not writing, for trying and for not trying, for hitting “submit” or for not hitting submit. And then we did it all over again. I learned that everything matters, no matter how small, and it opened up something new in me. I had something to say. I filled multiple journals. I started scribbling poems on the backs of receipts again. I began to remember my childhood dream of being a published author. What if?
Asking “what if” led me to have a relationship with my writing, which is to say that I began to have more of a relationship with myself. The page is where I found the fullness of myself. And I claimed myself as a writer while the world was on fire. It felt both marvelous and terrifying. Did I really have the luxury or the audacity or the confidence to be a writer? Yes and yes and yes. I am a writer simply because I say I am.
And yet, no one ever does anything alone. Not even writers. Especially writers. When I drafted my first statements for fellowship applications, the words felt clunky and odd. I didn’t know what I was doing. I feared that I would never be selected for the fellowship. I didn’t even know what I wanted to say. But I asked for help anyway because support will always move us closer to our goals. And once I finally crafted one fellowship application that seemed strong, it was easier to tailor it and apply to more workshops and fellowships. At the same time, life happens, and I didn’t worry much if a deadline for a certain opportunity passed. I did what I could at the time and I am okay with it because there will always be more chances.
The first fellowship that I completed was the Authentic Voices program with the National Women’s Book Association (NWBA). Directed by the NWBA President, Natalie Obando, my cohort and I met over the course of four months with her and other guests, including a six-weel writing workshop with the wonderful writer Mireya Vela. As someone without an MFA, I am still learning about so much, and the fellowship taught me about the business of publishing, the art of writing and revising, querying, and other concrete tools that will help me as an emerging writer. It also felt almost surreal to be in a BIPOC-only space where we could understand each other without explaining or censoring ourselves or our writing. And while institutional racism and other forms of inequities remain embedded in traditional publishing, programs like Authentic Voices make me hopeful that more change is coming.
The next workshop was the Tin House summer workshop. At the final happy hour meeting, a fellow participant said that it felt like an entire semester compressed into one week, and I wholeheartedly agree. I was pleasantly surprised that most of the Tin House faculty were BIPOC and they were privileged in the programming for the talks and lectures. However, I did not anticipate how grueling the schedule would be. Each day had over 12 hours of live programming. While all the talks and lectures were recorded, I made arrangements with my job to attend Tin House and so I wanted to use all the time that I could that week. I had meetings with a literary agent and editor, both women of color, who were honest about institutional racism in the publishing industry but encouraging. For the workshop portion, I was both inspired and a bit intimidated to work with the incredible Jaquira Diaz. My cohort and I talked with her about ghosts, speculative nonfiction, and what it means to write into the complexities of our lives. More than anything, Jaquira taught me that anything is possible, including our dreams.
My final workshop was the Macondo writers workshop. While the Macondo schedule was not as time-intensive as Tin House, it also felt rigorous. I was delighted to work with Daisy Hernandez who challenged us to consider space and place in our writing. My cohort and I wrote about mothering, beds, science, childhood homes, hopefulness, and helplessness. I also read a short excerpt of a personal essay during the Macondo open mic which felt like an accomplishment to me because I have not participated in many readings. And yet, at Macondo, the new Macondistas were welcomed with open arms and I felt a sense of belonging. Of all my fellowships so far, Macondo feels the most sentimental to me because I worked with the Chicana feminist writer and Macondista, Carla Trujillo, as an undergraduate. And Macondo’s founder, Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros, was the first book that I ever read that was written by a Chicana. With Macondo, I felt more certain than ever that I am not simply a fan of writers, but I am a writer too.
Even a year ago, I never would have dreamed of having any of these experiences, but here I am. For my fellow emerging writers, don’t give up and remember these phrases.
No means next. I learned this phrase from my friend, Yvette Martinez-Vu, who uses this phrase to help motivate her students. When I submitted to a Tin House workshop for the first time, my application was declined. But when the next round opened up, I applied again and was accepted. No means next, not never. If a venue says no, apply again or somewhere else. Don’t stop.
Your pace is the right pace. What if you did not write today, this week, this month, this year? Or perhaps even many years? It is okay. Whether or not you put pen to paper, you are still a writer, no matter what. Release the guilt and stress. The page will always welcome you back when it’s the right time for you and only you. Your pace is yours.
Ask for help. This one still feels difficult for me even today because asking for help can sometimes mean exposing your vulnerabilities and insecurities. And yet, building relationships with others in the writing community means that there are always friendly folks who are willing to help you with feedback, support, or advice. It is okay to ask for help. In fact, it is necessary. And then the best part is that we can pay it forward by helping the ones coming up after us.
Don’t compare and despair. It is normal to feel jealous, doubtful, or insecure when we compare ourselves to other writers who seem to have all the dream publications, awards, fellowships, book deals, etc. Feel those feelings and then let them go. There’s more than enough for us all and what’s meant for you will not pass you up. And remember, no one else’s success will ever diminish the inherent value of your work.
Lay a brick a day. I saw this phrase in a meme and I immediately loved it. The little things do add up. Even if you write just one sentence a day, it matters.
The magic is in the mess. Marvel in the mess and then marvel some more because that’s where the magic happens. Stay with the discomfort and the doubts. The right words will come, I promise.
Remember, your writing is worthy. But, even more important than that, you yourself are worthy.
With love,
Cecilia Caballero
Cecilia Caballero is an Afro-Chicana single mother, poet, creative nonfiction writer, teaching artist, speaker, and educator based in Los Angeles. Cecilia is a founding member of the Chicana M(other)work collective and she is co-editor of the book The Chicana Motherwork Anthology: Porque Sin Madres No Hay Revolución (University of Arizona Press 2019). As a teaching artist, Cecilia designs and facilitates poetry workshops for BIPOC folks to cultivate more spaces of healing and social justice. She has been invited to give workshops and talks at numerous institutions and organizations such as UCLA, UC Berkeley, San Diego State University, East Los Angeles College, the University of Arizona, Parenting for Liberation, and more. Cecilia’s prose and poetry is published or forthcoming in Dryland Magazine, Star*Line Magazine, The Nasiona, Raising Mothers, The Acentos Review, Chicana/Latina Studies, Gathering: A Women Who Submit Anthology, and more. Find her on Twitter @la_sangre_llama
It’s the end of August and the heat is kicking in here in Southern California, with more hot weather through at least September, if not longer. But the heat isn’t slowing down our WWS members, who continue to send out their fabulous work and publish it.
This month we’re celebrating the WWS members whose work was published during August 2021. I’ve included an excerpt from their published pieces (if available) or a blurb if the publication is a book, and a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Let’s celebrate our members who published in August!
In years past, we’d called this annual event the “Submission Blitz,” reappropriating a destructive term in pursuit of gender parity and wider representation of marginalized voices in literary publishing. But as the last 20 years has brought unbearable violence punctuated by recent catastrophic times, we at WWS thought it was time for a new direction and outlook.
SUBMIT 1 is the one day out of the year WWS encourages women and nonbinary writers across the globe to send out at least one of their top pieces to one top tier journal as one community. This is no longer about bombarding editors’ desks and slush piles.
SUBMIT 1 is an act of solidarity and faith in our own voices and communities.
WWS hosts quarterly workshops and panels to help demystify the submission process and provide professional development to the writers. One of my personal favorites was “Strategies for Submitting to Contest” in 2016 with Tammy Delatorre, winner of the 2015 Slippery Elm Prose Prize and 2015 Peyton Prize.
On that day she advised us to send our best work, the pieces we loved, the ones we had to see in the world, our absolute favorites. This was an aha moment for me.
If I want an editor to love my work and champion it in their pages, I have to love it first. If I want to turn the heads of the readers at the top journals, the work I send should be top shelf quality.
This year, in our 8th installment of this literary submission drive, I invite you choose one piece of writing, your best and most beloved piece, and do the work of sending it to at least one top journal (Or five!). And when it’s rejected (because chances are it will be), send it out again, and then again, offering as many editors as possible the privilege of reading your work, until you finally find it the right home.
This isn’t an attack. This is an act of love.
How to Participate:
1. Before September 18th, study THIS LIST of “Top Ranked Journals of 2021” with current open calls to find a good fit for your work. Links to guidelines are included.
2. On September 18th, submit one of your best pieces of writing to at least one tier one magazine from where ever you are in the world at any time of day.
3. Notify us on Facebook, Twitter, or IG. Be sure to tag us @womenwhosubmit, so we can celebrate you with lots of claps, cheers, and funny gifs.
4. Hang with us on IG Live at @WomenWhoSubmit from 7am to midnight for a full day special guests, support, and resources. Here is where you can ask WWS members for tips on submitting, get encouragement, or receive LIVE claps for when you hit send.
5. After submitting, fill out THIS FORM to help us track how many submissions were sent out, which will help us in our continued mission towards gender parity and wider representation of marginalized voices in literary publishing.
Submission Drive Origins:
After the first VIDA Count was published in 2009 illustrating the dearth of women’s voices in tier one publications, members of VIDA, Women in Literary Arts, began asking the editors of these journals why they thought the numbers were unbalanced. The most common answer was women don’t submit as often as men. In response, Women Who Submit and the monthly submission party was created in 2011 to support women and nonbinary writers in submitting their work for publication in order to raise the number of such voices coming across editors’ desks.
Our annual submission drive is a call to writers to submit their well-crafted and cared for work en masse to tier-one literary journals that historically have shown gender disparities in their publications. It is a call to action. Our first WWS submission drive was in September 2014 at Hermosillo Bar in Highland Park, CA.
Many years ago, a friend of mine gifted me a kit advertised as a spiritual tool for affirmation. It’s a cute concept: write a wish on a piece of fine paper, roll the paper like a funnel, place it on a platform, and lit on fire. The paper quickly burns and lifts your wish into the air in a magical moment that lasts seconds. It’s cute.
Only I had stopped placing my intentions in the universe as wishes. Instead, I plan and design my life based on well informed decisions, considering risks and unexpected circumstances. The process is not always pretty and most of the time far from smooth.
Bookkeeping concept aside, budgeting is a way to keep an eye on where the expectations reside while we watch the colors of the balance sheet go from black to crimson red. Budgeting is mental health into the future.
Sunset near Edwards, CO 7/3/21
Budgeting a small investment for retirement for the untrained entrepreneur requires a steady hand and an incredible amount of trust in the Self. Those monetary decisions should allow for the unexpected changes and turbulences pass through our lives without breaking us, even as they shake us.
Only five months into the pandemic, I took a risk greater than anything I had tried before and bought a house. Then the budge burnt with a puff in the air, like that spiritual tool for affirmation my friend gifted me.
After eight months waiting for a building permit, prices of lumber went up 400%. Plumbing material tailed behind. Inspectors found fault and the project was delayed even more. I am now into the one-year mark of building a tiny ADU unit and still no end in sight. At times, I wondered if there was any joy left. I felt depleted.
Then the past came back to threaten my sense of security. I reacted with more work and a flood of tears.
But I didn’t budget my emotions.
I allowed myself to feel all the anxiety, fear, abandonment, and anger. I considered these negative emotions as valid as joy and laughter and love, and they were necessary to remind me that being human requires authentic feelings, that my face doesn’t have to be IG ready every day. The reality is I wouldn’t have gone through it without friends holding me. They listened with patience on the phone when the sky turned dark. I am grateful they checked on me and offered advice, “Do not let anybody get into your head. Do not engage.”
With the help of those friends, and a good reserve of joy stored deep inside me I have hiked through this stretch.
What we can do to budget our emotions is to experience joy in its fullest whenever it steps into view because joy’s duration is unpredictable. Fill ourselves with its invigorating energy. Take the risk to love again. Get in touch with our senses. Jump into the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean and let that childish moment fuel the next heavy days. And write because the role of poetry is to survive and find beauty even in despair.
I don’t complain about my life because I am convinced I have done the right thing. Despite the budget being way into the red palette, I am content in my achievements so far. During all this time, I have lived intensely and with purpose. I am satisfied and impressed of my own ability to reinvent myself even when somebody threatened my sense of security.
All my decisions have been well informed. My personal life is on hold but not over. It’s compartmentalized into being a word artist, a teacher, an entrepreneur, a mother, a daughter, and a friend. All these parts of me come together to give myself what I didn’t give me before: a chance to design my own joy and future.
Both look spectacular from here, rough as the uphill road might be.
Lisbeth Coiman is an author, poet, educator, cultural worker, and rezandera born in Venezuela. Coiman’s wanderlust spirit landed her to three countries—from her birthplace to Canada, and finally the USA, where she self-published her first book, I Asked the Blue Heron: A Memoir (2017). Her poetry and personal essays are featured in the online publications: La Bloga, EntropyAcentos Review, Lady/Liberty/Lit, Nailed, Hip Mama Magazine, Rabid Oaks, Cultural Weekly, and Resonancias Literarias. In print media Spectrum v.16, The Altadena Literary Review, and Accolades: A Women Who Submit Anthology. An avid hiker, and teacher of English as a Second Language, Coiman lives in Los Angeles, CA.
Lisbeth Coiman is an author, poet, educator, cultural worker, and rezandera born in Venezuela. Coiman’s wanderlust spirit landed her to three countries—from her birthplace to Canada, and finally the USA, where she self-published her first book, I Asked the Blue Heron: A Memoir (2017). She dedicated her bilingual poetry collection, Uprising / Alzamiento, Finishing Line Press( Sept. 2021) to her homeland, Venezuela. An avid hiker, and teacher of English as a Second Language, Coiman lives in Los Angeles, CA.
Deborah Edler Brown was born in Brazil and raised in Pittsburgh. Her poem “Cubism” won Kalliope’s Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Prize, her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart, and she was 1998 Head-to-Head Haiku Slam Champion. She lives in LA, where she teaches reading to adults and dances daily.
