Women Who Submit

April 23, 2020May 6, 2020

Breathe and Push: A Meditation

By Désirée Zamorano

“Ask your heart, from time to time, what is most important right now, in this moment, and listen very carefully for the response.” –Jon Kabat-Zinn

When I learned that my students would not be returning from spring break, it was like a shovel to the side of my head. I was jolted; cortisol ran through my body for days and weeks, and I had a constant, throbbing headache. I was asked to move my teaching, my content, my carefully designed community-building designed activities, online. Many of us found ourselves in the awkward and terrifying position of being told to stay still, and yet be heroically productive. Like the students, all my plans were interrupted, and my writing utterly side-lined.

I wavered between being frozen with inaction and indecision or distracting myself with constant movement: more dishes to make or bake or stockpile; more articles to read; audio books; an online course; youtube exercise clips; zoom meetups. Not still, not listening, just being certain there is noise and action and activity to crowd out stillness, thoughts and doubts and, in particular, fears.

That inner editor, that tireless nag, relentless reproachful, reminded me that other people were writing their wry think pieces, their touching essays, their profound poetry. Other writers signed agents; agents made deals, sold books. My inner editor, eyed me disdainfully, as if to say, “Why not you?”

In the meantime, I considered that “last days” have passed, without my even realizing it at the time: the last meal at a favorite restaurant, the last purchase at an independent shop, the last recognition of a student’s presence before they return to their home state or country. The last physical classroom meeting for this semester.

My husband was let go from his job; I heard from friends and students: their job losses, a ruined relationship, weddings delayed or dissolved. Financial hardships, moving away, moving back home, relatives on the frontlines.

I needed to be still, and ask my heart, and listen.

My heart said, it is okay to mourn.

I gave my inner editor the day off, the night off, the week off, the quarantine off. Shh, I told her. There, there, there.

We are humans, we are elastic and we accommodate the wonderful as swiftly as we do the unpleasant. We adapt. We are now a month or so into this odd world. Or three and half years, depending on your reference point.

We are in a holding pattern, in my case with its particular comforts and concerns. My home is cozy; in order to visit my 80-year old mother I can not see my children. My daughter is a cashier at a grocery store; people I know are suffering.

In one particular highly effective habit from Steven Covey’s iconic text he gives a Venn diagram and explains, where our area of concern overlaps our area of influence, therein lies our greatest power. I have tremendous anger and anxiety for so many current political outrages and utterly avoidable tragic outcomes, but that is far, far out of my area of influence.

What, out of so many concerns, lies within my influence? My words on the page. My interactions with and responsibilities towards my friends, family members, students, community. Where I invest my time and money. My attitude towards this situation.

What does my heart tell me now?

Out comes the printed draft with all my annotations, it is time to continue my revisions. I bite my tongue against the harsh words I have for my husband, borne out of spending so much time together. I connect and loop in with my friends and family. Put a colorful top and a cheerful face on for the zoom classes I teach. Reach out to the struggling students. Send money to people and causes in need.

The county announces a two week extension to our physical isolation. My doctor friend assures me it will be extended again. And again.

Disturbingly, thoughts of the future creep in. How will I survive in a summer like this without students, who give me so much meaning and purpose? Like millions of others, I wonder, will there even be a fall semester?

Stop! I shift gears, and ask my heart, what does it want, for the future?

My heart is very clear. It wants a tomorrow quite different from the yesterday that preceded all of this chaos. A yesterday where so many were struggling and financially subjugated.That makes me pause and reflect, now, looking to the future, what will we bring to tomorrow, to make this world anew?

Désirée Zamorano is an award-winning short story writer and the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Amado Women. A frequent contributor to the LA Review of Books, her essays and short stories can be found at Cultural Weekly, Catapult, Huizache, and Kenyon Review.

April 15, 2020April 19, 2020

Storytelling in Action: Personal Narrative

by Ramona Pilar

This isn’t the first time we, as a species on this globe, have experienced an illness that impacts every demographic facet of society. An illness that careens through the bullshit hierarchies and infects indiscriminately.

This is, however, the first time a new or “novel” virus has emerged during this current era. A new virus for a viral era. And because of all the different outlets we have to communicate to, with, and at each other, there are wealth of experiences and stories being shared. News-wise, there has been some looking to past viral outbreaks – more often than not the 1918 Flu Pandemic – seeking insight or lessons on how to divine the best way out of this current crisis with some degree of sanity and sense of safety.

This led me to wonder about the literature of the time. I couldn’t recall any “Flu Lit” subgenre from around the turn of the 20th century, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. What I did find was that, while it was a major historical occurrence, the Flu didn’t quite find its way into literature in a major way.

April 1, 2020April 15, 2020

Writing on a Budget: Meditation in Times of COVID19

By Lisbeth Coiman

All I have to offer you today are my solitary confinement meditations.

Let’s weave the collective thread of our sorrows in a cloak to protect us from all evil.

Unless you are a widowed-mother of four in a war torn country, stop calling out privilege.

Let’s inundate the web with poetry and art. No need to advance bad news. Devastation will hit us in the face when we come out of our dens.

Give generously and accept with humility.

Share wisdom, not resentment.

I rather go with a broken than with a frozen heart.

Love yourself as if you are loving the entire humanity.

With the blinds open, gift your neighbors the joy in your face. It may be the last time they amuse themselves.

Allow solitude to transform you into a wondrous human.

Resourcefulness equals acceptance equals survival.

two wash clothes hanging from a toilet paper dispenser

Think of what will carry you through this transformation but no longer be useful at the end of the crisis. It’ll be the metaphor of what you shed in this journey.

Accept the prayers offered to you. It might be all they have to give, and it might as well be your last meal.

If you might die of a suffocating disease, why are you strangling yourself? Practice breathing.

You don’t know if tomorrow you’ll be hooked to a ventilator, morphine dripping into your transition, unable to whisper, “te amo.” Call those who need to hear it now.

When deep in the trenches, even the toughest soldiers cry.

Writer Lisbeth Coiman from the shoulders up, standing in front of a flower bush

March 30, 2020March 30, 2020

A WWS Publication Roundup for March

We hope this roundup finds you and your loved ones healthy and safe! To ease the stress of these unsettling times, please enjoy this lengthy and exciting list of publications from Women Who Submit members. Congrats to all!

To begin, we’d like to invite you to check out Accolades: A Women Who Submit Anthology that includes writing from Women Who Submit members!

Congratulations to Aruni Wijesinghe, whose poem “Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick, Crème Color #640, Blackberry: Part I and Part II,” was published in Making Up: Poems!

From Anita Gill‘s “What We Can’t Do: A Father and Daughter’s List” at Citron Review:

On that trip, I would ask you for the millionth time why you never taught me your native tongue and your answer would be the same, “What use would it have been?”

Also from Anita, “Coronavirus Forced Me Home from Spain Where I Was a Fulbright Scholar,” at the Baltimore Sun:

On March 12th, I woke up in my apartment in Spain to discover the president of the United States had announced a ban of all travel between the U.S. and Europe on account of the ever-growing cases of coronavirus patients.

From Kate Maruyama‘s “Not Yet” at Barren Magazine:

This was my fault. I wasn’t paying attention when his arm went around my throat. I tried a back kick, an elbow to the ribs, I tried to turn to face him. But I couldn’t move. I visualized a knee strike to his head—but apparently all of those years watching my boy do karate and jujitsu didn’t pay off, because I blacked out.

Congratulations to Bonnie S. Kaplan who had a piece published in Closet Cases – Queers On What We Wear edited by Megan Volpert!

Congrats to Tanya Ko Hong who had three poems published in Cultural Weekly. From “Yang Kong Ju”:

Koreans called her
Yang kalbo
Yankee’s whore

Korean men say
No thanks—
even though it’s free

Check out this interview of Tanya and this book in which Tanya’s work is featured!

From “Parenting Through An Apocalypse” by Liz Harmer at The Walrus:

The day we got the keys to our new house in California, the so-called Holy Fire was blazing a few kilometres away. The sky rusted a kind of brownish orange, and on the piled boxes and half-dismantled furniture on the patio of our newly purchased home, ashes collected lightly, like dry snow. I had not been sleeping well and did not appreciate this omen.

Congrats to Helena Lipstadt who had her poem, “First Light June,” published in Undeniable: Alternating Current Press!

From Lituo Huang‘s “My Beautiful Sister” at VIDA:

My beautiful sister is eating a slice of watermelon. It tastes so good she shows me the whites of her eyes.

My slice is old. All the cells have gone dark.

My slice is old, I say.

Also from Lituo, “DO NOT CONTACT YOUR EX DURING THE PANDEMIC,” at Bitter Melon:

Do not call and ask him to hold your hand at the end of the world.
Do not email him to get your things back.
Do not drive by his house, slash his tires, slash your wrists.
Do not confess.

Also from Lituo, “My Small Press Writing Day,” at my (small press) writing day:

My writing day begins at 4:00 a.m., or sometimes 5:00 a.m., or 6:00 a.m., or 7:00 a.m., or 8:00 a.m., when I wake up with anxiety. The first writing I do is in a notebook where I write down when I went to bed. When I woke up. If and when I fell back asleep and woke up again. How tired I am.

From Angela M. Sanchez‘s “Bucking the Danger of a Single Story with the Power of a Multitude – A Review of Tales from La Vida: a Latinx Comics Anthology,” at solrad:

A single story, fortunately, is not what readers get in Tales from La Vida: A Latinx Comics Anthology. Edited by Dr. Frederick Luis Aldama, Distinguished Professor at The Ohio State University, Tales from La Vida offers a panorama of Latinx narratives, featuring seventy unique vignettes and over eighty contributors. With eye-catching artwork, some pieces harken to fotonovelas (Leighanna Hidalgo, Fernando Balderas Rodriguez) while others, like Zeke Peña’s fleshy heart pulsing with nopales, are stand-alone striking.

Congratulations to Li Yun Alvarado whose poem, “Hechizo Para Congelar,” was published in Accolades: A Women Who Submit Anthology!

March 25, 2020March 25, 2020

Breathe and Push: from the safety of home

by Noriko Nakada

I had something else in mind for today’s column and had found someone write it. She wrote a beautiful and important essay on allyship, but that was done over a month ago, and so much has changed since then. So like so much right now, that essay will sit and wait.

We occupy this strange place right now. The world as we knew it sits just outside our view, and we can’t see out on the other side yet, can’t quite make out the horizon. We are stuck here with our thoughts, our words, our works-in-progress, ourselves.

If there was ever a time to remind ourselves to breathe, it is now. I find myself forgetting as I scroll through the news or zone out watching anything-but-the-news.

via GIPHY

Breathe.

Or read a poem.

WWS member Lisbeth Coiman is sharing a poem a day, and Xochitl Julisa Bermejo shared Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” yesterday.

Or listen to music.

Xochitl shared “You’re the Best Around” from The Karate Kid the other day.

Or write a poem. pusheen typing

There are still many ways to connect.

Whatever you’re doing, hang in there. Maybe submit something, or maybe just breathe.

headshot of racially ambiguous writer Noriko Nakada Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. Publications include: Through Eyes Like Mine (2010), Overdue Apologies (2012), and I Tried (2019). Excerpts, essays, and poetry have appeared in Catapult, Meridian, Kartika, Hippocampus, Compose, Linden Avenue and elsewhere.

March 18, 2020March 18, 2020

Storytelling in Action: Quarantine Edition

In light of the current state of affairs surrounding the COVID-19 virus, I’ve opted to switch out my original idea for this month’s post for my personal take on self-isolation, self-quarantine, and social distancing during this pandemic. As someone who has been practicing all three for a while (for various reasons not to do with communicable diseases), I’m experiencing this shift in social consciousness along with everyone else, and have observations – not necessarily solutions – that I hope can be helpful. Because one of -if not the – biggest reason I’ve been drawn to writing/storytelling since I was old enough to read, was to add another (my) perspective to a larger conversation.

* * *

I saw the pictures before I experienced it myself – first in Twitter and Instagram feeds, then from a friend of mine who lives in the town just north of me. I’m single, without children or a partner, and have been dealing with a spinal disc protrusion / sciatica issues for the past six months, so I’ve not been able to be in a rush to get anything from anywhere.

February 29, 2020

A WWS Publication Roundup for February

Happy Leap Year and congratulations to all the Women Who Submit who were published in February!

From Jenise Miller‘s “How Compton’s Communicative Arts Academy Rebuilt the City for Artists and Community Life” at KCET:

Before NWA, there was the CAA. Decades before young rap artists blasted a tough city image onto the world stage, a group of artists in Compton established the Communicative Arts Academy (CAA), a vital arts program in the era of the Black Arts Movement in Southern California in the 1960s and 70s. During the height of their operation from 1969 to 1975, the CAA invigorated Compton with art inspired by life and possibility in California’s first majority black city.

Congratulations to T.M. Semrad who had 2 pieces published at Nightingale & Sparrow – “A Wedding” and “Toward the Unfinished.” From “A Wedding:”

The groom sketches a self-portrait. He begins with the feet. They are practically shod. His feet ache. The shoes are black lace-ups with rubber soles. They are planted wide. He erases and begins again. He starts with the feet. He wears socks: nubby, cream, and thick. His feet get cold walking across the bare floor. He erases and begins again. He starts with the feet. They are bare, wide, the toes short. The big toes curl slightly up. He erases. He brushes the pale pink crumbs and pencil dust from the page, now smudged gray.

Check out T.M.‘s poem, “Virtual Realized,” published at Pomme!

Congratulations to Angelina Sáenz who had 2 poems published at Acentos Review – “Humidity” and “Estoy Sola.” From “Humidity:”

Humidity transports me

to musty brick homes along dusty roads
moist sunrise rooster calls
ragged dogs roaming on roofs

to Tepic, Nayarit

Neighbors in my Tia’s living room tiendita call

¡Quiero!

Also check out Angelina‘s, “I Come From a Place Where All We Knew Was to Be Ghetto Fabulous and Together,” at every other!

Have a listen to Lituo Huang‘s “Something to Remember” at Manawaker!

Congratulations to Donna Spruijt-Metz whose “Devil’s Fair,” a translation of Lucas Hirsch from the Dutch, was published at Copper Nickel!

Congratulations to Helena Lipstadt who had 3 poems published in February – “From Kalisz, Air, Earth” in The Midwest Quarterly, and “Doina in the Studyhouse” and “It Could Happen” in the Blue Mountain Review!

Congratulations to S. Pearl Sharp, who had a poem featured in the City of Los Angeles’ 2020 African Heritage Month Calendar and Cultural Guide!

February 26, 2020February 26, 2020

Breathe and Push: Pushing Publishing at the AWP Book Fair: A Choose Your Own Adventure!

By Noriko Nakada

I’m heading to AWP again this year. Last year was my first because I had the chance to table for Jack Jones Literary Arts. I also listened in on panels, heard from writers I respect and admire, and tackled that book fair.

The book fair is so overwhelming. All of those presses and programs and tables and books and writers. You could run into Jericho Brown wearing a flower crown, or Terese Marie Mailhot signing her memoir, or Wendy Ortiz browsing. In that overwhelm that is the AWP Book Fair, I was star-struck, and buying too many books, and stuck in my head as I wandered the aisles. I saw presses I’d sent work to who had passed. There were presses I’d never heard of. There were presses who’d published me. What did I have to say at these tables where my words were or were not welcome?

I felt lost, and small, so I found my way back to the Jack Jones table again and again. I only tabled there for a few hours over the course of the conference, but it was always a magnet pulling me, and it felt like my home base within that chaos. Even when I wasn’t tabling for them, every time I found myself in that fair, I’d walk by their table, visit with the staff or an author, ask if they needed anything, and help out before making my way to a lecture or panel.

Jack Jones isn’t at AWP this year, but I want to tackle that book fair in a way that feels healthy and productive. I don’t want to feel so lost and overwhelmed. So this is my AWP Book Fair action, and I invite any Women Who Submit members who are attending to join me in putting a little activism into your book fair wanderings.

1) Approach a press with one of our Women Who Submit postcards.

2) Present the card and introduce yourself. Explain a little about Women Who Submit, an organization which, as a response to the VIDA count, empowers women and nonbinary writers to submit their work for publication.

3) Choose your own adventure:

a friendly press: Thank the presses for doing their part to bring more gender equity into the publishing world. Maybe ask how they think they will do on the 2019 count, and what they plan to do to ensure continued equity in 2020. Ask about how they think they’re doing publishing women of color.

a press that is making gains: Acknowledge that the press has improved, but isn’t yet equitable. Ask if they are doing anything to ensure more equitable gains on the 2019 count or for 2020. Ask if they know about their racial representation and how they think they are doing/can do better.

a press that isn’t friendly to women: OK, only one of these is at AWP this year, but go ahead and let them know that they aren’t very equitable in their publishing of women and ask if they’re doing anything to change this. Ask how they might improve their representation of women of color.

a press that isn’t on the VIDA count list: There are so many of these! Ask them how many women editors they have, editors of color, queer editors? Are they actively recruiting marginalized voices? What are their strategies? Do they pay? Are they interested in hearing from our members? Particularly if there are women tabling, and specifically women of color, thank them for the work they are hopefully doing to ensure more equity in publishing.

4) Ask them to look for Women Who Submit members in their slush piles, and to be on the lookout for submissions during our Annual Submission Blitz in August!

5) Record your interaction. Did they seem receptive to WWS’s mission? Any names of editors or upcoming submission deadlines you should note? Will you send them work?

Press/Table	Response to WWS Mission	Editor Names*	Any upcoming call for submissions	Will you submit?

Please record your activism on this google form.

https://forms.gle/MNw1syCdMGbX87z49

It’s that simple! Make the most of your AWP!

Press designations from the 2018 VIDA Count: Book Fair location or N/A (not attending)

Friendly Presses

+60% women published
McSweeney’s: T1930
The Missouri Review: N/A
Prairie Schooner: 1668-1669
The Normal School: N/A
Pleiades: T2034
The Cincinnati Review: 1533, 1534

+50% women published
Tin House: 1635
Granta: N/A
Boston Review: N/A
Ninth Letter: 1532
Jubilat: N/A
Colorado Review: 1430
Conjunctions: N/A
Virginia Quarterly: 1129
Fence: 1751
n+1: T1321
The Believer: 1643-1644
New England Review: N/A
Kenyon Review: 1655

Getting Better: (made improvements >+5% in more equitable representation, but still not to 50%)
Poetry: 1457
The New Yorker: N/A
Gettysburg Review: 1135
Southwest Review: T259
Harvard Review: T1220

Male-Dominated Presses (less than 40% women represented)
The Times Literary Supplement: N/A
The Nation: N/A
The Threepenny Review: N/A
London Review of Books: N/A
The Atlantic: N/A
The New York Review of Books: 1058

Find us for WWS cards at the ACCOLADES Release Party on Thursday, March 5th from 4pm-7pm at La Botanica or at the ACCOLADES Book Signing on Friday, March 6th from 12pm-2pm at table Nosotrxs: More Than Books, 1038.

You can also catch WWS members all over AWP. Here is our AWP San Antonio guide.

Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. Publications include: Through Eyes Like Mine (2010), Overdue Apologies (2012), and I Tried (2019). Excerpts, essays, and poetry have appeared in Catapult, Meridian, Kartika, Hippocampus, Compose, Linden Avenue and elsewhere.

February 25, 2020March 2, 2020

WWS at AWP20 San Antonio

Black woman speaking from podium in a conference room as other women in her black mother collective look on.

By Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

It’s time for our annual WWS-AWP guide. Below you will find a list of panels, readings, and book signings featuring our members, including the release of our very first anthology, ACCOLADES on Thursday, March 5th at La Botanica. Last year in Portland, I chose to only attend WWS events, and the result was inspiring. I wrote about the powerful collaborative panels I was lucky to attend last year in this piece for our blog. If you’re overwhelmed by all the offerings, try what I did and pick a few events from our list.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2020

Neo n Lit Offsite Reading

The Twig Book Shop: 306 Pearl Pkwy #106 San Antonio, TX 78215 / 7pm-9pm / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Lorinda Toledo. From description: “Please join us for our Neon Lit Alumni Reading @ AWP, San Antonio! There will be raffles/prizes.”

THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2020

Making Place in Hybrid Tongues

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 2016A / 10:35am-11:50am / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Sehba Sarwar. From description: “This panel highlights the work of writers who explore remembered and imagined attachments with place. Featuring five women of color whose living and writing transcend national borders and literary genres, the panel asks whether the places we navigate demand their own hybrid literary forms. Writers who wear multiple tags—novelist, memoirist, poet, translator, critic—read from new work. These works embody aesthetic and political choices involved in representing locales across genres.”

One Day on the Gold Line (Black Rose Writing 2019) Book Signing Featuring Carla R Sameth / Bookfair, Table #958 / 1pm-5pm

Accolades: WWS Anthology AWP Release Party

La Botanica: 2911 N Saint Marys St, San Antonio, Texas 78212 / 4pm-7pm / FREE

Join us in celebrating the release of ACCOLADES: a Women Who Submit Anthology at AWP! We will have featured readers, copies of the anthology for sale, and La Botanica will have drinks and food for sale. We’ve been empowering women and nonbinary writers to submit work for publication since 2011, but this is our very first, all our own publication.

One Poem Festival: Canto Mundo, Letras Latinas, and Macondo

San Antonio Public Library: 600 Soledad St, San Antonio, Texas 78205 / 6pm-7:30pm

Featuring WWS member, Vickie Vértiz as well as other writers from Macondo Writers Workshop, Canto Mundo, and Letras Latinas.

Po etry on the River Walk | AWP Offsite

Casa Rio (Veranda Room): 430 E commerce St., San Antonio, TX / 6:30pm-10pm / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Tanya Ko Hong. From description: “Join 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, Poetry Northwest, and Quarterly West for an AWP offsite poetry reading. Walk from the conference center to Casa Rio (Veranda Room), located on the River Walk. Free drinks and appetizers while they last. See you there!”

Tupelo Press 30/30/Conference Alumni Reunion Reading

La Villita Historic Arts Village: 418 Villita St, San Antonio, Texas 78205 / 7pm-9pm / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Donna Spruijt-Metz along side other Tupelo Press alumni. From description: “This fifth annual Alumni Reunion Reading for 30/30 and Conference alums.”

FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2020

ACCOLADES: A WWS Anthology Book Signing Featuring WWS Contributors / Bookfair, Nosotrxs: More Than Books #1038 / 12pm-2pm

The Woven Verse: An Exploration of the Latinx Verse Novel in Kidlit

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 217B / 12:10pm-1:35pm

Featuring WWS Member, Vickie Vértiz. From description: “Latinx novels in verse have burst the children’s and young adult literary world open with award-winning and groundbreaking books. Join celebrated authors as they delve into the craft of writing a novel through the art of poetry as well as how their unique Latinx identity and experiences inform and nourish their work.”

New Suns: Afrofuturist and Cyborg Aesthetics

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 214B / 1:45pm-3pm

Featuring WWS member, Karolyn Gehrig. From description: “Octavia Butler writes, “There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” Taking a cue from Butler—Afrofuturist and disabled writer—this panel will discuss and demonstrate some new suns. What can a poem do in the 21st century? What is the strange new grammar of screens? How do we create and conscript images for activism? Panelists work in multiple genres including creative nonfiction, mixed media, performance, and poetry.”

To Be Young, Black, & Tenure Track: Diversity in Higher Education

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 008 / 1:45 pm to 3:00 pm

Featuring WWS member, Ryane Granados. From description: “What does it mean when you walk into a classroom and the person at the podium looks like you? As colleges across the nation increase diversity and inclusion efforts to close equity gaps for students of color, they may be overlooking one thing—diverse faculty representation. Published authors and professors, our panelists share best practices for culturally responsive pedagogy, their experiences in academia, tips for supporting Black teachers, as well as how they make time for writing.”

UGA Author Signing Featuring Colette Sartor / Bookfair, UGA Press Booth #1730 / 3pm

Veliz Books, offsite reading

Menger Hotel: 204 Alamo Plaza, San Antonio, TX 78205, United States / 5:30pm / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Sehba Sarwar.

3×3: Offsite With ALR, The Pinch, and The Arkansas International

Francis Bogside: 803 S Saint Marys St, San Antonio, Texas 78205 / 6pm-8pm

Featuring WWS member, Soleil Davíd. From description: “3×3: A reading hosted by American Literary Review, The Pinch Literary Journal, and The Arkansas International. Come join us for another #awp off-site reading.”

New Futures: Apogee x Offing Off-Site

The Cherrity Bar: 302 Montana St., San Antonio, Texas 78203 / 6pm-8pm FREE

From description: “2020 is The Offing’s fifth birthday and Apogee’s ten-year anniversary! Come celebrate with six authors (all joint contributors) who are writing what’s possible for literatures to come. We’ll dream up what our communities need for ten more years of extraordinary publishing—writing for us and by us, another decade at the outermost.”

Saturday, March 7, 2020

Women Trespassing: Women Breaking the Rules in Fiction and Their Writing Careers

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 008 / 9am-10:15am

Featuring WWS member, Liz Harmer. From description: “A Catholic-turned-Buddhist has sex with her Zen master. A biomechanist builds a deer suit to live in the woods. A woman stalks the celebrity living on her street. A girl basketball player navigates a male-dominated world. In this panel, women writers discuss how they write trespassing women and break rules in their writing lives. Women writers have been too long excluded from spaces of authority. We’re taking the power back. This panel is for writers ready to make risky choices and daring work.”

In Limbo: The Dilemma of Digital Thesis Repositories

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 210B / 10:35 am to 11:50 am

Featuring WWS member, Lorinda Toledo. From description: “As universities across the nation have transitioned to electronic theses, many graduate students face a dilemma: to earn a degree they are required to submit their work to a digital thesis repository. And though several top programs offer exemptions, not all programs protect students from having to submit their creative work to open-access repositories. What solutions exist for programs to protect creative theses from future publication roadblocks or potential piracy? We’ll describe a few.”

Macondo Writers Workshop Book Signing Featuring Sehba Sarwar / Bookfair, Gemini Ink/Macondo Booth #1471 / 12pm

Writing Medicine: The Role of Artists in Cultural and Community Healing

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 213 / 12:10 pm to 1:25 pm

Featuring WWS member, Maya Chanchilla. From description: “In November 2018, the FBI reported that hate crimes increased for the third consecutive year. Writers and artists build resilience and help communities heal, not only through our work on the page, but through our work in the world. Panelists offer reflections on their healing practices, from hosting pláticas following the Pulse Nightclub shooting, to working with Central American migrants at the border, to rewriting the centuries-old proclamation for the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico.”

Being an Accomplice: Supporting Local Communities through Literary Programming

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 206B / 1:45-3pm

Featuring WWS members, Kate Maruyama and Traci Kato-Kiriyama. From description: “There is an explosion of literary events all over the country, from readings showcasing famous writers to poetry nights at the local bookstore. But a neighborhood, a community, a city needs more. Literary accomplices can work together to create events that open spaces, fight erasure, and shift culture, providing environments that are safe, generative, supportive, and inclusive. Join four panelists producing events around the country to elevate the unique communities in which they work.”

Chicanas de la Frontera: Writing and Activism from the Border States

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 205 / 1:45pm-3pm

Featuring WWS members Marisol Baca, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, and Viktoria Valenzuela. From description: “In the tradition of the 1960s Chicano Movement, made well-known by the United Farm Workers strikes of Central Valley, California, and high school blowouts of Los Angeles, Chicana poets and writers from the four border states—Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California—discuss creative writing, activism, and the connections between the two. Listen to poems and stories from the borderlands, learn about current day actions to fight tyranny, and gain strategies for organizing in your own communities.”

#DignidadLiteraria Read-In at AWP

The Grassy Slope Outside the Henry B. González Convention Center / 5pm / FREE

Featuring many Latinx and BIPOC writers. From description: “No badges. No featured writers. Just us, our words, our people, our dignity.”

February 19, 2020February 19, 2020

Storytelling in Action: the World of Audio

Still from Saturday Night Live January 25, 2020

by Ramona Pilar

About this Column:

When I was about to graduate form Graduate School, I realized I had no idea what I was supposed to do with an MFA in Creative Writing.

I was born and raised in the second tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a survival mode of sorts: living moment to moment, reactive instead of proactive, ready to put out fires, real and imagined. That level of “readiness” without an actual crisis transformed into debilitating anxiety. I learned I lacked the mental space, energy, and experience to plan. Having that buffer is a type of privilege I’m only now learning to understand and practice. Hence going to grad school under the assumption that there were career answers there. They may have been, but I knew not where to look or what questions to ask of whom in order to build a career.

The initial intention was to teach, but the MFA program I attending didn’t really provide TA-ships or other teaching opportunities. Again, proactivity was not a strength I’d developed or a muscle I even knew I had; It was mythical.

At the end of it all, with fat debt and fatter doubts in my abilities, the time came to take my skills into the professional realm. I had just enough skills and aptitude in certain areas to be hyper-aware of how unqualified I was for everything remotely related to my interests and training.

I was a playwright, essayist, arts & film critic, and novice marketing/PR copywriter with no big-name bonafides and a drought of confidence. There was no “fake it ‘till you make it” for me.