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Transforming AWP Through Our Collective Power

Non-binary, Afro-Latinx poet speaking at a podium in a conference room while Latinx writers look on

by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

On the first morning of AWP at the second session, I stepped into “Lenguas Revoltosas: Writers of Color Disrupting Traditional Literary Zones” a reading featuring Olga Garcia Echeverria, Maya Chinchilla, Veronica Reyes, Sehba Sarwar, and Alan Pelaez. As I sat down I noticed a tapestry embroidered with bright flowers covering the podium and AWP signage. It reminded me of a tip from my poetry madrina, Denise Chavez who said to always carry a rebozo if only to decorate the ugly podiums we speak from. When I looked beyond the podium, I saw signs all along the walls written in different languages. As poets took their place at the podium, a sign just behind their heads read, “something has happened here / algo ha pasado aqui.” In front of each panelist’s seat, a sign with their name followed by a six-word memoir: “Maya Chinchilla: A Guatefemme tenderqueer volcanic ocean intuitive.” When I looked up from the words around the room, I noticed that the speakers themselves were also dressed with streams of bright ribbons in teal, wine, and golden rod. It felt as if the panel itself had become a kind of altar.

“We had phrases and words in English, Spanish, Spanglish, and Urdu. I took in a tapestry from Chiapas, Mexico and we draped the AWP podium with this. This was about beautifying and adding color, but it was also about making ourselves “at home” in spaces that have not traditionally felt welcoming (in either overt or subverted ways). I think something as simple as a special piece of cloth and silent signage can speak loudly. It sets the tone for an even before the event even begins.” – Olga Garcia Echeverria

Their spoken and silent words, their dressing the space became like offerings to those of us just beginning this journey through three days of AWP, and I was thankful for the poets’ care, for this reminder that this often cold and anxiety-ridden event, can be transformed into something beautiful.

The next morning, arrived to the conference in time to sit in support of Khadijah Queen, Bettina Judd, and Ashaki M. Jackson on their panel, “All Your Faves are Problematic: #Metoo and the Ethics of Public Call-outs.” These women worked together in the public call out of once-celebrated black poet, Thomas Sayer Ellis, who had assaulted women in their community. On the panel, they worked together to share their experiences with this public figure and how they went about taking him down. Part witness and part tutorial on how others can do this work for their own communities, they lead by example and shared space for Native American writers, Erika T. Wurth and Elissa Washuta, to speak about the fight they are currently in to call out Sherman Alexie and their need for allies.

“The literary community is immense without a structure to report predation and assault, nor is there a standard pathway toward restorative justice. We designed the panel to identify the problem and describe our methods to turn the Hunt on its head; instead of giving any more space and security to a predator, we shared ways we took away his freedom over a long period. It’s not prescriptive, but it’s replicable. They key is a network—in-person and virtual—lead by survivors, that is persistent and clear on the end game.” – Ashaki M. Jackson

One of the most powerful statements the panel made was requiring the audience to write questions on small pieces of paper that they, the panelists handed out and collected. The questions were then curated and read by the panelists before being answered. No one was going to speak in this space without their consent, and it illustrated the kind of diligence needed to protect women writers of color in spaces like these, which are crucial for advancement in literary careers. “This is indeed a workplace,” Ashaki Jackson said on the day of. The message is behave professionally, or women will ban behind survivors to have you removed.

Directly after this panel, I went to “Writing & Mothering: Black Women Writing Under a Quadruple “Minority” in America” featuring LaCoya Katoe, Cassandra Lane, Ryane Nicole Granados, Tameka Cage Conley, and Cherene Sherrard. Moderator, LaCoya Katoe began the discussion by recounting the months leading up to her first child’s birth.


“I was pregnant in 2014 and 2015, and our news cycle was literally littered with black death— Trayvon Martin murdered in July 2013. Eric Garner murdered in July 2014. Mike Brown murdered in August 2014. Laquan McDonald in October 2014. Tamir Rice in November 2014. Eric Harris in April 2015. And these were just the names making national news; never mind the names of men I personally know and who were daily being affected by the criminal justice system. I did not want to raise a black son in America. But my son was coming, and I had to prepare for him.

Like always when I’m desperate, during this time, I reached out to my sisters, particularly those friends of mine already in the throes of mothering black boys in America. I reached out for help, guidance, support, tips, suggestions, anything they could offer at the time to help me process this fear. This panel was born out of those initial heart-wrenching conversations between friends about raising black boys in America, about protecting them, loving them in a country/world that doesn’t seem to. Over the last three years, we’ve morphed into something of a support group, our very own Mama Collective.” – LaCoya Katoe

These five women, mothers of black sons, had banned together to transform their pain and fear into power, creation, and even joy. During the panel, they were kind and giving with each other and with the audience. They shared insights on how to create “a room of one’s own.” They shared mental heath practices. Ryane Nicole Granados shared, “I’ve weaponized my words. They are my super power.” But most of all they shared their sisterhood.

On the third day of the conference, I had my own panel, “The Word on the Street: How to Start & Run a Community Literary Series,” and volunteer hours to complete at my MFA’s table, but I started with the panel, “That’s not Relatable: Radical Teaching on Race and Intersectionality in Writing” featuring Cynthia Guardado, Marisol Baca, Luivette Resto, and Gabriela Ramirez-Chavez. A collective of Latina academics, I was moved by their candidness with aggressions and hostilities faced in their classrooms, break rooms, and office hours.

At the beginning of the panel, Cynthia Guardado asked the audience to write down a list of biases students and colleagues see when we walk into a room. I wrote, “woman, brown, young, artist,” and it reminded me of all the times I was minimized in the classroom by the simple act of a male colleague stepping into the room with me. According to equalrights.org, “Latinas are experiencing the worst pay gap in the nation” earning of 55 cents to every dollar made by white men. We are undervalued in our classrooms and rarely seen as experts, but I appreciated how this panel used technology to change the narrative. Slides projected each panelist’s bio, major publications and handles as they spoke, and slides were also used to share resources. Cynthia Guardado even encouraged the audience to take photos to reference later.

“As far as social media and resources, I based this on considering what I often felt was missing at panels I attended. I wanted our panel to be more than a one time conversation so if people wanted to reach out to us for support, they could follow us or email us (of course I also wanted to highlight our publications because they are great accomplishments). I’m also looking for panels where I can grow as a writer and educator and often find myself leaving panels without tangible things I can use later. This was very important to me for our panel, and I knew we would have a lot of conversation and wanted to include slides with resources, tips, and information because sometimes its a lot to process. I also applied my teaching methods using auditory and visual techniques through technology to make the whole experience more tangible for folks.” – Cynthia Guardado

I finished this last day of AWP with bonding time with my two MFA-poet sisters, Nikia Chaney and Allison Tobey. Allison lives in Portland and let us stay in her guest bedroom. After a long day of panels, readings, and one dance party, we sat together on the guest queen bed and chatted about our poetry and our shared love of Fiona Apple’s lyricism. We applauded each other on how far we’ve come in our careers since graduating 10 years ago. In our little collective we have an editor, a publisher, and an organizer, but close to 1am on Sunday morning, the only thing that mattered was that we still had each other.

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and the author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016). A former Steinbeck Fellow, Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grantee, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, National Parks Arts Foundation and Poetry Foundation. A Macondo Writers’ Workshop member, she has work published in Acentos Review, CALYX, crazyhorse, and American Poetry Review among others. A dramatization of her poem “Our Lady of the Water Gallons,” directed by Jesús Salvador Treviño, can be viewed at latinopia.com. She is a cofounder of Women Who Submit.

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Writing on a Budget: Salve for the Tax Season

By Lisbeth Coiman

Taxes looming in the background
Technical support calls drowned
the hours reserved for a scene.
The uncooperative screen
Shows Deductions 1099 Schedule C
A foreign language to me
 
Go for a walk at the beach
escape the whole number siege
 
Expenses multiply
While the gains dissatisfy
In the spread sheet display
Not-enough teaching hour downplay
The effort to create a breadwinner
Out of the tepid words of the beginner
 
Groceries offer distraction
An easy task without extraction
 
Paying the bills is not the issue
Change a flat tire without a fissure
Fight an intruder
I can do without sudor
Taxes, a whole new fiend
I never esteemed.
 
Lavender salve on my hands
To tackle IRS demands.

The following publications are seeking work by emerging writers:

1. Los Nietos Press
Word limit: 48-100 pages
Genre: Poetry and Short Stories
Submission Fee: $0
Submission Guidelines

2. Coffee House Press
Word limit: full length manuscripts / collections
Genre: literary novels, short fiction, poetry, essays, and creative non-fiction
Submission Fees: $0
Submission Guidelines

3. Rabid Oak
Word limit: Under 1,000 words
Genre: Poetry, flash fiction, flash non-fiction
Submission Fees: $0
Submission Guidelines

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

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

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A WWS Publication Roundup for March

A laptop computer with an article titled "Submissions Made Simple" on the screen and a stack of literary journals sits on top of the laptop base, titles facing out

Finally, the winter chill has started to thaw into a warmer, sunnier spring. Making the days even sunnier are these amazing publications from the members of Women Who Submit. Congratulations to all!

From Lisa Cheby‘s “Roof Clearing” at Ruminate:

At 9:30 that morning, I climbed onto the roof of my church, thankful for the overcast sky. I had committed to help at our church work party a few weeks before the government openly started separating and imprisoning families at our borders and criminalizing refugees seeking a better life, like my father did 60 years ago when he immigrated from Hungary. I had considered going downtown to an occupy protest, but I chose to be on the roof among an array of brooms and rakes, a leaf blower, and five other church members. Our task was to clear pine needles from the roof.

From Erana Leiken‘s “Retail Therapy” at *82Review:

What I thought would be a summer job in a small, college town in Indiana, became a time of unexpected and sometimes tragic encounters with other women’s lives. In my early twenties, I just finished my first year of teaching and needed work for the summer. 

Also from Erana, “What I Learned from a Cockroach,” at Women for One:

Like most people, I find cockroaches disgusting and repulsive, but one cockroach taught me a lesson just at the time I needed it. I’m afraid of bugs…always have been. I still remember them knocking and buzzing at the screen as I tried to sleep on a hot night without air conditioning in Chicago when I was a young girl.

From “Testament” by Lituo Huang at The Grief Dialogues:

On the day of your passing
I watched your friends
scatter—

some, to high places—tops of trees
to wave their branches in winds that waved yours,
tips of staves, ascending keening notes—

Also from Lituo, “My Neighbor, Who Has a Mail Order Bride,” at Recenter Press:

Gosling-waddling,
skinned peach eyeballs
in a blown-glass bulb
lodged atop a golem of clay.

In honor of National Endometriosis Awareness Month, we share Marnie Goodfriend‘s “9 Endometriosis Symptoms You Shouldn’t Ignore” at SheKnows:

Many endometriosis symptoms have been normalized by our culture, hovering under the golf-sized umbrella with the label “female problems.” The injustice in this is when the invisible illness is diagnosed and managed earlier, women have better options and better help managing their pain. Even though there is no known cause or cure, a diagnosis is critical in creating a care plan with your doctor to help mitigate these symptoms and puts an end to the question, what on earth is wrong with me?

From Carla Sameth‘s “Spinning” at Mutha Magazine:

She has begun to spin. Thirty minutes on the bike, thirty minutes on the weight circuit, trying to follow along. Keep her body moving, round and round.

The gym sits in the little town of Sierra Madre where her older sister lives with her family.

She is the middle sister who lives nearby. Like the Rose Parade floats, she makes the trip from Pasadena traveling on Sierra Madre Boulevard, but the floats only go once a year on their voyage to their holding spot near Sierra Madre, on Orange Grove Avenue.

Congratulations to Lisbeth Coiman whose essay, “Grey Hair of Desire,” was published in Unchaste Anthology Vol. 3!

Congratulations to Lisa Richter whose essay, “Flood,” was published in Joomag!

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Breathe and Push: Getting Through Winter

By Noriko Nakada

When I moved to Los Angeles and escaped Oregon over 25 years ago, I wasn’t just trying to escape the cloudy, dark, rainy, snowy winters. I was also escaping the homogeneity of the white, Christian majority that dominates the Pacific Northwest.

The diversity of LA has kept me here for decades, and the weather is a welcome bonus. I gained sunny skies, temperate winters, and long summers that even sneak summery days into winter, spring, and fall.

But this year, with wet like we haven’t seen in a long while, and a cold snap that gripped the southland so tight it even sent a few flurries down into the foothills, I was reminded of my fragile mental state on cold, dark days.

Shoes in show

When the dark of winter sinks in, even in sunny Southern California, I feel like sleeping, hibernating, pulling to covers tighter and longer and keeping my eyes closed to the world. I forget to exercise, to write, to eat green things, and sometimes I even forget to breathe. I wish for a snow day, and dream that, for just a minute, I live somewhere with snow. I feel like I would trade away my entire LA life for a single day off.

I should no longer be surprised when I find myself swallowed in this slothful seasonal state. But each year, it takes three, or four, or five weeks for me to realize what’s happening, that I’ve come off the rails, that I’m stuck in first gear, that even though my foot is on the pedal and I’m flooring it, I can only go so fast, and I’m probably doing real harm to my engine.

Thankfully, spring is here. The days are stretching longer and I am at the page, putting words down, one after the other. Yes, I’m still hitting snooze, and eating cake and French fries whenever I can. I’m not writing or reading as much as I would like, but I am going to be gentle on my winter-hating self.

a boy and girl on a baseball infield
A boy and a girl ready to play some ball. It must be spring.

I will breathe. I will get a column out into the world. I will revise and resubmit some poems and essays. I will watch my kids hitting baseballs and softballs into a blue sky. I will go for a run. I will even get up to Portland for AWP and when I’m there, I will engage with the writing world. I will, somehow, welcome spring.

As writers flock to rainy, gloomy Portland, I hope we can all shake off the winter that might still be clinging. And if you can’t, at least know you are not alone. Depression and seasonal affective disorder are real. Please take care of yourselves as we all crane our necks toward spring. Find the wildflower fields, the cherry blossoms, the sun shining bright for a little bit longer each day. But if it is all too much, please listen to the small voice that knows when you might need some help. Listen to that voice and reach out if you need it, because we need you.

Here are some resources for those struggling with depression.

Noriko Nakada, a racially ambiguous writer's headshot

Noriko Nakada is a public school teacher and the editor of the Breathe and Push column. She writes, blogs, tweets, and parents in Los Angeles. She is committed to writing thought-provoking creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.

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Women Who Submit at AWP Portland

a crowd of people at the AWP conference bookfair

AWP is next week, and Women Who Submit will be representing in full force! Our headquarters leaders, chapter leads, and members from around the country will be showing up in Portland for this annual conference. We are reading our poetry. We are signing our books. We are hosting dance parties. We are hosting a happy hour. We are launching our books and speaking out against the current President. We are on panels that talk about starting a literary series, submitting our work for publication, being an adopted person of color, mothering, mental illness, epistolary writing, and forbidden narratives. Just try to go one day at AWP without attending a WWS panel, reading, or reception. It’s impossible. We’re everywhere!

And if it’s your first time at AWP and you want some tips, check out our blog post from three years ago, How To Do AWP.

Continue reading “Women Who Submit at AWP Portland”

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The Benefits of Summer Writing Workshops

12 writers standing together posing for a group photo with trees in the background.

by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

I didn’t know about writing workshops until after I graduated from my MFA program in 2009. How I completed two years of an MFA without ever hearing about summer writing workshops, I’ll never know. But it wasn’t until two years later in 2011, when a friend I met at a reading for the now defunct Splinter hGeneration told me to apply to the brand new summer workshop, Las Dos Brujas, organized by Cristina García, author of Dreaming in Cuban. I applied solely on her recommendation and did so without understanding what I was applying for. Months later, we found ourselves on a two-day road trip through the southwest to our destination of Ghost Ranch Retreat Center in Abiquiu, New Mexico (home of Georgia O’Keefe) for a five-day writing retreat with workshop leads Juan Felipe Herrera, Denise Chavez, Kimiko Han, Chris Abani, and Cristina. Eight years later, this workshop nestled in the elbow of red mesas, with its early morning hikes and sunset writing circles, is still in my top five writing experiences of all time.

A writing workshop is typically about a three to five-day experience where you pay to have your writing workshopped by a celebrated writer in the literary world as well as a group of your peers (some workshops are generative). To be invited to a summer workshop, you have to apply with a sample of your work and pay a submission fee. The total cost to attend can vary and may include the cost of the workshop (typically a three-hour chunk of time with your mentor and peers), room and board, nighttime entertainment (drinks and dancing), and travel.

I’ve attended four different workshops in my tenure as a poet: Las Dos Brujas, Macondo Writers Workshop, Tucson Festival of Books’ Masters Writing Workshop, and VONA Voices. These workshops in differing degrees have been geared towards writers of color, focused on social justice writing, and featured mentors of color. When I applied to Las Dos Brujas, this wasn’t something I was looking for, but once I attended and saw the kind of community and kinship you can find at these workshops, something I didn’t always find in my MFA program, I knew it was something I needed.

No two writing workshops are the same. Prestige, mission, mentor selection, size, location, and structure all affect the overall tone of a workshop experience. For example, Bread Loaf is the most prestigious and competitive writing workshop in the nation and it’s also the longest with a 10-day commitment. If you are looking to find an agent this might be the workshop for you, but it probably won’t be the best place to find community. Cave Canem, Kundiman, and Cantomundo, are community workshops for people of color. The selection processes for these are competitive due to limited space and high demand, but they offer major community support for those accepted. All three typically have application deadlines before January 1, but Jack Jones Retreat, “open exclusively to women of color writers and nonbinary writers of color,” is currently taking applications for their fall retreat. Two summer workshops still open are Tin House and Community of Writers-Squaw Valley.

No matter what you are looking for in a writing workshop, you can probably find one that fits your needs. When looking into these opportunities be sure to familiarize yourself with the mentors because they drive a major part of the experience as the facilitator of the daily, three-hour workshop. If you don’t know them, read their work (always read their work), and ask friends about their own experiences with these writers and spaces. You are spending time and money to participate, and one lesson I’ve learned is literary accolades don’t necessarily mean a person is a good mentor or instructor. Do yourself a favor and research.

The benefits of attending a workshop on the most basic level are access to writers you admire and enjoying time spent with like-minded people. You can also walk away with your work being read by a mentor and peers, hopefully with helpful notes on how to improve your work, and maybe a few writing exercises for later. Long-lasting benefits can vary as a summer workshop can be used as a place to find future readers, editors, and collaborators, to soundboard ideas for projects in process, and to build relationships with awesome writers across the nation.

When my poetry book, Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications) was released in 2016, one of my biggest goals was to create a book tour for myself. I decided on a west coast tour from Los Angeles to Seattle, and in the planning stages I reached out to people I had met at Macondo, Las Dos Brujas, and VONA. Thanks to help from those communities, I was able to book events in Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose and later in New York City, Las Cruces, San Antonio, and Houston. Another long-term reward was when Las Dos Brujas returned in 2017 with a workshop in San Francisco, I was invited by Cristina García and her team to lead a one-hour talk on applying to workshops, residencies, and fellowships based off my essay, “Building Up to Emerging.”

Of course, not every workshop will produce long-lasting friendships, partnerships, and job opportunities, but with each one I attend I do my best to enter the experience like a sponge and absorb all the knowledge, creativity, laughter, dance parties, ping-pong tournaments, and mind-melds that I miss out on the rest of the year sitting at home and working alone.

In the end, to attend a summer writing workshop is a major financial commitment, so I suggest doing your research and looking for a workshop that fits your needs. Many offer scholarships to help offset costs, and if you are a WWS member, in 2019 we are offering two scholarships of $340 to attend a conference, workshop, or residency through the Kit Reed Travel Fund for Women-Identifying and Non-Binary Writers of Color.

Happy submitting!

Latinx woman with curly black hair and red lipstick smiles at the camera in front of a bookcase

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and the author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016). A former Steinbeck Fellow, Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grantee, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, National Parks Arts Foundation and Poetry Foundation. A Macondo Writers’ Workshop member, she has work published in Acentos Review, CALYX, crazyhorse, and American Poetry Review among others. A dramatization of her poem “Our Lady of the Water Gallons,” directed by Jesús Salvador Treviño, can be viewed at latinopia.com. She is a cofounder of Women Who Submit.

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Writing on a Budget: Put on Your Oxygen Mask First

By Lisbeth Coiman

Most writers I know, including myself, are activists or behind-the-scenes supporters of several causes. When the political conjuncture we are living through in America threatens everybody’s sanity, writers struggle to focus before stepping up. Facing a myriad of social issues hurts these writers both emotionally and financially.

Vintage typewriter next to an iPad covered with pins and stickers from different social and political causes

      Creativity dilutes in the stream of  information/petitions/demonstrations, and the ordinary responsibilities of work. I can’t even come close to imagine what it is like to live through these times with children to take care of. The emotional load seems to grow by the minute. The writer feels like borrowing a “welder’s mask” to look at the blinding reality without hurting, without revealing tears.

      With the emotional burden of political activism comes the added weight of financial demands. Bills can pile up easily on top of donations and contributions. The line between urgency and necessary disappears in the mists of a stream of crisis. We wake up to news of mass shootings, racial violence, and sexual violations of immigrant minors in detention. At work, fundraisers and pot-lucks drain the bank account. Add to that a humanitarian crisis in a homeland and you wish going to sleep on the eighth day of the month and wake up on payday.

     When my budget became unbalanced, like a flight attendant, I told myself, “put on your own oxygen mask before helping others, even your family.” My livelihood depends on my mental health. Without money, I can’t write. Since writing is therapeutic for me, my sanity is at risk.

      That’s when I jumped at the opportunity to take a scholarship for a social consciousness poetry class online, Poetry for Survival taught by Xochitl Bermejo. Through this class, I’m learning that I can’t see the page through tears. By detaching myself emotionally from the issues dearest to me – Venezuela and immigration – I hope to bring my unique perspective of the devastating reality of which I’m both a witness and a subject.

      Perhaps  the only advise I have for my readers tonight is to take a social consciousness vacation before taking a stand. Disconnect, put the check book in a locked box and forget where you hide the key. Go for an extended walk by the beach. Only then, your voice will sound clear.

This month, the short list includes some free submission opportunities.

1.The Booklist – seeking reviewers of diverse backgrounds
The Booklist is part of the American Library Association.
Genre: All
Languages: English and Spanish
Application Fee: $0
Submission Guidelines

2. Green Linden Press
Genre: Poetry, interviews and reviews
Submission fee:       Up to $12.50
Deadline:                    March 20, 2019
Submission Guidelines

3. Catapult
Tiny Nightmares: An Anthology of Short Horror Fiction
Genre:                         Short Horror Fiction
Payment:                    $100
Submission fee:      0
Deadline:                    May 1, 2019
Word count:              Under 1200 words
Submission Guidelines

4. Ripples in Space: Flash Fiction for Weekly Podcast
Gener:                         Flash Fiction
Submission fee:     $6
Deadline:                   Open
Word count:             Max 1500 words
Submission Guidelines

5. Dusk and Shiver Magazine
Genre:                         Fiction, Poetry, Artwork
Submission fee:     $0
Deadline:                   April 13, 2019
Word count:    5,000 to 7,000 words (Fiction)
Submission Guidelines

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

Lisbeth Coiman is an emerging, bilingual writer wandering the immigration path from Venezuela to Canada to the US. She has performed any available job from maid to college administrator, and adult teacher. Her work has been published in Hip Mama, the Literary Kitchen, YAY LA, Nailed Magazine, Entropy, and RabidOak. She was also featured in the Listen to Your Mother Show in 2015. In her self-published memoir, I Asked the Blue Heron (Nov 2017), Coiman celebrates female friendship while exploring issues of child abuse, mental disorder, and her own journey as an immigrant.
She lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches at Harbor Occupational Center and speaks for NAMI about living with a mental disorder.

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Breathe and Push: My Humble Submission

By Hazel Kight Witham

It comes in nerve-frizzling, stomach-turning uncertainty. I scour every sentence, every phrase, triple second-guess myself. I ask my trusted readers to give me thoughts and cuts and end notes and validation before I submit.

It takes me months sometimes to craft and hone and spit-shine a piece until I deem it ready for world. I imagine the world will judge all the micro-choices, the thin premise, the overwrought vines of ideas I could not prune back. And so I draft, and revise, and put aside, pick up again, add some, cut more, trim, reorder, cut the opening, extend the ending, carve, whittle, sculpt. I workshop myself weary.

And even then, I am unsure, doubting, wondering: who will read, what will they think, is it as perfect as I can make it to be beyond reproach, likeable, no—loveable—to all. I want to engage with the world, and my people-pleasing bones make it very hard to do so without worrying what others will think of this collection of words.

My first published essay took a sizeable lifetime and an MFA program to create, excerpted from a still unpublished memoir I had spent years writing and revising. I loved that piece (“The Storm Between Us” at Bellevue Literary Review), but the work that went into chiseling it into diamond-sharp focus was months and months in the making.

a collection of notebooks with handwriting

I wonder if the chiseling was my worry. It was hard stone to handle. All the revising was procrastination of a sort. It was nerve-wracking offering this story to the world: a braided piece about the DNA I inherited from my grandmother, her hospitalization in Galveston, a dip back into the hurricane history of that seaside town that mirrored the storm of mental illness that threatened to crush us both.

When I told my father that I was writing about my own hospitalization a decade after the hell of it he said, “Why? Why would people want to read about that?” I want to say that he was trying to protect me, this man who talks about everything but the stories I most want to hear. I want to say he was not saying my story does not matter. That he was trying to shield me from criticism perhaps, or a lack of regard. I want to be generous in the face of his disregard.

But his question echoes across the years still. Even though I know now and knew then that my story matters—our stories matter—and are worth being well-told. Worth something not just to the heart of the listener or reader, but to the heart of the teller, the writer.

And yet. The question still dogs me as I try to help manuscripts years in the making find the light. As I become the advocate for my own story because sometimes your queries go unanswered, and emails from contests all start in apology and sometimes the agent shops a work and there are no bites and they quit the literary world for another one a bit more kind.

Still: I am learning to breathe and push the work out. I am learning to submit. Poems are easiest, bite-sized, not so demanding of working and reworking that prose and longer works require. Perhaps not so vulnerable to judgment. But still there are those jitters when I know a piece will go up, and someone might read it, maybe even my father, and I do not know how or if it will be received. I do not know what I am blind to in my own work, what I say that might offend. I do not know if you are even here with me still, holding on to the end, giving this a few minutes of your precious time.

There are many worthy words out there, and claiming space for my own is part of the writing life I have the hardest time with. But the words are worth it. And so: to submit is the precise word for this process. I submit despite the fear, I submit despite certain rejection, I submit despite the echoes of my father and the self-doubt and the uncertainty. I submit, I submit, I submit and every time, there is less apology and more clarity.

Hazel Kight Witham is a writer, teacher, activist, and artist whose work can be found in Bellevue Literary Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, Rising Phoenix Review, Angels Flight, Sixfold, Zoetic Press’s NonBinary Review, Lunch Ticket and Lady/Liberty/Lit. She lives and breathes in Los Angeles with her family. www.hazelkightwitham.com

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A WWS Publication Roundup for February

A laptop computer with an article titled "Submissions Made Simple" on the screen and a stack of literary journals sits on top of the laptop base, titles facing out

Congratulations to all the women who were published in February – a wonderfully long list!

From Carla Sameth‘s “Making Love to My Toes” at Anti-heroin Chic:

Girl glares sullen for a moment, thinks: this shit job, this hotel, these people make
so much noise about nothin’ and I bet no tip gonna be left 

in my room tomorrow. 

Also from Carla, “Mourning Morning” at Entropy Magazine:

I remember her breath quickening, holding her breast while she touched herself; I was too selfish to make love to her because I was already off and running, ruminating. As if I was on the ride: Soarin’ over California in Disneyland, California Adventure. I take notes like I’m already remembering the embrace I’ll never feel again when she’s gone. Something will take her away; I’ll think about how far away I floated, as she stroked my body in the morning, just behind me, as she leaned into my labia, my clit (I write these words as if I always had, but they come out awkwardly).

From Ava Homa, “Theatre review: A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts,” at Signal Tribune:

It is only in a musical that brings to life caricatures of British snootiness that the horror of several consecutive murders can turn into jolly entertainment.

One of the best examples of this comic portrayal of ignorance, in this reviewer’s opinion, was the lofty lady Hyacinth D’Ysquith, who was desperate to find “a place so low that hope itself has been abandoned.” 

From Antonia Crane‘s “Secret Life of a Stripper Who’s Also a Social Worker” at narratively:

It’s slow as shit at Showgirls. Summer in the Coachella Valley is a sadistic blow-dryer you can’t turn off, and business comes to a screeching halt because all my regulars leave for their other houses in colder places or go on fancy European vacations with their wives. I’m “Candy” here but my regulars call me “The Lady in Red.” Riley and I always work on Tuesdays, waiting for the rare drifter to pop in for a happy hour beer and a quick blast of AC so we can talk him into a twofer and pay our bills. Riley’s the best pole dancer here by a long shot — she can do the Running Man while suspended in midair. Right now, she’s a superhero perched to fly, but there’s no one to dangle upside down for, so she leans on her fists with her elbows on the bar and talks, while her long, toned legs drip off the barstool. She tells me about her recent relapse and her anxiety disorder while our buns stick to the vinyl barstools.

From Diane Sherlock‘s “The Inedible Footnote of Child Abuse” at The Manifest-Station:

There was no bodily autonomy in the house I grew up in. No privacy, no warm baths without ice water dumped from above, no agency over my body, and my brothers and I had no say in what we ate. Three seemingly random vegetables were force-fed.  Why those three? Why not? They were the favorites of the reigning narcissist of the house. They were our mother’s favorites. Reject them, reject her. The essence of narcissistic abuse.

From “Water Tank” (and other poems) by Sehba Sarwar at Paper Cuts Magazine:

we are fish
swimming
below the surface

in our aquarium
beneath broad
banana leaves

From Janel Pineda‘s “In Another Life” at wildness:

The war never happened but somehow you and I still exist. Like obsidian,
we know only the memory of lava and not the explosion that created

us. Forget the gunned-down church, the burning flesh, the cabbage soup.

From Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo‘s “‘A While’ Means January,‘” at The Acentos Review:

“It’s like you fell from the sky,”
he said mystified, but he didn’t know
I conjured him in a new moon.
Bees buzz in his ears ordering
him to work till callouses grow
into houses for their dreams.

From Soleil Garneau‘s “Shaking the Magic Eight Ball” at catheXis:

i went out lookin’ for something
like i go out every day
i walk
the broken concrete
and think of what else won’t be fixed

Congratulations to Ryane Nicole Granados whose “Kids Gym Provides Inclusion for Children – and Its Owners” was published at L.A. Parent!

Congratulations to Toni Ann Johnson whose story, “The Way We Fell Out of Touch,” was published at Callaloo!

Congratulations to Lituo Huang whose story, “The Climb,” was published at Bosie Magazine!

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Behind The Editor’s Desk: Janice Lee

When new WWS members ask, “Where do I even start? Where do I find magazines, journals and websites that might publish my writing?” I always direct them to Entropy Magazine’s Where To Submit list, which compiles a huge selection of presses and journals that are seeking submissions. Entropy is a community-centered online journal that has been really hitting the high notes for several years. From fiction to longform essays, from astrology to a series about the weather, they curate a unique and vibrant space for a diverse range of authors.

I spoke to founder and executive editor Janice Lee about how Entropy started, where it’s going, and why you should submit.

As founder and executive editor of Entropy, what was your mission in beginning the journal and community space? How did you build a masthead, readership, and a pool of contributors?

Peter Tieryas Liu and I started Entropy in 2014 seeking to create a new kind of community. We wanted it to be built on trust and diversity, and at first, that meant we wanted people involved that weren’t in our immediate circles. So I didn’t ask my close friends and collaborators and grad school buddies initially. We used intuition and sense and gathered a diverse group of literary citizens that we were in touch with through social media, and at AWP Seattle, we asked a bunch of them to be involved in this crazy project, and they said yes.

Peter and I too, by the way, didn’t know each other well. He had submitted reviews to me when I was Reviews Editor at HTMLGIANT and we immediately trusted each other but were also drawn to the fact that we were really different from each other in terms of the communities that we participated in and our own artistic and aesthetic inclinations.

This diversity was important. The people we initially asked to be editors were also scattered. Different genres, communities, geographic regions, interests, etc. Having diverse editors meant that we knew they would bring on contributors that were diverse and that we didn’t already know about.

Since then we’ve worked hard to build Entropy more of as a community than as a magazine. We take submissions and have features and sections and make curatorial decisions and publish work, so yes, we operate like a magazine. But part of the impetus of its creation was to have a community space for writers. When we started, many other literary sites that had acted as these kinds of community spaces had ended or were winding down, or were moving on to different projects.

There are tons of amazing magazines and journals publishing super high quality content that is highly curated and selected. Entropy is not that. We’re super proud of what we publish, but we don’t want to be an elite platform. It’s meant to be an inclusive space. All of our editors (over 50 of them now) all have direct access to the website and can schedule and publish content directly. They don’t need my approval. It’s a model built on trust and compassion. We want this to be a safe space. A welcoming one. A place for dialogue and collaboration.

What are some of the ways that Entropy has evolved over the years and have you seen your day-to-day work as editor change along with it?

Entropy has grown in a way that I never could have predicted. Its reach still surprises me, and it means so much to me when contributors come say hi at events like AWP and thank us for publishing their work. A lot of these contributors are students, for many it is their first publication. We also hear from writers who have careers who appreciate the support that Entropy has shown them, and the important community space that it creates.

In this way, I’ve learned more about the capacities for intimacy through editing. Both in my writing and editing and publishing, I’m interested in asking questions, I’m interested in the vulnerability of language that allows for an honest attempt at expression and a way to investigate complex questions. This might be about life, seeing, existence, race, gender, politics, love, depression, relationships, food. I believe that writing exists because language fails. Because language fails, we keep doing what we do. That is the exciting part. Writing is an attempt to articulate the inarticulable. I’ve gotten to meet a lot of new people or hear from people because of things I’ve personally written or pieces I’ve published or books we’ve put out. Writing and editing and publishing and reading and sharing and dialoguing and thinking, all of this is about existing together as part of a larger community, and this larger community is where the work exists. It allows us to share what we see and to see what others see.

This is also a political act. How marginalized voices get to articulate their everyday, their reality, how all these realities can exist. An exchange. Various levels of intimacy are important for radical change. I’m constantly asking in both my writing and editing: how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy?

What distinguishes an excellent submission from an okay one? What are you looking for?

We look for honesty, we look for diversity, we look for sensitivity, we look for thoughtfulness, we look for engagement. We are open to almost everything. We keep creating new sections as people take the initiative to create them. Readers are welcome to write and pitch their own ideas for a series to curate or column to contribute. What we’re looking for is what benefits our readers or the community in some way.

Speaking of submissions, I’m really interested in the new Subversions section in Entropy and I think a lot of interesting perspectives about the submission process will come out of it. What was the inspiration behind starting that section?

Justin Greene, our Where to Submit editor, dreamed up that new series. He wanted to complement the Where to Submit list and create a larger dialogue around the logistics of submissions, and look at everything from the questionable power dynamics implied in the term “submission,” and the practice of submitting as it intersects with identity. We want to make the submission process easier and more transparent, but we also don’t want to buy into the commodification of writing and publishing. We provide the lists as a resource for the community, but wanted to be more open in creating dialogue around different vantage points and perspectives, including taking into account the problematic hierarchies that submission systems create. At the same time, it’s an opportunity to feature non-standard publications like zines or experimental publications.

Entropy is doing something unique and exciting in partnering with Civil Coping Mechanisms and Writ Large Press to form The Accomplices. Can you talk about anything that partnership has planned for this year?

Yes! So The Accomplices LLC is a literary arts partnership and media company dedicated to amplifying marginalized voices and identities, particularly writers of color, through traditional and new media publishing, public engagement, and community building. It consists of the entities Civil Coping Mechanisms, Entropy, and Writ Large Press. We wanted to combine our various strengths (Civil Coping Mechanisms: publisher & promoter of kick-ass independent literature, Entropy: a magazine and community of contributors that publishes diverse literary and non-literary content, and Writ Large Press: an indie press that uses literary arts and events to resist, disrupt, and transgress) to work towards creating more resources for marginalized writers, and doing this by more than just traditional publishing.

We just launched our new website and we have a whole bunch of new books slated for this year. I’m especially excited about Entering the Blobosphere: A Musing on Blobs, a book of speculative theory by Laura Hyunjhee Kim that is coming out this summer. We’ll be at AWP for the first time as a single entity and have a huge event planned for Thursday March 28, called Center Justify (and are partnering with AAWW, The Operating System, De-Canon, White Noise Project, and PSU Indigenous Nations Studies for an extravaganza of readings and lots of delicious food.) We have lots of new events planned in LA and elsewhere. We’ll be announcing some more partnerships. There are also rumors of a new podcast series and other new projects. We’ll be announcing updates on our website and our Twitter (@the5accomplices).

Janice Lee is the author of KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), Reconsolidation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2015), and The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). She writes about the filmic long take, slowness, interspecies communication, the apocalypse, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? She is Founder & Executive Editor of Entropy, Co-Publisher at Civil Coping Mechanisms, Contributing Editor at Fanzine, and Co-Founder of The Accomplices LLC. After living for over 30 years in California, she recently moved from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon where she is an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Portland State University.