Women Who Submit

The September roundup is one of the biggest yet for Women Who Submit members. Congratulations to all!

From Lisa Cheby‘s “War Lessons from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Spoilage” at the Rising Phoenix Review:

He didn’t mean to suggest
the harvest would be easy.

We have to get all the skeletons out
of the graves.

From Soleil David‘s “Book of Transnational Feminist Prayer: On Barbara Jane Reyes’ Invocation to Daughter” at Post No Ills:

Barbara Jane Reyes’ fifth poetry collection Invocation to Daughters (City Lights, 2017) is a missal for Filipino women, one that uses Western poetic forms to utter an unapologetically transnational feminist poetics. In this collection, Reyes pushes against Spanish and American influences, the two patriarchs that have kept the Philippines abject for much of its history. The poems subvert Western tradition through the use of those same Western traditions, all while bringing in multiple languages, as well as ruminations on Filipino and Filipino-American culture.

From Arlene Schindler‘s “I Chose a Career Over Babies” at Living the Second Act:

I don’t have regrets about not bearing children. It was a conscious decision. Some parents may see my life as empty, unfruitful, or even immature.

From Désirée Zamorano‘s “Adelanto” at Cultural Weekly:

It starts with pain and outrage.

You’re out of the country when you hear about a Supreme Court Justice stepping down, and the caged children. You want to keen and wail, but you don’t. You want to never return to your country of origin, but you do. You return to daily life at home. Continue reading “A WWS Publication Roundup for September”

As the summer wraps up, we are pleased to share good news from Women Who Submit members who had work published in August.

From Mia Nakaji Monnier‘s “Keiko Agena On Life After ‘Gilmore Girls,’ Her New Book, and How She Copes with Anxiety” at The Lily:

For anxious artists held back by perfectionism, “No Mistakes” provides 150 pages’ worth of interactive pep talks inspired by Agena’s experience doing improv, where there’s no such thing as a mistake, only creative choices for team members to build on collaboratively.

From Jay O’Shea‘s “Beyond Protection: Perceived Threat, Criminalization, and Self-Defense” at IMPACT Chicago:

As I approached the cash machine, another person walked up from the opposite side, a few paces before us. A slim, white woman whose expensive casual wear and designer sunglasses marked her as one of our Westside neighborhood’s more affluent residents, she turned and looked at me instead of giving her attention to the ATM. I offered a smile, acknowledging that she had reached the cash machine first and had dibs on it. When she returned my smile with a scowl, I expected the snappish disdain that well-off women in West LA so commonly project toward other women, but not the question she asked.

“Can you come back?” she said.

From Ava Homa‘s “Graduation” at apt:

I am counting the cracks on the ceiling. My lawyer is presenting some documents to the judge. It is hard to breathe here. This room stinks as if the walls were made of corpses. The judge leaves his seat and is walking to the door that convicts cannot use. It is only for him. The attached light-brown desks divide His Honor’s space from that of the non-honored ones.

Congratulations to Ava who also had her piece, “Nameless Stones,” published in Room!

From Melissa Chadburn‘s “This Wanting Business: On the Cost and Labor of Writing” at LitHub:

I often say that whenever I feel the urge to complain about the work of writing, I think about a woman who has to take five buses to work. The truth is I’m likely thinking of my younger self. She’s always at my heels. In college, I sold Herbalife, called people to refinance the mortgage on their homes, worked as a data entry clerk on campus, and telemarketed selling timeshares. Struggling to get by at school, I eventually dropped out, moved back to Los Angeles, and worked the switchboard at a large law firm in Century City.

From Tanya Ko Hong‘s “Mother Tongue” at First Literary Review-East:

Sophistication isn’t damn good to drink
So why don’t you untie my tongue
like you undress me in the dark, don’t
let my ego ruin our night, don’t scan betrayal
in your mind—life’s not so bad if you don’t pay attention.

Congratulations to Tanya who was the first winner of Run Doon-ju Korean American Literature Award and was interviewed in The Korea Daily!

From Marnie Goodfriend‘s “Finding My Unsolvable Mother in Her Left-Behind Crossword Puzzles” at Ravishly:

As a child, I remember Mom’s stack of crossword books with Velveeta-orange Bic pens holding her place on the current one she was trying to solve. A flimsy card table stood awkwardly in the middle of our living room where she sat in a folding chair carefully separating the edges from the middles of a “Mastermind Impossible to Solve” 1,000 piece puzzle. We often visited a stationery store on Main Street where I ran up and down the sticker aisle inhaling pizza and popcorn scratch and sniffs while she fingered large boxes with display photos of crayons, confetti, stars, and circles. Even at my age, I knew that she didn’t choose a puzzle for its pretty or interesting design but by which sequence of objects was more difficult to finish.

From Li Yun Alvarado‘s “Literatura, Música, y (Huracán) María: Reflections from the Diaspora” at VIDA:

My parents separated when I was twelve years old, and divorced when I was in college.

By some telenovela magic they reconciled two decades later, the summer before Hurricane María roared through their hometown, Salinas, Puerto Rico.

My one comfort during that week of silence was that they were together: through worrying about reaching my brother in New York and me in California; through negotiating with siblings and caring for their elderly parents with whom they each lived; through negotiating this post-Hurricane María world.

Li Yun also saw her poems “Momentos de Maria“and “Zika” published in Hinchas de Poesia and Acentos Review, respectively, and an essay, “Retro Row Helps New Yorker Adapt to Long Beach” published in L.A. Parent!

Congratulations to all!

As the summer winds down, we are happy to share the great news from Women Who Submit members who were published in July.

From Melissa Chadburn‘s “Who Is Anna March?” at the Los Angeles Times:

…Anna March first appeared around 2011, when she started publishing online. Before that, she was known by different names in different cities. In researching this story, The Times found four: Anna March, Delaney Anderson, Nancy Kruse and Nancy Lott.

In three places — Los Angeles, San Diego and Rehoboth Beach, Del. — March became a part of the literary community. She won over new friends, even accomplished authors but especially writers trying to find a way into that world, with her generosity, her enthusiasm and apparent literary success — only to leave town abruptly.

From Désirée Zamorano‘s “The Upholsterer” at the Kenyon Review:

Enrique looked at his cousin and at the sofa that had just landed in his workshop.

The couch was a sodden mess covered in food stuffs, and Enrique really didn’t want to know about it, nor did he have any expectations of what he would find underneath the fabric. Probably a factory-assembled piece of cheap teakwood with low-grade stuffing and springs.

Also from Désirée , “Therapy Saved Me as a Writer,” at Read Her Like an Open Book:

I think therapists hold a particularly profound attraction for writers. So much content, from petty to profound: the stories of grief, menace, abuse and mourning. So many ways to lie, to yourself, to your therapist. So much fun with being an unreliable narrator, as we recreate our biography for an audience of one. So much rapt attention and focus, on our words.

From “Hechizo Para Congelar” by Li Yun Alvarado at UnMargin:

Ingredients:
1. Names
2. Pencil
3. Paper Bag
4. Freezer

Spell:
Pencil names onto
pieces of brown
paper bag.

Let’s say:

donald john trump

From Noriko Nakada‘s “Late Night Phone Calls” at SFWP:

When the phone rang, I knew it was either Laura (Yukiko), or my boyfriend (soon to be the ex-boyfriend) and his calls usually resulted in him coming over to spend the night and me not minding, because I was alone and lonely in this new city.

But when it was Yukiko (Kiko), those conversations jolted me wide awake, There was a frantic, frenetic, frequency in my sisters’ phone calls.

Also from Noriko, “Marbles” at The Rising Phoenix Review:

My father turns eleven just before
he’s told “take only what you can carry.”
He chooses marbles, polished glass spheres, smooth
and cold in his jacket pocket. Six in
all: a shooter, a cats eye, two aggies,
two comets, in swirls of yellow and blue.

Also from Noriko, “Gaps,” at The Rising Phoenix Review:

Your baby teeth
and the baby teeth of all ten
of your siblings were not
included in what
you could carry

when stripped down
to two bags each.

From Natalie Warther‘s “Vinegar” at Drunk Monkeys:

The child had a birthday. People came. They ate the cake. People went home. And once again Dolly was alone, staring at a single slice of cake. Of course, the child was there, precious, soft, aloof, which is company, but it’s different. The windows needed washing.

From Arlene Schindler‘s “The Stuff that Dreams Are Made Of” at Purple Clover:

Shortly after I got married in 1982, I learned that my husband had lied about everything. He disappeared for hours on end after making large cash withdrawals from our joint account and deceived me about many other things, including how many times he’d been married. I grew to hate him and myself.

Congratulations to Flint who read her poem “I Call Queer” at ACE/121’s art show, “QUEER!”