Women Who Submit

November 15, 2017

A Repost: The Fabulous 40

Back at the end of 2015, WWS organizer, Tisha Marie Reichle, curated this fantastic list of 40 feminist journals to support and submit to in 2016. Since we are coming to the end of 2017, why not challenge yourself to hit up a couple of these markets before the new year? Check out these journals that didn’t make it on to our first list–Gigantic Sequence, Lady/Liberty/Lit, Mothers Always Write, VIDA, Women in Literary Arts, and What Fresh Witch is This–and be sure to share any new journals we missed in the comments!

NPG x126136; Jackie Collins; Joan Collins by Terry O'Neill — by Terry O’Neill, bromide fibre print, 1970s

The Fabulous 40: Sister Journals to Read, Support, and Submit to in 2016

by Tisha Reichle

When setting your reading and writing goals for 2016, consider the work being done by other women writers and editors – people like you! Think about subscribing to one or more of the journals listed below. Make a conscious effort to read print and online journals edited/curated by women writers. Submit your work regularly to the journals and magazines that address themes you are writing about. As we move towards being more responsible literary citizens in the upcoming year, keep our sister writers in mind. (Information below is edited from each journal/magazine website information.)

If there are publications that have not been included on this list, please add a brief description and a link in the comments below so others can learn about it and we can update our information.

13th Moon: A Feminist Literary Magazine
Founded in 1973 in the ferment of early second wave feminism, as a home for women writers and their readers. Because the surrounding culture has tended to erase women writers from history, their work has needed rediscovery, preservation and its own dedicated space each generation. Continue reading “A Repost: The Fabulous 40”

November 8, 2017

An Interview with Lisa Cheby, Owner of the Desert Lotus House for Writers

by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

The Desert Lotus House for Writers is a new writing retreat in Joshua Tree, California, and is the passion project of WWS original member, Lisa Eve Cheby. Applications opened on 11/11/17 with residencies beginning in January 2018.

Women Who Submit: On the Desert Lotus House for Writers website, you mention time you spent at a residency in Knoxville, TN. Why did you want to start a writing retreat, and how did your residency experience help you create your own?

Lisa Eve Cheby: The residency at Firefly Farms and SAFTA was amazing. I had never been on a residency and doubted myself and what I would do with that gift of space and time. There was something about the process of applying and being accepted. It is not a fully-funded residency, but it was affordable and in a new place. The house was welcoming and comfortable. The landscape was new and beautiful. It was the first time in my adult life where I did not have an agenda. I was able to write and read poetry all day. I opted to not have a car that week, so I was really isolated to the farm and to walks on the property and neighborhood. All I had to do was feed the animal and write. I also loved having another poet in the house with me, in this case, Karen Craigo, and the writer in the “coop” who shared kitchen and bath with us, Sara Martin. We each retreated to our rooms or various places in the house to write, but cooking in the kitchen seemed to indicate we were open for conversation.

For about a year, I had been wanting to create a writing retreat for myself in Joshua Tree. The right place at the right price never really came along, and I am limited in what I can fund on my own. I was reluctant to Airbnb as I didn’t want to be a burden to the community. When I was in Knoxville it occurred to me that I could do this with a house in Joshua Tree. I realized it did not need to be a house like the many bought and renovated by professional investors who get homesteader cabins and renovate them to be hipster places for desert getaways. It just had to be a comfortable house where writers could go at an affordable rate to write. A month after I returned from Firefly Farms, I found the house and decided to go for it. Continue reading “An Interview with Lisa Cheby, Owner of the Desert Lotus House for Writers”

November 1, 2017March 6, 2018

Ten Kind Suggestions for Being a Literary Citizen

by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

1. Read

The most important way to contribute to a community of writers is to read their writing. Buy and read the books and journals of those around you, those you admire, those who you wish to work with, those you call friend or wish to call friend. Of course, we can’t buy every book, but if you can’t buy it, then borrow it from a friend or the library (And by the way, support your local libraries! They do important work for the community’s children and families). We are writers; it’s what we do; it’s what we work for. Show your appreciation for others by knowing their work.

2. Share

Use social media to share what you’ve been reading and help promote other writers’ work, readings, or events. I like to post photos of my current reads to Twitter and Instagram with #amreading and tag the author if I can. As someone whose first book debuted a year ago, I know it gives me all the warm, happy feels to see my book in a reader’s hands on social media, and I want to give that feeling back. Also, it helps promote their work and possibly gain them more readers and followers. I also like to share photos of events I’m at, especially if they are women, women of color, and writers of color centric events because we need to be archiving more. I think it’s important to capture these moments, and say, yes, these writers were here; their work is important; you should know these writers.

It costs nothing to share what you’re reading or the events you’re attending on social media, so why not give freely and widely? Continue reading “Ten Kind Suggestions for Being a Literary Citizen”

October 31, 2017October 7, 2018

A WWS PUBLICATION ROUND UP FOR OCTOBER

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

An autumn chill is in the air but it won’t slow down Women Who Submit who have had a record number of acceptances this month. Congratulations to everyone who had work published in October!

From “Leilani Squire on Veteran’s Writing and ‘The Storytellers,’” an interview at bookscover2cover:

I have been facilitating a weekly veterans writing workshop at Wellness Works in Glendale, California (a veterans resource center that focuses on holistic methods of healing) since March 2013. I have witnessed the veterans’ commitment to the writing process, with a growing sense of focus and writing ability. I felt it was time to take them to the next level: publication.

From Sandy Yang‘s “Quid Pro Quo” at Juked:

One night when he was home, news broke that several women had accused one of the presidential candidates of sexual assault. The candidate said these women were coerced by the opposing side to make up stories. We were in bed and I asked my husband what he thought.

He was still typing on his laptop when he said, “They’re probably lying.”

Congratulations to Sandy whose story “Superfood” was published in the St. Petersburg Review! Continue reading “A WWS PUBLICATION ROUND UP FOR OCTOBER”

October 25, 2017March 6, 2018

Women Who Submit about Town!

A woman stands at a microphone in front of a small audience seated in individual chairs.

If you’re in L.A., don’t miss Lit Crawl tonight in North Hollywood! Three rounds of raucous literary goodness all over the neighborhood. You’ll find many events starring Women Who Submit!

Round 1

From 7 to 7:45 you have many choices to see Women Who Submit in action, including:

The Rumpus: Heartache and Whores: How We Write Sexuality, featuring WWS organizer Ashley Perez

Roots and Wings Project: Matriarch, featuring WWS organizer Ramona Pilar

The Dimes: Death and Other Funny Stories, featuring WWS member Marnie Goodfriend

Melrose Poetry Bureau featuring WWS member Linda Ravenswood

Round 2

From 8 to 8:45, the word party continues, with:

The Santa Monica Review, featuring Women Who Submit member Sandy Yang

Red Hen Press: Fowl Language featuring WWS member Siel Ju

Continue reading “Women Who Submit about Town!”

October 18, 2017

Claps and Cheers: Latinxs in Media Res

by Ramona Pilar

Claps and Cheers is a column dedicated to honoring pioneers and visionary storytellers who have forged their own path in their creative careers. This month we focus on honoring one’s own reality as seen through the work of Soraya Membreno, Vickie Vértiz, and Vanessa Angélica Villarreal.

I gotta be honest. At the risk of sounding snarky, I don’t like a lot of stuff right now. I mentioned this to a friend of mine the other day and he said, “But… you don’t like most things.” And yeah, it’s true. There isn’t a lot of stuff out there that I can say that I like, much less love and feel passionate about. The older I’ve gotten, the less connected I feel to the culture in which I live because I still don’t see myself reflected in it.

I used to be inspired by the concept of “paint[ing] my own reality,” this idea that if I don’t see myself reflected in the art and culture around me, it’s my job to produce it, to fill that niche. Keeping inspired, keeping focused, keeping in touch with what I now see as an idealistic philosophy has proven to be challenging, to say the least. There’s the reality I want to create, and the one in which I have to live and work and try to earn money and sustain myself. More often than not, I find they are at odds with each other which makes it difficult to have faith in my ability to communicate a reality that I know exists, even if I don’t see it in the world around me.

Continue reading “Claps and Cheers: Latinxs in Media Res”

October 4, 2017

Annoucement: WWS Selected for CCI Grant

Women Who Submit is excited to announce that our WWS Los Angeles headquarters was selected out of 106 applicants to receive one of 14 Investing in Tomorrow Organizational Grants from Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI), a nonprofit organization awarding grants to individuals, organizations, and projects throughout California for the arts.

From the CCI press release:

The 2017 Investing in Tomorrow Organizational Grants program granted $105,000 to fourteen projects taking place throughout California. Each grant of $7,500 supports catalytic individual and institutional leadership at this time of tremendous social, economic, generational, demographic, and technological change. Continue reading “Annoucement: WWS Selected for CCI Grant”

September 30, 2017October 7, 2018

A WWS PUBLICATION ROUND UP FOR SEPTEMBER

Another month, another impressive line-up of WWS publications. Congratulations to all!

From Noriko Nakada‘s “Camp Stories” at Kartika Review:

Glass marbles in
pants pockets and
a forever
train ride rumbling
toward a mountain

Also from Noriko, “Howl” at Kartika Review:

The wind tonight
presses us all
away from the
ocean

From Hazel Kight Witham‘s “Done” at lady/liberty/lit:

Becoming an artist of faces—
of eyes
sultry, smoky, kohl-lined,
all the different looks I’d try
seductress, sunkissed, smoldering
painting myself
from a palette of shimmering promises Continue reading “A WWS PUBLICATION ROUND UP FOR SEPTEMBER”

September 27, 2017

Behind the Editor’s Desk: Rachael Warecki

The Nervous Breakdown just got a new fiction editor: writer, photographer and Women Who Submit organizer Rachael Warecki! If you are looking for a place to submit your fiction, consider The Nervous Breakdown, a fun and irreverent blog of essays, stories, poetry, podcasts, and interviews.

While Rachael was spending two weeks at a writing residency at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, she took a few minutes to step away from the beautiful view of Santa Cruz to answer some of my questions.

As the new fiction editor at The Nervous Breakdown, tell us what you’re looking for in pieces. How do you hope to make TNB’s fiction section stand out?

For our original fiction section, I’m looking for short literary fiction from authors of many different backgrounds, featuring characters who have traditionally been underrepresented in literature. I’m new to TNB and our fiction section has only been open to original fiction for a short time, but I previously served as a fiction editor at another literary magazine, and I can say that in my year and a half at that journal, we never had a shortage of submissions from men. And I’m starting to see that a little bit here at TNB: men don’t need to be encouraged to submit their work, because they’re already doing so. Continue reading “Behind the Editor’s Desk: Rachael Warecki”

September 13, 2017

A Letter to your Future Agent

Dear Him/Her/Them/You:

Before we knew each other, I shaped you into a complex character because that’s how we writers deal with agent querying. Even memoirists create a kind of life to live in when faced with the business side of writing. Dream sequences. Reliable narrators. End on an up note.

I imagined your office was in a pre-war, West Village brownstone off Hudson, even though most of the publishing world speed walks in the 20s crosstown between 5th and 6th Avenue. Manuscript pages whirled in the air as you released each loose leaf from your hands after reading them. Authors stopped by after midnight for advice and fell asleep on your Perla tufted sofa, intoxicated from the scent of cherry red markups and pink eraser dust. You dragged a landline phone cord over stacks of books that measured up to your waist while talking me out from underneath five thousand line notes crowding my brain. You waved your pen like a conductor and my book was submission ready. I was enchanted by the notion of you as a romantic bibliophile, a protective lion or lioness, a guardian angel. Continue reading “A Letter to your Future Agent”