“I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer.” – Derek Walcott
Like many people, I first heard of the indie rock band Little Moon when they won NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest this past May. Written by the Utah-based couple Emma and Nathan Hardyman while his mother was in hospice care, their winning song, “wonder eye,” confronts death and explores the liberating sense of not knowing what comes after. Around the time they wrote it, the couple was also leaving the Mormon church. Coincidentally, Little Moon’s redemptive paean to atheism debuted just months after NPR re-aired the story of the 2014 excommunication of Mormon feminist activist Kate Kelly. Her offense: organizing a protest in which she and other women requested entry to a male-only Priesthood meeting. She equated her expulsion, for simply exercising her free speech, as a kind of “spiritual death.” Although I’ve never talked openly about my Mormon past, it felt like Little Moon and Kelly were sending me a sign that it’s time to write about my own journey to the other side of Mormonism.
I grew up Mormon in the atheist city of San Francisco. Every Sunday, my father led his three daughters down the steps of our tall Victorian and drove us in his blue Volvo station wagon along the hills of the city to that white stuccoed church that stuck out among the festive painted ladies crowded around the Bay.
Often, I’d sleep over next door at my best friend’s house on Saturday nights, hoping to be forgotten about, but Sunday morning her telephone would ring and my father’s voice would come on the line, summoning me to church. My favorite fantasy in those days was being one of Sleeping Beauty’s fairy godmothers. I imagined myself squeezing into a ball and flying up the chimney and out over the city.
After years of attending church classes in which young women were instructed in their future lives as homemakers while the young men went off to Priesthood meetings, my last stand was over a workbook I was supposed to be working on but that only gathered dust in the trunk of the Volvo. The book had lots of tasks that felt useless to me, such as baking cookies for the sick, crocheting needle point, and ironing my Church clothes on Saturdays. Amidst the pressure over the workbooks, our teacher completely ignored the true miracle before us. One of my fellow students, a lovely moon-faced blonde—I’ll call her M—was growing more pregnant by the week. Yet we never celebrated the new life in our midst. M’s pregnancy was treated as a mark of shame, her growing belly hidden under blousy black dresses, her demeanor sullen and downcast. Then our teacher’s husband, who was the Bishop, ran off to Utah with another woman from the congregation. She disappeared, and classes were suspended. The ships sailing outside looked suddenly hollow to me, as though they might be made of cardboard, and I wondered whose hand had put them out to sea. Soon after, I also left church one day and never returned.
Centered in Utah, Mormonism stays mostly out of the mainstream and is often viewed with disparagement. Within the faith, dissent is taboo, as demonstrated by Kelly’s excommunication. But, as I know from my own silence around my religious background, fear is the enemy of creativity. After I left the Mormon Church, I lost my sense of gravity. I ran to New York, then L.A., then Mexico City. I found my bearings by throwing myself into the study of Hispanic literature. I delighted in the films of Pedro Almodóvar, since they so gloriously, outrageously broke from Catholic conservatism. But, having turned away from my own roots, I had no idea how to locate my voice. I didn’t realize that someone could leave a religion while holding onto their culture until I read writers like Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, and Cherrie Moraga in graduate school– writers who had rebelled as sincerely as I had against patriarchy, but still clung so fiercely to their culture that they reinvented it, reimagining the past until it fit them like a vestal garment.
If Little Moon’s creative breakthrough came with “wonder eye,” my own, smaller one occurred during a Mexicanist conference at UC Irvine this year. One of the panelists, Dr. Jacobo Sefamí, who grew up in Mexico City of Syrian Jewish descent, was reading a paper entitled “The Sacred and Exiled Kábala in the Essays of Angelina Muñiz.” As he recited all the Hebrew words for the name of God, a story my dad once told came back to me. It was about his great-great-grandfather, a man who had four wives who lived in four houses on four corners of the same street, in the southern Utah village of Pine Valley. I remembered hearing that one of the wives, who was a dressmaker, had fled to New York. Listening to Dr. Sefamí, I thought about that great great aunt, living in New York in exile, and about my own self-imposed exile. Wondering if my ancestress searched for the names of God in New York, I jotted in my notebook a poem entitled “The Fourth Wife” (forthcoming in Sunstone). A couple months later, with the encouragement of fellow WWS writers, I applied for a grant from the California Arts Council, in part to write more of my female ancestors’ histories from Utah. Recently I found out that I received the grant.
It’s as if by that same sense of grace that I switched on the radio this spring to hear a young band with Mormon roots making music that so joyfully and noisily rebels and transcends. Fronted by singer Emma Hardyman, Little Moon also features Nathan Hardyman on bass, Bly Wallentine on electric guitar, Bridget Jackson on harp, Chris Shemwell on drums, and Grace Johnson on keys. Watching them play with fresh earnestness in their music video, it’s easy to imagine them cutting their milk teeth on sacred music. According to the original NPR news release, “wonder eye” surprised the judges, moved them to tears, and filled them with hope. For me, the moment in “wonder eye” that gets me is when the music swells and Hardyman’s four-octave voice swoops into the chorus.
To where we are and where we go
Wonder Eye, wonder Eye
And when I go I’ll give my all to the sky, to the sky
Wonder Eye , wonder Eye
Commenting on the meaning behind the song, Hardyman told NPR, “Mormonism believes in life after death, resurrection and eternal families. There is beauty and comfort in our former beliefs of certainty, light and life; we honor and respect such teachings. But we also find deep beauty in uncertainty, darkness, chaos and death. Perhaps it’s all one and the same.”
“kind, kind home,” another song in Little Moon’s Tiny Desk concert set, registers the difficulties of leaving one’s community, the feeling of being an outsider and of having to learn to stand on one’s own.
I think I lost a kind, kind home.
It’s my fault I’ve run away,
even though I wished to stay.
You’re a ghost,
a dropout just drifting in this town.
Feeling lost and feeling all alone
I will try to be a kind, kind home.
For years after leaving the Mormon church, I felt adrift. I thought I had left the spiritual part of myself behind, but I rediscovered it in a Twelve Step meeting in my thirties. Throughout my twenties and thirties, I kept trying to find a place that felt like home, until I realized I carry it with me wherever I go. I plant seeds of self-knowledge on the page; if I tend them, they flourish; if I neglect them, they dry up. This summer, words grow around me like flowers, and my notebook fills with poems. To paraphrase Derek Walcott, poetry is my prayer. It is where I proclaim my belief in the importance of my ancestresses and their ongoing presence in my life; that, as in Mexico, the shedding of colonial religion gives way to something deeper and older, a spirituality that links all people with the earth; that the spirit is not gendered; that love is not a sin; that loving oneself is never wrong–no matter how far one has strayed. I believe that motherhood is sacred whenever and to whomever it arrives.
In the face of this nurturing, I feel my old anger give way to curiosity. Even some exercises from my old Young Women’s workbook no longer seem silly to me. Iron your Sunday clothes. Visit the sick. Bible passages come back too, from childhood readings with my dad. Do not hide your light under a bushel, but let it shine. I hope to return someday to my family’s village of Pine Valley, to stand on the corner of the four wives, and to gather more of their stories so I can tell them. I think they deserve that.
Audrey Harris Fernández is a Lecturer in the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Together with Matthew Gleeson, she translated “The Houseguest and Other Stories” by Amparo Dávila (New Directions, 2018). Their translations have appeared in The Paris Review, Harpers, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. Her poem “The Fourth Wife” is forthcoming in Sunstone. She lives in Long Beach, CA with her daughter and husband.
Author’s Note
Audrey Harris Fernández would like to acknowledge the support of the California Arts Council and Los Angeles Performing Arts Initiative for this piece. She is currently working on a series of essays on Mormonism, and is gathering stories from other Mormons/ LDS who have left the Church. She is interested in what we hold onto and what we share (such as stories, customs, rituals, beliefs and connection to community), as well as reasons for leaving. If you would like to share your story, please email her at audrey.harris@gmail.com.
The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during August 2023. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in August 2023!
Have you ever asked yourself if you’ve lost your mind after accepting a challenge or saying yes to new duties–knowing your plate of responsibilities is already overflowing? Can I get an amen out there from the faithfully over-committed? Some of y’all know exactly what I mean.
In August, I stepped up to fill the canoe-sized shoes that Alix Pham left. She is our former tireless Westside Chapter leader, who left to pursue personal projects. Like many of us, I was content to watch her superwoman work ethic from the sidelines, marveling at how she didn’t seem to break a sweat. I mean, that woman did some of everything, and truth be told, even watching her work was tiring.
I thank and commend Alix for the four years she devoted to our chapter and to WWS overall. Under her leadership, I was inspired to participate more in public readings, submit to various residences and conferences for poets. The best part of her goading challenged me to explore poetry forms like writing sestinas.
Adding the Chapter Lead hat to my other writerly commitments demands excellence. With the new hat, I bring a wide range of professional and artistic writing experiences. I received the Eloise Klein Healy scholarship to attend Antioch University Los Angeles (AULA). After graduating in 2020, I continued learning. I am an alumna of the Community of Writers Summer Poetry Program, Cave Canem, Voices of Our Nation, Hurston/Wright Summer Writing Program, and others. Success in these writing programs was spawned and nurtured by a professional career, which lay the foundation for setting and reaching goals. Retiring after nearly 30 years of service from the City of Los Angeles, as a public information officer for LAX, the Bureaus of Engineering, and Sanitation, and as a budget analyst for the Department of Water and Power, I began in earnest writing a memoir and two books of poetry– sharing much of my experience as a woman living long enough to overcome racism, sexism, and now ageism. This seasoned citizen is silent no more!
Now that I’ve grabbed Alix’s baton, I plan to Flo Jo my way to publishing victory. I’m carrying on her tradition of informing and equipping members. For the first meeting in my new role, I invited Alexis Rhone Fancher, editor, poet, and photographer extraordinaire, who shared tips and frank talk on submitting one’s work.
The plucky poet did not disappoint with a delivery that eclipsed the usual submission spiel. Regaling members on what it takes to grab editors’ attention, Alexis delved into what does and does not work in the publishing arena. Attitude is everything. “If you think you’re not good enough, you’re probably right,” she offered.
If you are suffering from rejection blues, Alexis offered consolation saying, “Each no is one step closer to a yes.” As a former editor, she had little patience for weak writing. She challenged, “Where’s your blood on the page? What risks are you taking? Her take-no-prisoner approach admonished, “Nobody wants to read your held back”—(your embarrassed-looking-bad-on the page, stuff we tend to hide). Prior to Alexis’s stern advice, I have never heard the slam-dunk statement of “looking good in your poems is the kiss of death.”
Who knew?
Alexis has an open invitation to return for a second visit to share more with us, from her belt-notched experiences of 200 published poems, 29 Push Cart nominations, 10 books of poetry, and 12 years of literary editing.
I hope you’ll join me as we blaze new trails on our collective literary journeys!
Onward!
Angela M. Franklin’s latest work Stay in My Corner will be published in Transformation: A Women Who Submit Anthology, December 2023; essay The Wrath of Conk, was published in June 2023, in the anthology These Black Bodies Are…published by Inlandia Institute. She holds an MFA from AULA. Her poems and essays are published in several anthologies and online publications.
I’ve been a fan of Submit 1 since its first year when I hosted hour one and talked about strategies for submitting and dealing with rejections. As I spoke on Instagram Live, people chimed in with questions and announced when they had made a submission and we cheered as a group! It was early and I was just getting my coffee. I was thrilled by how I had just woken up and I was already in a virtual room full of supportive writers. The Women Who Submit Community were at work that morning and throughout the day and I dipped in as other hosts shared their experiences, tips, and claps and cheers. The feeling that we were all working together toward a common goal made it a singular space.
Women Who Submit has been a huge part of my life. In the ten years since I joined, it has been a resource support, a place to keep me on task in submitting my work, and a place to ask any questions about writing, publishing, and even job opportunities. A lot of things that I’ve had published are because of attending submission parties and being cheered on as I pressed SEND.
Last year Toni Ann Ann Johnson asked me to join the hour of Submit 1 she was hosting, along with our friend and colleague Nicole D. Sconiers. I’m always happy to learn more from Toni Ann, who leads really good discussions and is always a fabulous host.
Flyer from the Submit 1, hour with Toni Ann Johnson, Kate Maruyama, and Nicole D. Sconiers.
What followed was a conversation about all the ways in which Toni Ann, Nicole, and I are intertwined with our work, mutual support, friendship, and careers. All three of us told stories about times we were so frustrated, we gave up. We were there for each other, coaxing each other back to work, to the submitting, to the myriad jobs that go into being a writer. It felt like it was the most “Women Who Submit moment ever” as we talked, comments rolled in from members who were submitting all over the country and we cheered them on.
Toni Ann and Nicole are both my first readers. We have been exchanging work for years. We met each other in different ways. Toni Ann and Nicole shared Alma Luz Villanueva as a mentor. Nicole and I met as students in our MFA workshop where I was so excited by her speculative fiction story “Here Come the Janes” that I basically started hounding her for more stories. Later, she hired me to edit her first collection: Escape from Beckyville, Tales of Race Hair and Rage. I kept on her to write and submit after that because at that time, her speculative fiction, which she described as “A Black Woman’s Twilight Zone” was rare and needed. This was 2009 and predated Black Mirror as well as Get Out.
Toni Ann’s fingerprints are all over my three novels that came after Harrowgate. She is not only my first reader, she’s the reason my upcoming book Alterations happened at all. She inspired the idea by asking why I didn’t write about old movies since I loved them so much, and she provided thorough notes on two drafts of the book. When my agent had given up on that book, Toni Ann didn’t and prodded me to believe in my characters and my story and to submit the book independently to small presses. There’s a “you can definitely do this” stalwart belief Toni Ann has in all of her suggestions. Even at my weakest, darkest moments, she encourages me to find that belief again. When the book, after ten years of support from Toni Ann, finally sold, she was the person I called first.
You can read more about our mutual support in a conversation we had for The Coachella Review “You Can’t Do This Shit Alone.” Toni Ann and I have both found similar support in WWS where there is this idea that a rising tide raises all boats and we share resources, encourage each other, and think of ways that each writer in the group can improve, submit, and promote their own work.
In an email exchange, Nicole said, “Toni Ann is not only supportive of my fiction writing but my screenwriting as well. She encouraged me to submit to the ScreenCraft script competition. I submitted my sci-fi thriller Spectacle to the 2022 ScreenCraft Sci-Fi & Fantasy competition and was named a finalist out of more than 3,000 submissions! She also provided coverage for my script Bless the Mic and shared the screenplay with a director who hired me for a writing project.”
Nicole has been a go-to for my genre short stories and for my literary novels. I know she won’t hold any punches and will be open and honest about anything I’m writing. She gave me notes on my new novella Safer (paired with Family Solstice in my new book Bleak Housesout now from Raw Dog Screaming Press) and is the queen of details.
During our Submit 1 conversation Toni Ann had this to say, “Nicole helped me refine details and elements of (fact-checked) some of my fiction, which led me to clarify or emphasize the veracity of my details. She also made helpful (and humbling!) corrections to spelling/grammar/punctuation. We have also exchanged some of our screenwriting. I’ve read at least two of Nicole’s screenplays (which I loved!) and she’s read at least one of mine. Over the years, I’ve recommended Nicole as a writer and as a manuscript consultant to multiple friends and colleagues.”
This was such a beautiful thing to recount for WWS members in our hour of Submit 1 with Toni Ann and, as we told these stories, more writers helped by this circle of friends tuned in, in the comments. We realized these stories tell the far reach of the WWS community. Some folks submitted their work while we were talking: it was peak Submit 1.
During this magical hour on IG Live, I realized that without Toni Ann and Nicole, half of the wonderful things that have come my way wouldn’t have happened at all.
All writers are out there alone, getting up our nerve to submit, but it is this kind of community, helping each other out with drafts, encouraging each other when we lose hope, and bolstering each other through tough times that makes WWS a profound group to belong to.
Toni Ann put it best when she wrote, “As you both know, this writing journey is not easy, there are good times, but when the hard times hit hard, they can be unspeakably dismal–at least for me–and I’ve been lifted in low times by each of you.”
Together we can do so much. Our upcoming Submit 1 slogan is “One community, one day, one submission at a time.” You can join our community virtually by tuning into Instagram Live on September 9 (@womenwhosubmit) or check in with this website to learn how to participate in person!
Kate Maruyama is the author of Harrowgate (47North), Halloween Beyond: A Gentleman’s Suit (Crystal Lake Publishing), and Bleak Houses (RDS Press) and upcoming novels The Collective (Running Wild) and Alterations (Writ Large). Her short work appears in numerous journals and anthologies. She writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles.
SUBMIT 1 is the one day out of the year WWS encourages woman-identifying and non-binary writers across the globe to send one of their most beloved pieces of writing to tier-one journals as one community. This is an act of solidarity, not only with our writers, but with editors and publishers as well. SUBMIT 1 dares to connect the literary publishing community as a whole.
September 2014 was the first time we called on our WWS community to submit to tier-one literary journals en masse. Inspired by the 2009 VIDA Count from VIDA, Women in Literary Arts, which published quantitative evidence of the dearth of women’s voices in top tier publications, this submission drive became our annual call to action for equity and wider representation in publishing. In 2014, a group of writers gathered at Hermosillo Bar in Highland Park, CA for a day of beers, cheers, and literary submissions. Since then, we’ve hosted an annual submission drive at public places across Los Angeles, but when the pandemic hit in 2020, we pushed to think of a creative solution to gathering, and the @WomenWhoSubmit Instagram Live programming was born.
1. Before September 9th, study THIS LIST of “Top Ranked Journals of 2023” with current open calls to find a good fit for your work. Links to guidelines are included. BE SURE TO READ AND FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES.
2. On September 9th, submit one of your most beloved pieces of writing to at least one tier one magazine from wherever you are in the world at any time of day.
3. Notify us on Twitter or IG. Be sure to tag us @womenwhosubmit, so we can celebrate you with lots of claps, cheers, and funny gifs.
4. Hang with us on IG Live at @WomenWhoSubmit from 9am to 9pm PACIFIC for a full day special guests, support, and resources. Here is where you can ask WWS members for tips on submitting, get encouragement, or receive LIVE claps for when you hit send.
SUBMIT 1 IG Live Schedule (all times are PACIFIC):
5. After submitting, fill out THIS FORM to help us track how many submissions were sent out, which will help us in our continued mission towards gender parity and wider representation of marginalized voices in literary publishing.
How to Support:
If you don’t plan to submit with us, but would like to support our efforts, please consider making a donation at our Paypal account in the name of your favorite WWS member or underrepresented writer.
As a writer, I grapple with the immigrant dilemma of allowing contradicting parts of me to find their way in my work or isolate them and write from a specific perspective. In nature felt but never apprehended, Angela Peñaredondo navigates the intersecting paths of immigration and gender politics: A Filipino immigrant struggling to find a home while holding a permanent longing, breaks down their family’s history in search of DNA clues for gender identity.
Earth scientists, botanists, and nature aficionados all learn to read the environment for clues. A rock can tell how old a mountain is and animal behavior can warn the explorer of environmental dangers ahead. Peñaredondo’s collection nature felt but never apprehended is a field trip in search of ancestral cues in the Philipine’s mountainous landscape. Peñaredondo approaches their themes from a naturalist perspective, naming and interpreting their environment to create the paradigm defining diasporic Filipino queer identity.
This four-part collection begins by offering a life raft “I set your weight on a raft” in a ritual for the ancestors the poet is about to dissect, “steel pointed like hawk bone at your bare collar.” First, the poet confronts the lineage of colonized bodies “excavating the bedrock” of the mountain range during the Battle for Manila in 1945 and placing two male lovers at its center under the heavy weight of Catholic dogma.
The imagery in these first poems does not exoticize the tropics nor the male participants of the story. Rather it presents the Philippines in all its complex glory: magnificent nature, Catholic culture, battleground during World War II, “feminization of wage labor,” all occurring “before [the poet’s] birth, who, like a geographer, must go beyond the “excavated map” to understand their legacy. This is the “survivor’s topography.”
However, it’s in the geological analysis that the poet focuses on the women in their ancestry and where her craft shines. Here the poet sees past the exoticization of the tropical female “adorn[ed] in teknite,” “at the Tsubaki nighclub,” “bar girl in a fish tank,” to state “you are much more than others realize.” The last four poems of this first part dissect the patriarchy “lithification/”fossilization and what it means to look beyond the fetish, “love us in our deviancy.”
The poet names body parts, symptoms, and diseases to stress how internalized oppression is in the female body. As it is shown in “exigencies of layers i & ii” where the poet questions the women have assisted pathologies in the perpetuation of these patterns.
Cuticle
Upper epidermis
Epidermal hair
Substomatal chamber
Palisade mesophyll
Xylem
Air channel
Guard cell
Stoma
Phloem
Chloroplasts
Lower epidermis
Thus, Peñaredondo creates a true paradigm of what it means to see past the oppression and go beyond a painful transformation. But the poet refuses to stay in survival and ends the first part presenting the rest of the collection as a resistance story.
In the second part, the transformation takes place with blunt imagery. It’s all about the coming out Queer. The poems become longer, the spaces widen, and the overall structure shifts, patterns emerge. From scattered lines across the page, to brief prose passages, the verses compel us to read in silence, masticate every blunt image, pause, reflect. These poems turn the previously described violence against women into love.
“My fist
…
i can make love with it”
Columns and double columns appear as if grabbing the reader by the shoulders and facing them with a harsh reality.
Hunger : rain :: fever : black stone
Lexicon without apparent connection rains on the page as if words and dates fall off the poem as gender affirmations surface and become the focal point. Then, brief poetic prose passages erupt like the volcanic imagery across the entire collection to reveal the magma within:
“she’ll gulp oysters and mussels down with no desire for the palm wine, she’ll read books, floating on their side, spectral algae trickling their brain and wanted curvy fat. in that unreachable sky some human might describe as precious or turquoise, she knows paradise lives elsewhere.”
In the third part, the poet exposes the immigrant conundrum as the desire for a home while holding a permanent longing. Then exquisite poetry arises, one where imagery and reflection intertwine to create delicate passages holding powerful truths.
“how must one proceed toward potential when splintered enough, boiled down to transparent bits rendered invisible, seen as conformity.”
“exile is a river at the end … ”
“suspension & assimilation with a distant border in view
or lack– . . .”
“to classify as anything but singular is an intervention, a bridge between migration and when
trauma exposes the hybridity of the self, it exposes the multiple, often
incompatible . . .”
The fourth part “holds the contradictions” with a letter to self that gives the poet permission to be all the parts of themselves in harmony. An interesting poem written in couplets in a rhythmic composition marked with abundant spaces naming the identity “queer” “gay immigrant child raised in the 90’s” “kweens”, the origin “Bisayan princess” and their art “haranistas.” It also presents those who refuse “to awaken on the part of the subject,” the lineage that killed “femme supremacy.” Poetry forms shift again, to include lists, “Induction to Self-loyalty,” and an interesting poem written in columns, “studies in becoming prayer” which works as a contrapunto between three different voices. The collection ends with an intriguing bilingual poem titled “albularya”–the name for a witch doctor in Philippines. “albularya” suggests the poet had been subject to this ritualistic cure/cleanse to cure the child of a serious ailment. The reader can only wonder if their family tried to pray the gay away or if the child’s life had been in danger.
“for my famished body lipstick to remind me that death
although marked in shade is never monochrome.”
We are in the presence of a poet who is not afraid to explore their past in an intelligent and thorough analysis. nature felt but never apprehended stays with me for it focuses on nature to interpret the colonization of the Filipino diaspora uncovers fossilized patriarchy encrusted at different levels of the poet’s ancestry, “those before us.”
By naming body parts, diseases, and symptoms, the poet stresses how internalized patriarchy and oppression are in the bodies. New patterns indicate the bravery of breaking off tradition to allow for gender identification.
At times a geographer “excavating maps,” at times, a botanist naming plants, mostly a geologist analyzing fossils, the poet uses the lexicon of sciences to name a reality amalgamated in colonized ancestry to reveal the DNA clues that pointed at queerness for generations in a family of Filipino immigrants.
In their nature felt but never apprehended, Angela Peñaredondo embraces their gender identification while holding a longing for the homeland and all the contradictions within. This collection is a gift for those who understand longing and struggle to decipher their own past.
Lisbeth Coiman is a bilingual author who has wandered the immigration path from her native Venezuela to Canada and last to the US where she now resides. Her debut book, I Asked the Blue Heron: A Memoir (2017) explores the intersection between immigration and mental health. Her bilingual poetry collection, Uprising / Alzamiento (Finishing Line Press, 2021) portrays the faces of Venezuela’s complex economic and political unrest.
The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during July 2023. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in July 2023!
In the world of freelance writing, opportunities abound. There are magazines, E-zines, newsletters and newspapers to submit to. In most cases, the freelance writer without a college degree, MFA or other kind of notable status has a chance of getting published without those requirements. As long as writers show they know their stuff and can produce a well-written article or essay, they have a chance of getting published.
Freelance writers specializing in a topic or field had more clout than an MFA or college degree. This provided many freelance writers with the opportunity to get published. As long as they had knowledge and high-quality writing, an article or essay had a good chance of acceptance.
That was how it worked once upon a time. Now things have changed. My attempts to get published in magazines and with brands I have researched have met a huge barrier: the fact that I don’t have an MFA or a college degree.
When the opportunity arose to become a part of a content creation agency, which is not the same as a content mill, I jumped on it. I wanted to try something new with my writing. Becoming a writer for this agency required me to have knowledge of SEO writing and using keywords. New to this kind of writing, I learned as I went, taking online courses and reading articles in order to become better at SEO writing, boosting my chances of getting published.
For a while, this went beautifully. I found brands I was compatible with and stayed busy writing articles for them. That worked until it didn’t. One brand eventually changed their platform and another started ghosting me. No problem, I thought. There were tons of other brands I could pitch, simply because I have specialized in these topics.
It didn’t matter that I researched these brands and read samples of their work in order to get a feel for the type of material they wanted. Many who I pitched to never responded, which meant no.
It didn’t matter that I had clips relevant to the topic I was pitching; I was still rejected.
It didn’t matter that I have experience in chemical recovery (alcoholism) as someone who has navigated sobriety for over five years; I was still told “no.” Even when I pitched to blogs on this topic inviting readers to share their experiences, my pitches were ignored.
It also didn’t matter that I have training and experience working as an in-home caregiver, as well as providing rehabilitative care; any article or essay I pitched on that topic was rejected. And, yes, I was sure to pitch to markets accepting work from all kinds of writers.
It also doesn’t matter that I am deaf, as well as a burn survivor, writing on these topics for markets welcoming submissions and pitches from marginalized groups. The rejections still rolled in.
This happened when I pitched brands through the agency as well as when I pitched markets outside of the agency. I knew my luck with the agency would run out, so I made sure I continued my work as a freelance writer, pitching magazines, websites, blogs, and newsletters. There were acceptances here and there, but mostly rejections from the bigger paying markets that seemed to prefer a certain kind of writer–namely, ones who had more impressive publishing clips, positions with a company or a degree in the field they wrote in.
In the end, I noticed that writers who had a degree relevant to the topic they wrote in, or some kind of specialized training in a field, or even an MFA, had a better chance of getting published than I did. I saw how everyone else with those accomplishments under their belt got published in those same places I had pitched.
It’s understandable that most writing markets these days would require writers to have some kind of degree or specialized training, but how does that help those of us with financial barriers keeping us from achieving those goals and can still write well? I couldn’t finish college because the funding was no longer there. I would absolutely love to have a degree and/or an MFA, but there is currently no money to make those things happen!
I am not the only freelance writer out there who faces the financial barrier in earning a degree. The money we earn has to go towards providing for our families, paying our bills and paying for the medications we need to keep us alive. We don’t have the funding required to get a college degree or an MFA, and, yes; we have exhausted all resources in trying to obtain that funding. With no luck. They should not hold this against us freelance writers who are only trying to earn a living with our words.
It seems that most writing markets are adopting a classist or elitist attitude when deciding what writers they choose to work with.
It used to be that anyone who built their way to success with their own resources was looked up to and admired. Anyone who gained knowledge and training outside of educational institutions, and proved they could get a job done, garnered respect and appreciation. This kind of self-sufficiency no longer means anything to the editor at a magazine or publishing company.
It seems this classist attitude is slowly creeping into the world of independent publishing, as well. Writers with bigger platforms, wider appearances at cons, and impressive publication credits are being given more attention among independent publishers. It used to be that I supported independent publishers, being an indie author myself. But now it seems that if I submit to an independent publisher and I have to compete with an author who has more recognition than I do, they get the publisher’s attention and I don’t. I’m lucky if I ever get a response to my submission at all.
Famous writers like Ray Bradbury, Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, Truman Capote and William Faulkner never had a college degree, yet their work was published, won awards and achieved literary acclaim. If only we could go back to the days when it was enough to just be published. When being an author attracted attention, brought admiration and respect from others, and signified that said author is worthy of one’s attention.
Those days are long gone. In its place are the demands for a degree, MFA, or bigger platforms. If a freelance writer or aspiring author doesn’t have those things, then the road to publication is a lot longer and harder to pursue.
Dawn Colclasure is a writer who lives in Oregon. She is a book reviewer, freelance writer and ghostwriter. She is the author of several books. Her work has appeared in magazines, newspapers, websites and anthologies. Website: https://dawnsbooks.com/ and https://www.dmcwriter.com/ Twitter: @dawnwilson325 and @dawncolclasure
Online learning has exploded over the last decade, and with the Covid-19 pandemic came the widespread use of online learning platforms from Zoom to Google classroom. In 2021, as a 50th birthday gift to myself, I decided it was time to dive into poetry in whatever capacity I could. This is something I had always wanted to do, but didn’t have the time, money, or logistical ability. I earned an undergraduate degree in English, but stopped there many years ago.
By 2021, opportunities for workshops and lectures had become ubiquitous within the creative writing sphere. Higher learning in creative writing, such as certificate and MFA programs, are certainly no exception to this. The options open to me were plentiful, albeit with a little digging and research.
Participating in various forms of workshops in online spaces is a good option for a variety of reasons. For many people, the cost of a traditional MFA program is simply prohibitive with the average tuition in the tens of thousands of dollars, with fully funded programs being extremely competitive. Online learning offers the flexibility to complete a degree or a certificate from home. For those of us who work fulltime, or for someone like me who is a fulltime caregiver to family members, it is simply a logistical impossibility to enroll in a multi-year degree program.
Many traditional colleges and universities have extension schools or continuing education programs where non-matriculated students can enroll in individual online classes or a certificate program in creative writing. This is a great place to start, but traditional colleges and universities are just a small slice of what is out there. In the last few years, independent writers’ workshops, collectives, and publishers have flourished online, offering countless options to choose from.
Some MFA programs are online but require a small duration of in-person attendance called “limited residencies.” These have existed long before online learning, where students could submit work via U.S. mail, also known as “correspondence learning.” The limited residency can be as short as ten days or two weeks, just twice a year. Again, even though this is a more flexible option than a fulltime two-year degree program, it’s still a financial and logistical challenge for those of us with employment and family obligations.
The types of online workshops vary in format. Let’s explore the “non-live” option first: asynchronous. Asynchronous classes don’t meet live on camera, instead interaction is limited to discussions organized in a forum style. The syllabus will update with new material on fixed dates. In other words, you don’t workshop each other’s pieces in real time. To be honest, you’ll need to be highly self-disciplined with your time to get the most out of asynchronous workshops. While a convenient option, the downside is that discussion can become anemic depending on how interactive the cohort is. The structure of the workshop is critical here. The syllabus should include mandatory participation, but this isn’t always the case. If you’re looking for lots of peer feedback and lively discussion, or if you’re looking to feel the excitement of reading your work aloud, an asynchronous workshop might not be the best option.
In that vein, it’s important to fully commit whenever you sign up for an online workshop, regardless of type. Even if it’s only for an hour. Even if it’s a free event. Be as collaborative as possible and participate to the best of your ability. As with any creative endeavor, you can only improve with collaboration and learning through critique. The journey is an evolution, and to make progress, one must share one’s work but also fully listen to and examine the work of your cohort. Think of your writing as a sculpture and with each pass through workshop, your fellow participants have all helped in their way to smooth the rough edges of your work. It’s in that spirit that we fully lean into the close reading of our peers’ writing.
It can be difficult to decide on which workshops to participate in. My best advice is to do your due diligence to find out how the workshop is structured. Learn as much as possible ahead of time. Get to know who is facilitating and research their writing background. If they’re published, consider buying their book or borrowing it from a library. Reach out to them by email if you have questions.
Let’s not forget that one of the purposes of workshops is to learn and grow through constructive critique. If at any point the critique process doesn’t stay focused or if it’s not being facilitated in a constructive way, it’s best to re-examine if that workshop is a right fit for you. I was enrolled in a multi-week workshop where the instructor would ask “what would you revise?” with no specific direction or structure. I received some of the worst, most unhelpful critique in this workshop because there were no guidelines given from the instructor. An open-ended “what did you dislike?” does not generate conversation tailored toward that piece of writing. If you find yourself in a workshop like this, do not hesitate to drop out. One of the most important things in writing is to protect your process. Anything that becomes a barrier to your creativity needs to be dealt with in a way that protects your peace of mind.
Of course, the more worthwhile and generative relationships you build in a workshop don’t have to end once it’s over. Keep in touch with your writing peers through email or social media. It’s never a bad idea to offer to swap your work outside of workshop to keep that collaborative energy flowing. You don’t need a set place or a deadline to do any of that, just a bit of extra effort and an openness to fully engage with other people’s writing.
Aside from craft workshops, it’s important to seek opportunities to do close readings of prominent authors. Be on the lookout for the plethora of lecture series available. I completed a multi-week series on W.S. Merwin through the Community of Writers collective, hosted by Victoria Chang and Matthew Zapruder. The course also included an optional break-out into small cohorts. It was a great chance to delve into poetry that is dense and not as easy to access without the benefit of some deep academic analysis and facilitated discussion.
Looking for a quick and easy drop-in class? Search Eventbrite for online creative writing events. Many of them are free and you can register the same day. I’ve had the luck to discover many generative events for poetry using this free event search tool. You don’t have to commit a lot of money or time to get your writing life going and fully energized. Another great free option is using Meetup to search for online group writing sessions. These sessions can include prompts and sharing work, but they don’t always. The atmosphere and structure is usually casual.
Finally, always be mindful of proper online etiquette. Be a good student by following some commonsense guidelines. Get acquainted with whatever platform is being used for live meetings, be it Zoom, Google, etc. Use the app before ever entering a live session. Get fully familiarized with its features, including using the chat and reaction functions. Test your audio and visual setup’s and make sure they’re working properly. While in a live classroom, please stay muted if you are not speaking. Lastly, direct technical issues to the chat. Don’t distract the instructor unless it’s clear they cannot see your chat. In a workshop that’s only 60 minutes long, one distraction can take up precious time.
Stay curious, and stay creative, friends!
F. Gülşen Buecher is an emerging poet who lives in Santa Cruz, California with her husband, kids, and pets. She has participated in online poetry workshops facilitated all over the U.S. as well as the U.K. and Germany, including a UCLA workshop taught by WWS founder, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo.
The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during the month of June 2023. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in June 2023!
