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WWS at AWP Kansas City Guide

The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference is next week, and Women Who Submit is here to help you maneuver through the mayhem. If you’re unfamiliar with the AWP conference, it is the largest writers conference in the nation that lasts four days. It’s typically in the winter, and it moves around the country each year. Next year, AWP 2025 will be in Los Angeles! We’re already thinking about what fun event we can do to celebrate.

If you are attending AWP Kansas City, WWS hopes to help you with a list of events from our members as well as from writers, presses, schools, and orgs we love and support. Look through the listing and find the folks you’d like to link up with. My favorite thing to do at AWP is attend a couple of panels featuring my friends. It’s always nice to support your community, and seeing friendly faces at the front of the room is calming. Plus, I know I’ll never be disappointed (there’s a reason they’re my friends).

If the bookfair is where you like to spend your time, be sure to visit Women Who Submit at the Kaya Press table #838. We will be selling copies of our newest anthology TRANSFORMATION, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 9am-12pm. Come say hi!

A quick list of dos:

Drink water

Carry snacks

Take breaks outside the convention center

Say yes to invitations to coffee, lunch, or dinner

Support friends

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2024

PANEL: Embracing the Body: A Journey of Illness and Celebration

9:00 am to 10:00 am

Virtual

Panelists: Maria Maloney, Carolina Monsiváis, Elisa Garza, Katherine Hoerth, Laura Cesarco Eglin

Description: Throughout our lives, we encounter various health challenges and gender expectations on our bodies that test our physical and emotional well-being. However, there is beauty to be found in celebrating our bodies. This panel of poets shares and discusses poetry of resilience and celebration of our bodies to find meaning and perspective. The panel explores the transformative power of writing that honors the courage it takes to embrace the diversity of our bodies.

This virtual event was prerecorded. It will be available to watch on-demand online starting on Wednesday, February 7, 2024 through Thursday, March 7, 2024.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2024

PANEL: Navigating Stormy Waters: Telling your tales when they’re hard to tell

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Room 2209, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Juanita Mantz, Toni Ann Johnson, Hannah Sward, Nikia Chaney, and Laurie Markvart will read from their work and discuss writing about difficult topics based on themselves and their families.

Description: How do you write your tale with compassion and love when it is a hard story to tell? These five writers will read from their works of memoir and autobiographical fiction touching on their own stories and their family stories of addiction, mental illness, trauma, neglect, and chaos. After, they will talk about how they were able to navigate the choppy waters of truth telling in their books, and how they use their voices for change and to highlight their own stories of redemption and forgiveness.

PANEL: Sin Fronteras: Navigating, Representing, and Publishing Latine Authors

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Room 2215A, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Viktoria Valenzuela, Cloud Delfina Cardona, Carlos Espinoza, Maria Maloney, Edward Vidaurre 

Description: As the United States continues to diversify, state legislatures advance bills that target people of color and the LGBTQ+ community. Publishing is one of the only industries that gives a truer representation of the richly complex Latine populations in the U.S. and their contribution to culture, history, and literary landscape. This panel of independent publishers from the U.S.-Mexico border discusses the importance of publishing Latine, including LGBTQ+ Latine authors in Texas and the U.S..

PANEL: Speaking Mosaics: Hybrid Narratives & the Prism of Identity

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Room 2504AB, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 2

Panelists: Marissa Landrigan, Rajiv Mohabir, Monica Prince, Adriana Es Ramirez, Caitlyn Hunter

Description: Accustomed to wielding multiple perspectives, many BIPOC, queer, and neurodivergent writers are drawn to fragmented or hybrid forms: multimodal cross-genre mosaics of personal experience, and cultural, social, political, or natural history. Our panelists work across poetry, performance, nonfiction, and folklore, and will explore the craft and challenges of fragmented forms, offering inspiration and motivation to embrace hybridity as a way to claim space for historically marginalized communities.

BOOK SIGNING: Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites (Mouthfeel Press 2023) by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM

Mouthfeel Press Booth #3021

PANEL: Decolonizing American Literature: The Goals, Challenges, and Strategies of Writers

10:35 AM – 11:50 AM

Room 2502A, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 2

Panelists: GEMINI WAHHAJ, Sehba Sarwar, Oindrila Mukherjee, Namrata Poddar

Description: Four writers will discuss decolonizing American literature through the examples of literary works in the colonial languages of English and French from Black, brown, and Asian writers across the world, as well as literature in Indian languages, including Urdu and Bengali. Panelists will discuss the goals of decolonial anglophone literature and consider the challenges and strategies of writers confronting imperial patterns in American Literature.

PANEL: Getting Non-Writers to Write: Teaching Outside of the English Department

12:10 PM – 1:25 PM

Room 2103A, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, Deb Olin Unferth, Elline Lipkin, Mihaela Moscaliuc, and Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Description: “I’m not good at writing,” “I don’t know what to write,” and “My English isn’t good enough”—working with creative writers outside English departments requires shifts in expectations, approaches, and consciousness. This panel gathers those working in a variety of nontraditional settings: libraries, prisons, hospitals, and teacher certification programs. Each panelist addresses challenges they’ve encountered and strategies for success to teach with courage, creativity, and care.

PANEL: Poets Against Walls: An Anthology/Handbook for Writing Past the Checkpoints

1:45 PM – 3:00 PM

Room 2215C, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Cesar De Leon, Sehba Sarwar, Emmy Perez, Carolina Monsivais, Celina Gomez

Description: Poets Against Walls anthology/handbook features poetry and hybrid writings from the geopolitical spaces of the borderlands, along with a history of the collective’s social actions, discussions on craft, and writing prompts. In addition to reading short selections of their work and speaking on the value of writing directly about communities under attack, panelists will provide tips and strategies for writing what some may feel dissuaded from in workshop spaces: crafting work for social change.

PANEL: Reproductive Writes: Writing About Reproductive Choice, Loss, and Justice

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

Room 2105, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Jacqui Morton, Erika Meitner, Carla Sameth, Maria Novotny, Robin Silbergleid

Description: How do writers use poetry and nonfiction to explore reproductive choice, health, and loss? What are the unique challenges and risks raised in the act of writing about reproductive topics, including infertility, miscarriage, and abortion? How does the stigma of discussing the intimate emotional and bodily aspects of reproduction carry over to the page? How do these issues change across genre? Writers with a range of experiences and backgrounds will read from their work and engage these issues.

PANEL: To Keep or Not to Keep: Shifting Models in the Post-Pandemic Workshop

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

Room 2104B, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Sarah A Chavez, Ever Jones, Ching-In Chen, Rochelle Hurt

Description: This panel explores inclusive innovations in creative writing workshop learned from remote instruction during the pandemic. Since “getting back to normal,” an assumption has been made that we can and should return to previous pedagogical models. But should we? Has the traditional workshop model successfully served the growing diversity in classrooms? From varied subject positions and range of courses taught, panelists will elaborate on ways that workshop practices can and have shifted toward equity.

READING: TRANSFORMATION: A Women Who Submit Anthology – AWP Release Reading

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM

Kansas City Central Library: 14 West 10th Street Kansas City, MO 64105

Room: “The Vault”

Featuring Lisa Allen (WWS-KC), Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Carly Marie DeMento, Toni Ann Johnson, Noriko Nakada, and Nancy Lynée Woo

READING: Host Publications proudly presents “A Feminist Reading at AWP Kansas City’’ 

7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

BLK + BRWN.: 104 1/2 W 39th St, Kansas City, MO 64111

Featured readers: Stephanie Niu, m. mick powell, mónica teresa ortiz, cloud deflina cardona, Bianca Alyssa Pérez, lily someson, Ae Hee Lee, Jae Nichelle, and Ashley-Devon Williamston.

Description: Host Publications proudly presents “A Feminist Reading at AWP Kansas City’’ featuring nine women & non-binary authors. A special opportunity to celebrate our 2023/2024 chapbooks, threesome in the last Toyota Celica and Survived By at the independently owned Kansas City Bookstore BLK+BRWN.

READING: AWP Offsite Reading with Co•Im•Press, Green Writers Press, Mouthfeel Press, and Noemi Press

7:30 PM – 9:30 PM

Café Corazón: 110 Southwest Blvd

READING: Macondo Open Mic

8:00 PM – 10:00 PM

Mattie Rhodes Cultural Center: 1701 Jarboe St, Kansas City, MO 64108

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2024

BOOK SIGNING: Breaking Pattern (Inlandia Books 2023) by Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera & Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites (Mouthfeel Press 2023) by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

10:00 AM – 10:30 AM

Letras Latinas Table #830

PANEL: Should I Just Give Up?

12:10 PM – 1:25 PM

Room 2215A, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Michelle Otero, Anel Flores, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Jackie Cuevas, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera

Description: These Chicana/x feminist poets, memoirists, artists, administrators, and professors have invested a collective ninety years on projects that lingered long past their anticipated finish dates. Because we represent communities whose stories might not otherwise be heard, the writing process can be especially daunting. We’ll talk about how we got it done, the communities that supported us, how we handled rejection, how we navigated this long relationship, or how we finally let go and moved on.

BOOK SIGNING: Catastrophic Molting by Amy Shimshon-Santo

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

FlowerSong Press, Booth #T1051

Panel: Beyond Borderlands: Celebrating Essential Latinx Poetry from Texas Presses

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

Room 2104B, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Luivette Resto, Adrian Cepeda, Vincent Cooper, and Edward Vidaurre

Description: FlowerSong Press and Mouthfeel Press are just a small representation of the Latinx-owned independent presses creating vibrant work in the Borderlands. Both founded in Texas, these presses publish new, emerging, and established writers who’ve historically gone underrepresented, but whose words hold the power of resilience and transformation. This poetry reading celebrates contemporary Latinx poets and their books of struggle, truth, and hope as a call to elevate diverse voices and spread cultura.

PANEL: Too Small For the Patriarchy: Getting Girlhood Stories Past the Gatekeepers

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

Room 3501 EF, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 3

Panelists: Chaiti Sen, Toni Ann Johnson, Rose Smith, Magdalena Bartkowska, and Natalia Sylvester

Description: Who has the right to grow up in American literature? On this panel, authors discuss the joys, challenges, and importance of writing and publishing diverse narratives about American girlhoods. Getting these stories past the gatekeepers, who often misunderstand and reject them for being “too quiet” or “too small,” requires courage and persistence. When our own inner critics tell us such stories don’t truly matter, how do we push beyond our doubt and continue writing on a path to publication?

PANEL: Transformation: Creating Change Through Collaboration

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

Room 2104A, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Noriko Nakada, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera, Nikia Chaney, Sarah Rafael Garcia, Ryane Nicole Granados

Description: Inspired by Helena Maria Viramontes’s AWP 2020 keynote address, Women Who Submit’s third anthology, TRANSFORMATION, centers work that speaks to the ways writers and other artists can promote change in the world. By focusing on generosity and collaboration, shared leadership and mentorship, and inclusive partnerships, panelists discuss how Women Who Submit makes this change a reality not just in the writing they publish but in the ways they edit, publish, and promote their writers.

READING: A Dozen Nothing AWP Offsite Reading

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Vulpes Bastille: 1737 Locust St, Kansas City, MO 64108

READING: FlowerSong AWP Offsite Reading

6:05 PM

Habitat Contemporary: 2012 Baltimore Avenue

Featured readers: César de León, Amy Shimshon-Santo, Michelle Otero, and Eddie Vega.

Description: Friday, February 9, FlowerSong Press will be teaming up with CavanKerry Press, Acre Books, and Perugia Press for an AWP 2024 offsite reading at Habitat Contemporary. A big shout out to Dimitri Reyes for putting this together.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2024

PANEL: Una Mujer Peligrosa: Celebrating the Queer Work and Life of tatiana de la tierra

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Room 2104B, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Olga Garcia, Karleen Pendelton Jimenez, Amelia María de la Luz Montes, Myriam Gurba

Description: tatiana de la tierra (1961–2012) was a Latina lesbian writer and trailblazer. In the nineties, she cofounded Esto No Tiene Nombre and Conomoción magazines featuring Latina lesbians in the United States and abroad. She later authored her iconic For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology. In 2022, Redonda y radical: antología poética de tatiana de la tierra was published in Colombia (Sincronía Press). This panel features some of tatiana’s literary coconspirators to discuss her dangerously delicious life and works.

PANEL: Be Gay, Do Crime: Teaching Queer and Trans Poetics in Dangerous Times

10:35 AM – 11:50 AM

Room 2103A, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Meg Day, Oliver Bendorf, Donika Kelly, Ching-In Chen, Melissa Crowe

Description: Given our nation’s latest investment in suppressing both bodies and books, what is at stake—newly, historically—in the teaching of queer and trans poetics? Five seasoned poet-educators, working inside the classroom, libraries, and community centers, gather to discuss navigating threats on the poems they teach, the poems they make, and the bodies they occupy as they do both. Panelists will offer experiential commentary and strategies for protecting, generating, and sustaining queer and trans people and poems.

PANEL: Keeping It Lit: Nurturing a Literary Journal Program at Two-Year Colleges

10:35 AM – 11:50 AM

Room 2211, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: James Ducat, Melissa Ford Lucken, Mary Lannon, Phoebe Reeves

Description: This panel explores ways to shepherd a community college literary magazine with diverse, high-risk, low-income students. Topics of discussion include: staff recruitment, pedagogy, editing, layout, budget, advertising, submissions, course credit, and technological tools. The panelists reflect on obstacles—some common, some unique—and equity-minded solutions. Faculty advisors share experiences producing print and online student journals and fostering a vibrant literary community.

PANEL: Beyond Zoom: Building Vibrant Literary Communities in a New Hybrid Era

12:10 PM – 1:25 PM

Room 2104B, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Karina Muñiz-Pagán, Minal Hajratwala, Randy Winston, Maceo Nafisah Cabrera-Estevez, & Juanita E. Mantz (JEM)

Description: Community is essential to a writer’s growth, but what do you do when spaces are inhospitable to your community? Build your own! These innovative authors share how they’ve built thriving programs for diverse NYC fiction writers, global Muslim writers, women/nonbinary writers, domestic workers, and BIPOC+ authors. We share strategies and tools to empower anyone eager to create a nurturing space that centers writers of color, language justice, disability justice, and voices at the intersections.

TABLES & BOOTHS

Antioch University Los Angeles #825

Cave Canem Foundation, Inc. #719

Copper Canyon Press #1223, #1225

Feminist Press #737

FlowerSong Press #T1051

Kaya / Women Who Submit / Blaft #838

Kundiman #1330

Letras Latinas #830

Mouthfeel Press #3021

Noemi Press #1449

Santa Fe Writers Project #3124

Sundress Publications | Sundress Academy for the Arts | Best of the Net Anthology #1111

UCLA Extension Writers Program #831

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WWS at AWP Seattle Guide

A graphic flyer with turqois background and the words "WWS at AWP" over what looks like a white poster. And a sillouette of five women in different colors.

The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference is just days away. People may have even started packing and scrolling Yelp for the best Seattle eats. Whether you go to the AWP Conference to promote your latest title, to catch up with friends, or to fangirl on your favorite author, between the panels, bookfair, and evening events there is enough for everyone. And if you’re like us and get overwhelmed by too many options, let WWS help you narrow down where to spend your time and money. Below is a list of events where you can find WWS members and some of our allies. Stop by one of these places and say hi!

THURSDAY, MARCH 9

PANEL: Too Small to Fail: The Indie Press Prerogative in Advancing Diverse Voices

10:35 AM – 11:50 AM

Rooms 431-432, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4

Panelists: Krishna Narayanamurti, Marcus Clayton, Viva Padilla, AJ Urquidi, Amanda Orozco

Description: The Western US is one of the world’s most diverse regions, but the literary scene remains a “mainly white room.” In what ways is it the duty of West Coast indie journals and micro presses to find and publish writing that upends the norms of institutional gatekeeping? LA-based editors from sin cesar (formerly Dryland) and Indicia discuss their experiments with equity, intersectionality, and digital collaboration to publish crucial work that challenges hidden biases of audiences and the editors themselves.

PANEL: Demystifying the Application: Fellowships, Residencies and Grants

12:10 PM – 1:25 PM

Signature Room, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 5

Panelists: Julayne Lee, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Angela Franklin, Janice Sapigao, Amanda Galvan Huynh

Description: Have you ever applied for a fellowship, residency, or grant and wondered if your application has what it takes to be a top contender? This is a rare chance to hear from a diverse group of authors who’ve served on selection committees for state and national grants as well as fellowships and residencies. You will gain a better understanding of what judges are looking for, what goes into the selection process and how you might identify which fellowships, residencies, and grants are the best fit.

PANEL: Minding the Gaps and Mining Landscape in Linked Short Story Collections

1:45 PM – 3:00 PM

Rooms 343-344, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3

Panelists: Toni Ann Johnson, Ramona Reeves, Rion Amilcar Scott, Leslie Pietryzk

Descrition: Linked short story collections have become more popular, perhaps in part because of their hybrid nature. They can employ recurring themes, characters, and settings to situate readers in worlds that move beyond the borders of many short stories while stopping short of the breadth and propulsion of a novel. Minding the gaps, or the spaces, is key in writing linked story collections. How does space function between and within linked collections, and what stories does one choose to tell and why?

READING: WWS Happy Hour & Community Mic Hosted by Noriko Nakada

4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Clock-Out Lounge: 4864 Beacon Ave S, Seattle, WA 98108

Features: Suhasini Yeeda, Carla Sameth, Elizabeth Galoozis, Jamie Asaye Fitzgerald, Sakae Manning, Alixen Pham, Maria Caponi, Michelle Otero, Amy Shimhon-Santo, Jane Muschenetz.

READING: Storyknife AWP Reading & Gathering

5-7 pm

Vermillion Gallery & Bar, 1508 11th Ave

Features: Rowena Alegria, Jasmin An, Sandra Beasley, Jan Beatty, Kim Blaeser, Ching-in Chen, Lydia Conklin, Rebeca Flores, Minda Honey, Amanda Galvan Huynh, Casandra Lopez, Zenique Gardner Perry and others.

READING: #AWPSeattle Off-site Reading

6 pm

Seattle Public Library

Description: Join Veliz Books, Noemi Press, and BOA Editions at the beautiful Seattle Public Library for an in-person reading featuring 10 writers.

READING: Queerly Beloved: An Evening with Foglifter Press

7:00 PM

Corvus and Company, 601 Broadway E, Seattle, WA 98102, USA

ASL interpretation and live-streaming provided

Features: Michal ‘MJ’ Jones, author of HOOD VACATIONS, Joy Priest, author of HORSEPOWER, Miah Jeffra, author of American Gospel, Kazim Ali, author of Inquisition, Dior Stephens, author of CRUEL/CRUEL, Xan Phillips, author of Hull

READING: Nightboat Books Reading 

9:00 PM

The Rendezvous Theatre: 2322 2nd Ave, Seattle, WA 98121

Features: Allison Cobb, Andrew Abi-Karam, Dior J. Stephens, Douglas A. Martin, Emily Lee Luan, Gillian Conoley, Gillian Osborne, imogen xtian smith, Janice Lobo Sapigao, Joyelle McSweeney, Kay Gabrial, Kevin Holden, Lindsay Turner, Ronaldo V. Wilson, Rosie Stockton, Samiya Bashir, Tiff Dressen, Wo Chan

FRIDAY, MARCH 10

Panel: Inlandia social justice literature reading 

10:35 AM – 11:45 AM

Bookfair Stage, Sponsored by the Dramatists Guild, Exhibit Hall 1 & 2, Summit Building

Panelists: Nikia Chaney, James Coats, Stephanie Barbé Hammer, Juanita E. Mantz, & Cati Porter

Description: Inland Southern California, aka Inlandia, is a sprawling geographic region, the logistics capital of the west, and one of the few majority-minority regions. As writers, we have a responsibility to take an active role in addressing the most pressing social justice issues of our time. Listen to works confronting issues of LBTQ rights, racial inequities, the criminal injustice system, mental health discrimination, and more.

BOOK SIGNING: Imagine Us, The Swarm with Muriel Leung

12 PM PST

Nightboat Books Table: 1024

PANEL: Languages of Belonging: Transcending Borders in Life and on the Page

1:45 PM – 3:00 PM

443-444, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4

Panelists: Sehba Sarwar, Torsa Ghosal, Emmy Pérez, Tameka Latrece Cage Conley, Gemini Wahhaj

Description: Five women writers of color incorporate personal and global histories—of India, Pakistan, and the Netherlands, and within the U.S., California, Louisiana, and the Texas-Mexico border—into their prose, poetry, and hybrid texts. Each writer will discuss her process of transcending literal and figurative borders separating nations, generations, and identities. How do we resolve the conflicts that arise from having histories in multiple places? Where are we traveling from and to in our writing?

PANEL: Writing the Land: Inspiration and Perspiration to Create Poetry

1:45 PM – 3:00 PM

Room 337, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3

Panelists: Catalina Marie Cantú, Erica Reid, Leona Sevick, Diana Raptosh, CMarie Fuhrman

Description: What if you were paired with a conserved land for a year to visit and create three poems inspired by place and preservation? In this panel, five diverse, emerging, and established poets from east, central, and northwest regions will share their writing process and poems. Their protected lands ranged from protected habitats, sanctuaries, farms, and ranches, to ecosystems and wilderness preserves. Their poetry and the methodologies used to create their poems will challenge and inspire you.

PANEL: BIPOC Women/Nonbinary Writers Cultivating Community and Safe Writing Spaces

1:45 PM – 3:00 PM

Seattle Convention Center, Level 3, Room 327

Panelists: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo (she/her), Janaka Bowman Lewis, PhD (she/her), LaCoya Katoe Gessesse (she/her), and Mahtem Shiferraw (she/her), Sakae Manning (they/them)

Description: Panelists share modes and methods towards creating safe space through considering intention as liberatory groundwork for BIPOC women and nonbinary writers, creating intersectional spaces beyond physical boundaries, identifying and becoming part of a writing community, and understanding how intergenerational racial and gender-based trauma impacts amplifying our own work. Join Janaka Bowman-Lewis, PhD, LaCoya Katoe Gessesse, and Mahtem Shiferraw, as we navigate writing and sustaining writing communities.

READING: Feminist Press Presents: Readings by Louise Meriwether First Book Prize Winners

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

Room 430, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4

Panelists: YZ Chin, Cassandra Lane, Claudia D. Hernández, Melissa Valentine, Annell Lopez

Description: The Louise Meriwether First Book Prize seeks to honor the groundbreaking legacy of Meriwether’s Daddy Was a Number Runner by creating debut publication opportunities for women and nonbinary authors of color. The 2022 winner of the prize will be joined by past winners YZ Chin, Claudia D. Hernández, Melissa Valentine, and Cassandra Lane to read from their work, including a reading from the 2022 Prize winner’s manuscript in progress.

READING: Macondo Writers Meetup & Readings

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Anxestral Gallery, 1302 5th Ave, Seattle, WA 98101

READING: Antioch’s MFA: A Night of Reading Hosted by Tim Cummings

5:30 PM – 7:30 PM

Graduate Hotel: 4507 Brooklyn Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105

Features: Jazmine Aluma, Andrea Auten, Semaj Saint Garbutt, Guadalupe Garcia McCall, Diana Hardy, Scott LaMascus, Malia Márquez, Ari Rosenschein, Kim Sabin, Mireya Vela 

READING: Anaphora Arts & Pacific University Oregon Reading

6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Little Saigon Creative, 1227 S. Weller St, Suite A, Seattle, WA 98144

Reading: Sundress Publications Reading

7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Old Stove Brewing Co 600 W. Nickerson St. Queen Anne Seattle, WA 98119

Features: Barbara Fant, Kimberly Ann Priest, Stacey Balkun, Atena Nassar, jason b. Crawford, Sunni Wilkinson, Nicole Arocho Hernández, Amanda Galvan Huynh, Cynthia Guardado, Dani Putney, Donna Vorreyer

READING: Texas Review/DIAGRAM/Apogee Reading

7:30 PM

Alley Mic: 1922 Post Alley, Seattle, WA 98101

Features: Katie Jean Shinkle, Ginger Ko, PJ Carlisle, Ander Monson featuring Ananda Lima, Bryan Byrdlong, Angela Penaredondo, Mihee Kim, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Caridad Moro-Gronlier, Kanika Agrawal, Elizabeth Gonzales James, Danielle Pafunda, Jennifer Sperry Steinorth, Dao Strom, Eric Burger, and more.

READING: AWP ’23 Offsite: Coffee House Press, Feminist Press, and The Rumpus

7:30 PM – 10:00 PM PST

Structure Cellars 3861 1st Avenue South Seattle, WA 98134

$14.88 – $23.45

Features: Courtney Faye Taylor (CONCENTRATE), Eleni Sikelianos (YOUR KINGDOM, WHAT I KNEW, MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY), Joe Vallese (IT CAME FROM THE CLOSET), Marcelo Hernandez Castillo (CHILDREN OF THE LAND, CENZONTLE, DULCE), Tom Comitta (THE NATURE BOOK, 〇, AIRPORT NOVELLA), YZ Chin (THE AGE OF GOODBYES, EDGE CASE, THOUGH I GET HOME)

SATURDAY, MARCH 11

PANEL: Beyond Writing Well: Making Space for Professional Development in the Workshop

12:10 PM – 1:25 PM

Room 447-448, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4

Panelists: Kathie Bergquist, Sheree L. Greer, & Sarah Browning

Description: While developing writing skills is justifiably central to workshop practice, students often emerge from the workshop with little practical knowledge of the praxis and processes necessary for establishing a viable writing career. Professional development can and should be an important component of creative writing workshops. This discussion will feature strategies and exercises you can easily integrate into your workshop to better prepare your students for the professional life of a writer. 

PANEL: Double-Dipping? You Bet! Promote Your Book with Short Articles and Literary Essays

12:10 PM to 1:25 PM

Rooms 431-432, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4

Panelists: Melissa Hart, Juanita Mantz Pelaez, George Estreich, Tanya Ward Goodman, Andrea Ross

Description: What if we told you that instead of spending thousands on a publicist, you could promote your books and find your ideal readers while building your writing portfolio and earning a paycheck? In this panel, we’ll talk about how we’ve perfected the art of identifying key themes and topics in our published books and writing about them for newspapers, magazines, and literary journals. We’ll teach you how to do the same with personal essays, book reviews, profiles, how-to pieces, and feature articles.

BOOK SIGNING: Light Skin Gone to Waste with Toni Ann Johnson

1:00 PM

University of Georgia Press: 928

PANEL: The ART of Infertility: Writing About Reproductive Choice, Loss, and Family

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

Rooms 431-432, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4

Panelists: Jennifer Berney, Robin Silbergleid, Carla Sameth, Cheryl Klein, Krys Malcolm Belc

Description: How do infertility memoirs rewrite the dominant family narrative? How do they grapple with issues of gender, sexuality, race, and the body? Reading from published memoirs about infertility, miscarriage, reproductive choice, and queer family building, panelists explore the emotional, practical, and legal complexities of infertility and family building outside cisgender and heteronuclear families, such as in vitro fertilization, third party reproduction, blended families, and adoption.

TABLES

Antioch University Los Angeles – 807

Apogee Press – T1203

CALYX, Inc. – T128

Cave Canem Foundation, Inc. – 929

Feminist Press – T405

Kaya Press – 1309

Kundiman – 728

Lambda Literary – 908

Mouthfeel Press – T1122

Nightboat Books – 1024

Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP) – 1202 (Monica Prince will be selling advanced copies of her next book, Roadmap: A Choreopoem, along with other authors. Come say hi!)

Sundress Publications – T500

University of Georgia Press – 928

World Stage Press – 1309

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

By Noriko Nakada

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

a table filling with books by Women Who Submit members and a WWS tote bag with the WWS logo displayed prominently.

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

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

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

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

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

3) Choose your own adventure:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please record your activism on this google form.

https://forms.gle/MNw1syCdMGbX87z49

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

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

Friendly Presses

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


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

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

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

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

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

headshot of racially ambiguous writer Noriko Nakada

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

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WWS at AWP20 San Antonio

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

By Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

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

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2020

Neon Lit Offsite Reading

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

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

THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2020

Making Place in Hybrid Tongues

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

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

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

Accolades: WWS Anthology AWP Release Party

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

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

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

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

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

Poetry on the River Walk | AWP Offsite

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

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

Tupelo Press 30/30/Conference Alumni Reunion Reading

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

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

FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2020

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

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

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

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

New Suns: Afrofuturist and Cyborg Aesthetics

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

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

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

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

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

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

Veliz Books, offsite reading

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

Featuring WWS member, Sehba Sarwar.

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

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

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

New Futures: Apogee x Offing Off-Site

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

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

Saturday, March 7, 2020

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

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

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

In Limbo: The Dilemma of Digital Thesis Repositories

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being an Accomplice: Supporting Local Communities through Literary Programming

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

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

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

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

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

#DignidadLiteraria Read-In at AWP

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

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

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Cheers to 2019!

three women of color holding beers and standing in front of a graphic black and white mural

Dearest Writers,

As we come to the end of another year (and decade), I like to look back at all we’ve accomplished this year, and congratulate everyone for continuing to thrive when too many want us to disappear.

Firsts the firsts. The Kit Reed Travel Fund, thanks to a donation from Kit Reed’s surviving family members, made it possible for WWS to sponsor three writers of color to attend a workshop, residency, or conference of their choice with a small $340 grant meant to offset travel costs. In the spirit of Kit Reed’s prolific work and adventurous spirit, Sakae Manning attended the Summer Fishtrap Gathering of Writers in Oregon, Grace Lee attended Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Vermont, and Sibylla Nash attended Joya: AiR in Spain. We look forward to offering more grants in 2020.

Thanks to the tireless work of managing editors, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera and Rachael Warecki, we had our first anthology, ACCOLADES, made it through it’s open call, selection process, and design, and will be ready for release in spring 2020. ACCOLADES was made possible by CCI Arts Investing in Tomorrow grant and is a celebration of our writers’ publications and awards over the last few years.

Another first in 2019 was our WWS Happy Hour at AWP hosted by our friends at Nucleus Portland where we featured 10 readers to a jovial crowd drinking beer and wine. Be sure to be on the look out for our 2020 AWP event, the ACCOLADES, a WWS Anthologly, Release Party on March 5th at La Botanica from 4pm-7pm .

We ended the year strong with one last first, our first crowd funding campaign, and thanks to the work and leadership of Lauren Eggert-Crowe and Ashley Perez we surpassed our funding goal! These funds were needed to match funds from a CAC Local Impact grant we received in 2019.

In 2019 we also hosted the following workshops and panels:

February: You Need a Website! A Practical Guide to the What, Why, and How of Building (or Strategically Updating) Your Author Website with Li Yun Alvarado

April: Poetry Submission Panel with Muriel Leung & Vickie Vertiz and moderated by Lauren Eggert-Crowe

June: Finding an Agent and What I Never Knew Until It Happened with Natashia Deón

August: Tier One Submission Strategies with Désirée Zamorano

October: Pay attention: attending and collaborating at the end slash beginning of the world with Rachel McLeod Kaminer and Rocío Carlos

But let’s not forget other highlights such a the 6th Annual Submission Blitz in September, where we encouraged our members to submit to tier one journals, an action inspired by Vida and the Vida count. We also made our 4th appearance at Lit Crawl LA, with “It’s a Book Party!” featuring new titles from members Jenise Miller, Carla Sameth, Colette Sartor, Micelle Brittan Rosado, and Noriko Nakada, and we featured at the Los Angeles reading series, Roar Shack, hosted by David Rocklin with readers Sakae Manning, Grace Lee, Sibylla Nash, Ryane Granados, Lituo Huang, Andy Anderegg, and Ann Faison.

And last but not least we can’t forget the 125 publications and awards celebrated on the WWS Publication Round Up in 2019, a list curated each month by the brilliant and tireless, Laura K. Warrell.

So with that, I thank you for all you did this year. I thank you for sharing space with me, and for continuing to champion your work and the work of other writers in our community. We do this together, and I look forward to another year of submission parties and publications with you!

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Director of Women Who Submit

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Breathe and Push: Attending the AWP You Want to Create

by Noriko Nakada

Ever since I first became aware of the AWP conference, I have avoided attending. Part of my avoidance had to do with my MFA experience. I attended Antioch University LA’s low residency program from 2003-2005 where I worked with amazing mentors and created bonds with talented writers, but like most MFA programs, it had/has a diversity problem. I sought out what diversity did exist in the program, and super-appreciated that Terrence Hayes was our commencement speaker, but I wasn’t brave enough to leave my MFA like Kima Jones did and wrote about in her “Flood Is Water” piece for Poets and Writers.

Throughout the program, I found residencies stressful, and when I glanced through the schedule of lectures and readings, most topics weren’t for me. I realize now, I was suffering from MFA-so-white, so-male, so-straight, so fiction-valuing, so I avoided AWP. I imagined it would be a fun-house mirror of my MFA experience. I also dislike crowds and paying fees for professional organizations/ conferences. I didn’t even go to AWP or its associated events when it was in LA. Yeah. I just never wanted to go.

But 15 years later, a small tweet from Jack Jones Literary Arts asking for volunteers to table for them, and a post from Women Who Submit asking for a roll call of members attending, I got myself there.

In the weeks leading up to the conference, I heard from writers who struggled at AWPs in the past. They gave advice for making the most of the conference, and I listened. And then I cast a spell over myself to be positive (while still critical) within my AWP experience. My first test came in the form of a LONG registration line. A long, white line. But I stayed inside my little spell and quietly observed the AWP happening around me.

The line moved quickly, and I signed in, but they didn’t have my badge. A volunteer there told me the organization who registered me must have printed it. Okay. So instead of lingering inside that chaos, I got to seek out Jack Jones. I pushed my way onto the floor of the book fair and at the end of a brilliant red carpet, there was Kima setting up the JJLA table. She welcomed me with a hug, introduced me to her staff, passed on my badge, and then I created the AWP I wanted to attend. I went to panels with women and writers of color talking about issues I wanted to think about and readings by writers I admired and wanted to hear.

A few weeks have passed, and I don’t know if I’ll ever attend AWP again. I know there were other versions of AWP happening in Portland last month, but my AWP was fierce writer-activists creating the literary world they want and demanding better from the community that exists. We all need and deserve more from the literary community: we have work to do, so for now, I’ll stay writing.

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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2018 Report and What’s to Come in 2019

A woman standing before a room of women writers speaking.

In 2018, WWS hosted five public career development workshops led by local professionals, which were livestreamed and archived on our public Facebook page. At these free, public events we orientated 66 new members into our community and granted nearly $900 to existing members to help with submission fees. In September, we hosted our 5th Annual Submission Blitz at The Faculty Bar in East Hollywood where those in attendance racked up 35 total submissions in four hours.

On our blog, we celebrated 131 publications and awards in our monthly WWS Publication Roundup edited by Laura K. Warrell, and we brought two new series: “Breathe & Push,” essays focused on the strength and space to breathe through bleak circumstances and push our creative works into the world, edited by Noriko Nakada, and “Writing on Budget” edited by Lisbeth Coiman. Nakada also published the original essay, “Why LAUSD Teachers Might Strike” on our site, and we are happy to support LA teachers. Another piece of advocacy we are proud of is, “WWS statement against the Trump Administration’s racist immigration policy,” a collective piece led by blog editor and leadership team member, Lauren Eggert-Crowe.

On our leadership team, we wished farewell to long-time team member, Ramona Pilar Gonzales who is taking a step back from WWS planning to focus on her career goals, and we welcomed two new members, Noriko Nakada and Ryane Granados.

Black and white photo of three women sitting in a lounge and in mid discussion.
Kit Reed facilitating a writing workshop at Wesleyan University.

In 2019, we have many exciting things in store starting with the announcement of The Kit Reed Travel Fund for Women-Identifying & Non-Binary Writers of Color. Two $340 grants will be awarded in 2019 to writers seeking advancement through participation in a conference, workshop or residency. Kit Reed was a prolific novelist and short story writer who advocated for her marginalized students, colleagues, and writer friends. This fund was made possible by a donation from Reed’s family in honor of her work as a writer, feminist, professor, and mentor. 

Our first ever, anthology is also in the works. More details on the open call to come at AWP19 where we are hosting a WWS Happy Hour on Thursday, March 28th at Nucleus Portland from 3pm-6pm.

Lastly, be sure to join us for our WWS Workshop & New Member Orientation series beginning Saturday, February 9, 2019 at 10am with “You Need a Website! A Practical Guide to the What, Why, and How of Building (or Strategically Updating) Your Author Website” with Li Yun Alvarado.

If you would like to support our programming and help fund speaker honorariums and submission fee grants, you can now donate here.

From the WWS Leadership Team: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Lauren Eggert-Crowe, Ryane Granados, Ashaki M. Jackson, Noriko Nakada, Ashley Perez, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera, and Rachael Warecki.

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I’m a Writing Conference/Workshop Junkie

Two women on a workshop panel face a workshop group, presenting A Crash Course in Literary Submissions

by Tisha Reichle

I don’t know if it’s being surrounded by the energy of other writers or pretending for a week, a few days, an afternoon, that I’m a student again, but I sit dutifully in the hotel ballroom chair or at a classroom table or around the cozy fireplace with a view of nearby nature, and listen carefully, take notes, ask thoughtful questions, and offer my insight when appropriate. In 2015-2016, I attended more than ten different conferences and workshops, traveled to seven cities, and spent a lot of my teacher salary. Various notebooks strewn about my apartment and a pile of receipts can attest to this. The experience thrills me every time and after each one, I’m eager for the next.

There are many writing conferences and workshops to choose from in the US and abroad. Which one is “the best” depends on your needs as a writer, your budget, and your desire for distance (or not). I usually looked for conferences/workshops in summer when I wasn’t teaching, in places I love (like New Mexico), where a writer I admire is an instructor, or a topic I’m passionate about is the focus. This strategy led me to my first workshop, Flight of the Mind, in 1995 in Eugene, Oregon with Helena Maria Viramontes. Continue reading “I’m a Writing Conference/Workshop Junkie”

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How to Do AWP

Screenshot of the exhibition room map at AWP 2016, focused on the location of the Women Who Submit table

Please excuse this repost from March 23, 2016 as we are traveling to DC at this moment, but we felt this article can still be helpful to those nervous about how to do AWP “right.” Be sure to visit WWS at booth 975 for “I submitted!” buttons and a chance to win a free WWS tote filled with goodies. And you can find all three WWS cofounders–Ashaki M. Jackson, Alyss Dixson and Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo–at the Submission as Action panel 9am Thursday, along with Kundiman’s Cathy Linh Che and moderator, Desiree Zamorano. 

For more panels and events with WWS members check out our WWS at AWP17 guide.

By Lauren Eggert-Crowe

I had no idea how to explain where I was going. “It’s this conference in Baltimore,” I told my professors when I explained why I’d be missing class. “It’s for writers, or something.” All I knew was that it was called AWP and that my creative writing professor would be presenting a panel on imaginative teaching methods. She suggested I check it out, and that’s how I ended up driving six hours from Western Pennsylvania to Baltimore one grey Wednesday evening in February, 2003. Continue reading “How to Do AWP”

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Submitting on a Budget: Network

by Lisbeth Coiman

Where writing has become a self-employment enterprise, tracking expenses is vital for the emergent writer struggling to build her brand. Conferences, books, subscriptions, writing courses, memberships, tracking sites, and submission fees all add up quickly to a limited writing budget.

Arguably, artists can create great work without ever attending conferences, reading peers’ books, or participating in workshops, but writing great pieces is only one step in the process of getting published. Unless the emergent writer enjoys the benefit of a well-connected literary circle, a consistent flow of submissions to literary journals, contests, and online magazines is the only road to publication. Gaining access to information about submission calls takes up most of the money set aside to submit work. For that reason, submitting to publications on a regular basis on a shoestring requires a well thought submission plan.

Continue reading “Submitting on a Budget: Network”