It’s Halloween, which signals October’s close, and our WWS members continue to send out their work and publish in amazing places.
This month we’re celebrating the WWS members whose work was published during October of 2021. I’ve included an excerpt from their published pieces (if available) or a blurb if the publication is a book, and 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 October!
September has ended, bringing us even closer to the end of 2021, a year that has felt as unreal, uneasy, and unresolved as 2020. Yet our WWS members continue to send out their work and publish in amazing places.
This month we’re celebrating the WWS members whose work was published during September of 2021. I’ve included an excerpt from their published pieces (if available) or a blurb if the publication is a book, and a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Let’s celebrate our members who published in September!
It’s hard to believe we’ve made it past the midway point of 2021, but here we are, close to turning the corner into Fall.
Meanwhile, our determined members have continued to send their beautiful, provocative, insightful work into the world and publish it. This month we’re celebrating the WWS members whose work was published during July 2021. I’ve included an excerpt from their published pieces (if available) or a blurb if the publication is a book, and a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Let’s celebrate our members who published in July!
We’re headed into the sweltering heat of summer, which sometimes can wilt the resolve to do anything. Not our members. They’re still sending out their work and getting it published in wonderful outlets.
This month we’re celebrating the WWS members whose work was published during June 2021. I’ve included an excerpt from their published pieces (if available) and a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Congratulations to our members who published in June!
During this ridiculously difficult year, Women Who Submit has offered hope. Our members have supported each other during accountability sessions and publication parties and virtual community readings. We have extended a warm, virtual hand to people when they receive rejections—“motivation letters” as our wonderful member, Hannah Sward, has encouraged us to dub them. And we cheer loud and hard when our members publish their work.
So three cheers for the following WWS members who published across all genres and venues during December, the final month of this long year!
In the summer of 2011 a group of women met together in a kitchen to share food, literary journals, and submission goals to encourage each other to submit work for publication. The idea for this first submission party came from WWS cofounder, Alyss Dixson as a response to the Vida Count. We began the Submission Blitz in the summer of 2014 to honor our beginnings and continue to push for gender parity in top tier publishing.
We’ve come to understand that submitting to tier one journals is no easy ask, so to help, check out the 7 Steps to Submitting below. And consider joining us on September 12th. It’s as easy as marking yourself going to the event, submitting to a journal, notifying us know on FB, Twitter, or IG, and letting us shower you in claps and cheers.
Images from our 2019 Submission Blitz LA meet-up at the Faculty Bar in East Hollywood.
7 Steps to Submitting:
by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
1.Select a Manuscript – When selecting a piece (for poetry this may be 5-7 poems) to submit, be sure sure to choose a story, essay, or poems you absolutely love or need to see in the world. These are top tier magazines, so if you don’t love the work and need to see it published, why would you expect the editors to?
2.Research & Pick a Journal – Begin by looking through this list of tier one journals with links to guidelines curated by Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera. Some things to look into: Who’s on the editorial team? Who’s been published? What’s their mission statement? Do you like what’s been published? Does your work fit within their guidelines?
3. Read & Follow the Guidelines – the fastest way to get your work rejected is to not follow guidelines. Don’t make it easy for an editor to say no to you.
4. Prepare your Manuscript – be sure to adjust your manuscript according to the guidelines, give it to a friend read through for any last minute notes, and read through it out loud before sending to catch any typos.
5. Write a cover letter – be sure to personalize a cover letter with the name of the editor and a sentence about why you’ve chosen to send your work to them. Though it’s up for debate if cover letters are even read, this is a good practice for keeping open communications with editors you hope to create a working relationship with. See more about cover letters here.
6.Submit – once you’re ready, HIT SEND! And then be sure to let us know on our social media accounts so we can clap and cheer for you!
7. Record your Submission – a submission tracker is a spreadsheet and a great tool for keeping your submissions in order. What you put on the tracker is up to you, but the name of journal, name of submission, and date it was submitted is a good place to start. This is helpful for checking back on submissions that have been out for three, six, or more months, as well as keeping up communications when practicing simultaneous submissions (see the link in point 5 for more information on this).
This is image represents the first six months of mypersonal 2019 submission tracker.
First off, you can’t get into a top-tier magazine unless you submit. You can’t submit unless you’ve got work, and you won’t have the work unless you sit down to write. Let’s talk about this.
Yes, I realize Stephen Covey turned into an industry himself. But I’m going to talk about the two habits that I have carried forward once I read this classic. The first habit involves a Venn diagram with one circle labeled “Area of concern” and the other circle labeled “Area of influence.”
Concerned about your writing? (You should be)
Do you have influence over your writing? (You are the only one).
In the summer of 2003, poets from around the world converged in Chicago for the National Poetry Slam. One densely packed nightclub was electric with anticipation for the group poem showcase, a highlight of the annual event. You could have supplied power to a small town with the energy my own body was generating as I took the stage with two women on my team to deliver the poem “Penis Envy.” It had received perfect scores the night before in preliminary bouts.
For any team, but particularly for our small-to-middling town team from Delray Beach, Florida, this showcase was The Big Leagues. Because it wasn’t part of the competition (it was a “best of”), all we had to do is exactly what we did the night before – deliver our bawdy, satiric conjecture on what we would do if we had penises. We were only a few seconds into our poem when the room began to hiss as if giant, terrible snakes were about to strike. I recognized the sound immediately. I’d heard other poets call it “the feminist hiss.”
