Tag: nonbinary writers

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SUBMIT 1: WWS Submission Drive & Fundraiser

Saturday, September 14, 2024 Women Who Submit (WWS) hosts our 11th annual SUBMIT 1 Submission Drive & Fundraiser. This marks the one day a year we encourage woman-identifying and nonbinary writers across the globe to send one of their most beloved pieces of writing to tier one journals as one community. 

As an act of solidarity, SUBMIT 1 dares to connect marginalized writers to top tier editors and publishers, widening the spectrum of voices reaching audiences and influencing arts and culture across the world. And you can help! 

HOW TO PARTICIPATE:

1. Before September 14th, study this list of “Top Ranked Journals of 2024” with current open calls to find a good fit for your work. BE SURE TO READ AND FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES. 

2. On September 14th, 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. Join one of the following SUBMIT 1 Meetups to submit as a community: 

WWS-Los Angeles
Saturday, September 14, 2024, 11am-2pm
Highland Park Brewing: 1220 N Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Bring computers and money for beer and snacks
Masks recommended & provided
Contact: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo (admin@womenwhosubmtilit.org) 

WWS-Long Beach
Saturday, September 14, 2024 10am-12pm
The Hangar at LBX: 4150 McGowen St, Long Beach, CA 90808
Contact: Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley (lucy@lulustuff.com)

WWS-West Los Angeles
Saturday, September 14, 2024, 2pm-4pm 
West Hollywood Library: 625 N. San Vicente Blvd, West Hollywood
Contact: Angela Franklin (afrankone@gmail.com)

WWS-Bay Area
Saturday, September 14, 2024, 1-3pm
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94104
Contact: wwsl.bay.area@gmail.com

WWS-Austin, TX
Saturday, September 14, 2024 at 9:30am
Central market Cafe, Austin, TX
Contact: Ramona Reeves (ramona.reeves@gmail.com)

4. Tag @WomenWhoSubmit on Twitter (or X) and Instagram and use the hashtag #SUBMIT1, to share when you’ve submitted, so we can celebrate with you! 

5. After submitting, log your submissions with THIS FORM to help WWS track how many submissions were sent out as a community. 

HOW TO SUPPORT: 

In conjunction with SUBMIT 1, WWS is raising $5,000 to support projects like purchasing new technical equipment to ensure our hybrid workshops and panels are offering the best quality of online programming making professional development accessible to any writer in need and growing writers funds to help more writers offset the costs of starting and maintaining a writing career. 

By donating to the SUBMIT 1 Submission Drive & Fundraiser, and by sharing the fundraiser link and flier on social media and with your communities, you help spread the word on WWS’s mission to push the needle in publishing toward equity and inclusion as one. 

DONATE HERE!

Your support also allows WWS to continue to provide the following free services: 

WWS HISTORY: 

Inspired by the 2009 VIDA Count from VIDA, Women in Literary Arts, which published quantitative evidence illustrating the dearth of women’s voices in top tier publications, Women Who Submit was founded in 2011 to empower women writers to submit work for publication and help change those numbers. In September 2014, a group of writers gathered at Hermosillo Bar in Highland Park, CA for a day of beers, cheers, and literary submissions. It was the first time we called on our WWS community to submit to tier-one literary journals en masse as a nod to the original VIDA Count. SUBMIT 1 continues today as an annual event and call to action for equity and wider representation in publishing with submission drives hosted at public places across Los Angeles. From 2020-2023, we moved our annual gathering to the @WomenWhoSubmit Instagram, and this year we return to a focus on public meetups with online support. 

Eight women with laptops sit on either side of a long table, smiling at the camera
1st Annual Submission Drive – September, 2014

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Intersect: The Community of Submit 1

by Kate Maruyama

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 Houses out 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.
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Intersect: 5 Common Questions and Answers at WWS Submission Parties

By Rebecca Gomez Farrell

At the end of 2022, I stepped down from leading the long-running Bay Area chapter of Women Who Submit (WWS). Over the five years that I organized the chapter, I noticed that the same questions came up time and time again. Our answers to those questions illustrate what makes WWS submission parties so encouraging and productive. The positive reinforcement they provide turns the drudgery of the submission process into inspiration.

When we meet, our members ring a call bell whenever they hit “send” on a submission and everyone bursts into cheers. Doing so fulfills an important purpose by providing an easy way to inject excitement into the room. You might even call it Pavlovian: endorphins surge once the bell rings, bringing affirmation with them and a smile on all the faces as we celebrate the person who submitted a manuscript or query, or fellowship application. Everyone else is energized to earn their turn to ring the bell by submitting again. It’s so simple, yet such a beautiful way to support each other.

Like ringing the bell, WWS members encourage each other through useful and uplifting answers to those common questions that crop up at each submission party. Through reframing the submission process as part of a writer’s work, rather than something to dread, each click of a “submit” button becomes something that validates, rather than dulls, our creative dreams.

Here are the common questions and answers I’ve encountered at Bay Area chapter submission parties over the years.

1. My short story doesn’t quite fit this magazine’s guidelines. I shouldn’t send it, right?

Yes, you should! It’s one thing to submit a novel-length work to a submission call for 5,000 words (don’t do that), but if a market lists a flash fiction limit of 1,500 words and you’re at 1,610? Send that manuscript. Or maybe an anthology’s theme is surrealism, and your piece feels closer to abstract and you’re not sure it qualifies. The worst an editor can do is reject it, and the best? Well, you may just make it into one of your top markets! All because you had a slightly different understanding of those styles than the editor did. It’s their job to decide what submissions fit their call, and it’s your job to give them your piece to consider.  

2. Does anyone know what markets might take a funny novella about cello-playing vampires?

Many of our Bay Area chapter members are seasoned writers and quite willing to share their experiences with newer ones. They also dabble in multiple forms, from speculative fiction to personal essays to haiku memoirs. Part of the value of our submission parties is learning that we are each other’s greatest resources! Nearly every time this question is asked, another writer in attendance will have a suggestion. And it’s almost assured that another member will then also submit something to that market they just learned about. Everybody benefits from asking questions and taking the leap.

3. I can’t take another rejection. How do you deal?

By celebrating them! Or at least contextualizing them. Inspired by another member’s suggestion, I offered fifty-rejections stamp cards to our members, redeemable for a free beverage on me once those cards were filled. That’s a fun, tangible motivation, but the real one is this: rolling with rejection is part of a writer’s work, or at least the work of a writer who wants to be published.

Creative pursuits are emotional minefields, for sure, but if you’ve decided you want your masterpiece to appear in the pages of an esteemed publication? You have to keep sending it out. Making the publication happen is a numbers game. If the piece hasn’t been accepted yet, then you haven’t pulled the right number yet. What’s that number? The right editor reads your piece for the right publication on the right day when they are in the right mood. All that has to come together for an acceptance to come in, and none of it is controllable. So control what you can: the quality of your writing and placing it in that editor’s hands in the first place by submitting a rejected manuscript out yet again.

If you think of rejection as part of a writer’s work, it becomes routine, just another task to be managed. Another rejection? Another opportunity to send that manuscript out into the world. Then…Ding! Ding! Ding! Ring that bell! You’re doing the work of a writer. And you totally deserve that extra scoop of double-chip mint, too.

4. Is it okay if I don’t submit anything and just work on this poem?

Absolutely. Yes, WWS submission parties run on peer pressure to submit our pieces. When eyes light up, applause breaks out, and another member gets their deserved praise, it’s infectious! But sometimes, you don’t have the emotional reserves to keep hitting those “send” buttons. Sometimes, you need to refill your well first, and allowing yourself to do that is also the work of a writer. Sometimes you just want to bask in the presence of other women taking those leaps and use it as motivation to get that poem into shape. Even if you’re not taking part in the submission process right now, you’re taking part in the creation of that supportive atmosphere at the party. Maybe next time will be the one when you hit the send button and finally ring that bell.

5. Yes, you did it! You submitted! Now, where will I read that essay once your acceptance comes in?

I admit it, I’m the one asking this question whenever someone rings the bell. Sure, we need to harden our exteriors to deal with all the noes that writers accrue. But it’s okay to let ourselves dream of yesses, too. Ringing that bell generates happy feelings, and so does allowing ourselves that glimmer of possibility, welcoming the potential that this time this piece is going to win the numbers game. I’ve seen it happen for so many chapter members over the years, with a lengthy list of credits to their names. I’ve had at least twenty publications of pieces I’ve sent out during a submission party. If we control what we can—the quality of our writing and our willingness to risk acceptance—sometimes the magic comes together in just the right way and our number is pulled.

Making the choice to step down from the Bay Area WWS chapter was hard. But I’ve been neglecting a different part of the work of a writer in recent years: the writing itself. With the pandemic and a new day job, and the life changes that came with both, I stopped prioritizing writing new fiction. So I need to reclaim that writing time first before I’ll have submissions to send out again.

I know that when those new pieces are ready, my local chapter of Women Who Submit will be too, ready to welcome me back and cheer me on as I ring that bell.

Rebecca Gomez Farrell’s Wings Rising epic fantasy duology, Wings Unseen and Wings Unfurled, is published by Meerkat Press. Her short works have appeared over 30 times in magazines, websites, and anthologies such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, It Calls From the Sky, PULP Literature, and A Quiet Afternoon 1 & 2. Website: RebeccaGomezFarrell.com. Social Media: @theGourmez. 

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Intersect: Meet Me Where We Intersect

“Who’s got next?” Noriko Nakada asked in her last post as the blog managing editor. The week after I read it, I ran into her at a party. With a glimmer in her eye, she asked me, “You thinking about applying?”

“Kind of,” I said with my shoulders up to my ears telegraphing doubt.

” You should.”

I have written several times for the WWS blog series. Each experience was gentle, kind, and nurturing. The idea of holding space for other writers’ work, accepting submissions, soliciting voices I admire, and running a series close to my heart were too tempting to forgo.

So I applied. And…

I got next, but to be honest, I am more of an artist than a jock, but I will gladly take the court from the talented and compassionate Noriko Nakada and turn it into a found object sculpture of a new series called Intersect. Let’s see where we meet.

Perhaps we have already met, online through the WWS Open Mic (I hosted from April 2020-February 2023), or other areas I stepped in to support or take part in WWS programming, or you may not know me at all. If that is the case, I’m Thea. Like many members, I was financially and emotionally impacted by the pandemic. The WWS weekly online meetings in 2020 assisted me in becoming more resilient and adventurous in writing, submitting, and putting myself out there.

WWS also provided me with community and a culture of support. Something I desperately needed when the shutdown impacted me professionally, and I had to adapt and change. The business I spent over a decade building was not sustainable. Since I joined WWS in 2019, I saw my writing practice flourish and my publication numbers increase exponentially. With my newly found confidence in writing, I applied and accepted a contract to write ESL readers (the first time I was paid for my fiction). After writing 20, I realized the company, and I were not a good fit. I then went back to technical writing to supplement my lost income from my business and, of course, continued my literary writing to feed my soul.

Thanks to the WWS community, I have been able to access resources and knowledge bases that I never knew existed. Including scholarships, financial support, and other opportunities. As someone who wrote solitary for most of their adult life, I felt blocked from many opportunities. Primarily, because of lack of access, connections, and information. I didn’t have resources for letters of recommendation for residencies or fellowships. I wasn’t familiar with how to apply for personal grants. The list goes on. In my short time with WWS I learned much, and I am excited and honored to be named the WWS Blog Managing Editor for a paying market and help provide further information, context, and experience through your words to our members and the literary community at large.

The Road to Joy and Advocacy

February 8th, 2023 I found myself in one of the many places that WWS, and the literary and arts communities intersect. Cody Sisco invited me to read in person along with WWS board member Luivette Resto, WWS members Lisbeth Coiman, Hazel Knight Wittman, Carla Sameth, Flint, Traci Kato-Kiriyama and eleven other writers and poets at the WeHo Reads: Mindful Journeys Toward Better Futures event. It was held at the West Hollywood Public Library and included a tour of a photo exhibition led by West Hollywood Arts Coordinator Mike Che. WeHo Reads is a literary series presented by the City of West Hollywood, produced by Bookswell and supported by UCLA Extension Writers’ Program with media partnerships with Bookshop.org, Book Soup and Los Angeles Review of Books. Find out more about WeHo Reads here and how it intersects to resilience, justice, legacy, motherhood and more.

Photo by Noriko Nakada

The Beginning

Women Who Submit was born through the lens of intersectionality in the literary landscape with a vision to bring parity to women and nonbinary writers in publishing who experienced rejection, limited access to opportunities, limited representation, bias, and barriers due to gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability. The goal of the organization is to submit as much as much possible as a community to gain parity and visibility. Find out more about the beginnings of WWS here.

The Intersection

Let’s sculpt something beautiful together in my year as blog managing editor. In this series, I invite you to submit work regarding where we intersect. I’m looking for articles/essays about (but I am open to other topics as well):

  • Where identity or community overlap in the literary landscape
  • The merger of creative communities
  • Barriers or removal of them regarding access and opportunity
  • Difficulties or adaptations of being a creative in the sandwich generation
  • Experiences and/or applying for residencies, retreats, grants, or scholarships
  • Rejecting the scarcity model in publishing
  • Experience in shared leadership and mentorship
  • What inclusion and accessibility look like to you
  • Resilience as a human with lived experience
  • Your role as a literary citizen or community activist and how it intersects

On top of personal essays and articles, I am also looking for book reviews of marginalized and underrepresented voices.

The Facts
I look forward to reading your words and serving as a resource to this amazing community. Intersect will publish bi-monthly on the first and third Monday of the month. Familiarize yourself with the WWS Core Values prior to submitting, only work that adheres to them will be accepted.

Thea Pueschel is a nonbinary, neurodivergent, emerging writer and artist, the managing blog editor for Women Who Submit, a facilitator for Shut Up & Write, a California Arts Council Panelist 2022, and a Dorland Arts Colony Resident. Thea’s first solo mixed media exhibition “44: not dead, just invisible” ran at The Center of Orange from September 2021-December 2021.  Thea has been published in Short Edítion, and Perhappened, among others.