WWS @ AWP GUIDE
It’s almost time! LA will play host to the iconic writer’s conference, AWP from March 26 – 29th, 2025. So many panels, readings, and off-site gatherings, it’s a lot for a group not especially known as extroverts. I’m looking at you, fellow writers. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
We’ve put together a list to help you connect with other members of Women Who Submit. It’s a way for you to support old friends and to make new friends. There are a ton of events featuring members. Check them out below. From book signings to readings to moderating, WWS will be representing at AWP.
Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of the conference.
First, we know you want to do all the things. So many sights to be seen, but remember you can’t do it all and to give yourself grace. Plan the events you want to attend and be sure to schedule some downtime in between. If you need to chill out, rooms 506 and 507 in the convention center are designated quiet spaces. Hit up room 511C if you need low lighting.
Second, stay hydrated, bring snacks, and for the love of all things holy, wear comfortable shoes. Bonus points, dress in layers because you never know what the air conditioning temps will be like. The days will be long, so pack a phone charger.
Third, have fun and be inspired! So inspired, maybe, that you will be ready to meet up on Sunday, March 30 for a WWS Submit All party (see below).
Anywho, enjoy and hope to see you at the conference!
By Sibylla Nash, Inaugural Kit Reed Travel Fund Recipient
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2025
6:00 pm
READING: Tia Chucha Poetry Reading, Resistance & Revival
Location: LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, 501 N Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90012
Description: Join us for an unforgettable evening of powerful words and vibrant voices, a celebration of Los Angeles-based Latine poets who carry the legacy of resilience, identity, and cultural renaissance. This event brings together poets from the city that inspires them with resistance, justice, and action.
Poets: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Luivette Resto, Matt Sedillo, Jose Hernandez Diaz, William Archila, Angelina Sáenz, Melinda Palacio, Vickie Vértiz, Antonieta Villamil, Luis J. Rodriguez, Hosts: Rey M. Rodríguez and Jorge H. Rodríguez
Free
6:45 pm – 8:00 pm
READING: Love + Community: an AWP offsite reading with donations for LA fire relief
Location: Location: 1642, 1642 West Temple Street Los Angeles, CA 90026
Description: Seven literary luminaries perform their creative nonfiction work, at this benefit reading for LA fire relief. Audience donations on the night will go towards six local authors from the literary organization Women Who Submit, who lost their homes in the recent fires.
Speakers: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal (Magical Realism), Annie Liontas (Sex With a Brain Injury), Shze-Hui Tjoa (The Story Game), Grace Loh Prasad (The Translator’s Daughter), Jackson Bliss (Dream Pop Origami), and Minelle Mahtani (May It Have a Happy Ending). Hosted by Katie Lee Ellison, organizer of the Nonfiction for No Reason Series.
THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2025
9:00 am – 10:00 am
SIGNING: BREAKING PATTERN & STORIES ALL OUR OWN
Location: Inlandia Booth T1018, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera will be signing her books Stories All Our Own and Breaking Pattern.
9:00 am – 10:15 am
PANEL: Disrupting the Composition Classroom: Strategies from BIPOC Creatives
Location: Room 408B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: How can creative writers bring their expertise to the composition classroom? This panel will discuss how women of color/genderqueer creative writers challenge “traditional” white supremacist frameworks in college-level composition courses.
Panelists: Moderator: Cynthia Guardado Presenter: Bridgette Bianca Presenter: Arielle Jones Presenter: Michelle Brittan Rosado Presenter: Simona Supekar
10 am – 11 am
BOOK SIGNING & READING: Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl
Location: Booth T3358 Círculo de poetas and Writers Booth, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: Conversaciones con los difuntos / Conversations with the Dead is Diosa Xochiquetzacóatl’s 5th poetry collection, her first fully bilingual book, and first collection to be published and artisanally handcrafted in Mexico by Editorial Desierto Mayor.
10:35 am – 11:50 am
PANEL: Rewriting LA: Literature from the Modern Working Class
Location: Room 408A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: This multigenre, intergenerational panel focuses on a working-class literary Los Angeles that makes the glint possible, tasking us to rewrite our city’s imaginings or get written out. Through fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and nonfiction, these writers craft a diverse, gritty, tangled city, capturing the complex interchanges of Los Angeles’s cultural and social history.
Panelists: Moderator: Vickie Vertiz Presenter: Steve Gutierrez Presenter: Joelle Mendoza Presenter: Jenise Miller Presenter: Tanzila Ahmed
12:10 pm – 1:25 pm
PANEL: Combining Community & Mentorship to Help Build a Screenwriting Career
Location: Room 402AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: This panel will discuss how emerging TV writers and screenwriters can establish a community of writers, producers, development executives, managers, and agents who can support and mentor them throughout their careers.
Panelists: Moderator: Colette Sartor Presenter: Eirene Donohue Presenter: Winnie Kemp Presenter: Lisanne Sartor Presenter: Patrick Tobin
12:10 pm – 1:25 pm
PANEL: Getting Out of Our Own Way”: Cultivating a Sustainable Writing Practice
Location: Room 515A, Los Angeles Convention Center, Level Two
Description: How can writers cultivate a sustainable creative practice while paying the bills, growing a career, and accounting for domestic responsibilities? Award-winning authors with multiple books and diverse lived experiences discuss their ongoing journeys to do so—while also taking into consideration the roles of culture and institutions—as well as their best advice for tending to the mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of the writing life.
Panelists: Presenter: Amanda Churchill Moderator: Lorinda Toledo Presenter: Karen Connelly Presenter: Janet Fitch Presenter: Reyna Grande
11:00 am – 12:30 pm
BOOK SIGNING: West of the Santa Ana and Other Sacred Places by Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl
Location: Riot of Roses Booth 1235
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm
BOOK SIGNING: An Accidental Pilgrim, a memoir in prose and verse by Maria Caponi
Location: Booth 319, Atmosphere Press, Los Angeles Convention Center
1:30 pm – 3:30 pm
READING: Círculo de poetas and Writers Reading
Location: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Description: Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl along with other Círculo members, will be reading from their work during this event.
Free
1:45 pm – 3:00 pm
POETRY READING: Celebrating the Golden State: A Reading by Poets Laureate from California
Location: Concourse Hall 153 ABC, Level One, Convention Center
Description: What do a queer undocumented immigrant, a former packinghouse worker, an organizer around issues of extrajudicial killings of Black people, a Korean adoptee, and a lawyer by training have in common? They are all poets laureate from various parts of California. These poets celebrate California but also challenge positions of power and privilege. The laureates will discuss their roles, read from their books, and engage in a Q&A with the audience.
Speakers: Moderator: Lee Herrick Presenter: Tongo Eisen-Martin Presenter: Yosimar Reyes Presenter: Joseph Rios Presenter: Lynne Thompson
3:20 pm – 4:35 pm
PANEL: Remembering What Is Vanishing: Poets on Ecology, History & Race
Location: Room 408A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: This panel explores aspects of erasure, evanescence, and loss, as in the erasure of one’s identity and subjectivity through racial and historical lenses, as in the extinction of 150 species in an average day, and how poets can “knock on silence,” in the words of Chinese poet Lu Ji, so as to give voice to those rubbed out by ideology, history, and time, to reach across the void instead of staring into it and becoming monsters.
Panelists: Moderator: Tony Barnstone Presenter: Angie Estes Presenter: Mark Irwin Presenter: Douglas Manuel Presenter: Lynne Thompson
5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
READING: Storyknife AWP Reading & Gathering
Location: First Draft DTLA, 1230 S Olive St., DTLA
Description: Storyknife will hold an AWP Offsite reading and gathering at First Draft in Los Angeles.
Speakers: Rowena Alegria, Jasmin An, and more StoryKnife alumnae.
Free
5:30 pm – 7:30 pm
READING: Mouthfeel Press AWP Offsite Reading
Location: The Treehouse at Freehand Hotel, 416 W 8th St, Los Angeles, CA 90014
Description: Come and meet our amazing authors and enjoy a relaxing evening with us. This reading is curated with Green Writers Press.
Speakers: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Anthony Huerta Velasuez, Chim Sher Ting, Reverie Koniecki, Jen Yanez-Alaniz
6:00 pm
30ñera: 30 Years of the Macondo Writers Workshop
Location: LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, 501 N Main St, Los Angeles 90012
Description: Come celebrate the launch of our 30ñera: Thirty Years of the Macondo Writers Workshop in Los Angeles! The night will be filled with poetry, stories, and the spirit of Macondo, accompanied by light refreshments and snacks. Bring your friends and celebrate with us as we honor 30 years of the workshop LA style!
Speakers: Monica Palacios, Pat Alderete, Camilo Loaiza Bonilla, Ofelia Montelongo, Lori Anaya, Amelia Montes, Jonathan Ayala, Melissa Hidalgo, Natalia Treviño, Denise Tolan, René Colato Lainez, Lesley Téllez, Mona Alvarado Frazier, Adela Najarro, Sebha Sanwar, Karina Muñiz-Pagán, Jennifer Nguyen, Alex Espinoza
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
FUNDRAISER: The Offing’s 10th Birthday and LA Fire Recovery Fundraiser
Location: The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA-LA), 1717 East 7th Street Los Angeles, CA 90021
Description: Come celebrate a decade of creativity, community, and culture. Join us for birthday cake, a toast, and the release of The Offing’s anniversary anthology! We will donate all proceeds from our $5 ticket sales to rebuilding the Palisades Public Library and repopulating books burned in Pasadena Unified School District libraries.
Cost $5 – $20
7:00
Celebrate 10 Years of Expo at AWP!
Location: Truly LA, 216 S. Alameda St., Los Angeles, CA 90012
Description: Exposition Review is turning 10! You are officially invited to Expo’s in-person, off-site, literary citizenship extravaganza. Let’s party, seltzer-style!
Free
7:00pm
Location: Japanese American National Museum, 100 North Central Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Description: Join poets Brynn Saito and traci kato-kiriyama for a reading celebrating the forthcoming April 2025 release of The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration. Edited by Saito and Brandon Shimoda, this poetry anthology explores the afterlife of the historical yet enduring injustice of World War II–era prisons and camps. Featured readers include David Mura, Heather Nagami, Mia Ayumi Malhotra, James Fujinami Moore, and others, with a special tribute to poet, educator, and activist Amy Uyematsu and Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan.
Free
FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2025
9:00 am – 10:15 am
PANEL: Beauty of the Unwanted: Exploring the New Literary Terrain of California
Location: Room 404AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: This panel represents distinct literary voices of several contemporary essayists from California who are drawn to re-envisioning “the spirit of a place” in ways that challenge and fulfill the literary imagination.
Panelists: Presenter: Ruth Nolan Moderator: Carribean Fragoza Presenter: Melissa Hidalgo Presenter: Jenise Miller
10:35 am – 11:50 am
PANEL: Can I Write That? At the Crossroads of Social Change & Conscious Language
Location: Room 503, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: This session investigates how we can adopt inclusive, socially responsible approaches to creative projects. Presenters steeped in how writing inspires change will explore creative freedom and cultural sensitivity.
Panelists: Moderator: Stephanie Lenox Presenter: Kavita Das Presenter: Sonya Huber Presenter: Paisley Rekdal Presenter: Karen Yin
10:35 am – 11:50 am
PANEL: A Desert Full of Color: Creating & Supporting BIPOC Spaces in LA
Location: Room 411, Los Angeles Convention Center, Level Two
Description: Can a handful of established institutions serve the communities of a sprawling desert properly? Should BIPOC talent and labor be used to fight for access to PWI, or are we better served by creating and building our own spaces? Four writers, publishers, teachers, and community builders from the Los Angeles area discuss who benefits from inclusion into historically white spaces and whose work gets co-opted and ultimately wasted when BIPOC communities don’t build their own institutions.
Panelists: Hiram Sims, Peter Woods, Romeo Guzman, Sarah-Rafael Garcia, traci kato-kiriyama, moderated by Chiwan Choi
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
SIGNING: BREAKING PATTERN & STORIES ALL OUR OWN
Location: Inlandia Booth T1018, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguyilera will be signing her books Stories All Our Own and Breaking Pattern.
1:45 pm – 3:00 pm
PANEL: Alchemizing Belonging Outside of Academia: Writers Creating Careers Without MFAs
Location: Concourse Hall 152, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: This panel features cross-genre authors of color as they examine how to navigate the publishing industry on their own terms while alchemizing a code of belonging.
Panelists: Moderator: Camille Hernandez Presenter: Elontra Hall Presenter: Camari Hawkins Presenter: Heidi Lepe
1:45 pm – 3:00 pm
PANEL: Making the Cut: What Judging Story Collection Contests Taught Us
Location: Room 404AB, Los Angeles Convention Center, Level Two
Description: The panel—which includes editors, reviewers, professors, and scholars—offers insight and advice for those working on or trying to publish story collections; trend observations; and thoughts on how and why reading for the contest altered their own work.
Panelists: Moderator: Lori Ostlund Presenter: Jenny Shank Presenter: Hasanthika Sirisena Presenter: Michael Wang Presenter: Toni Ann Johnson
1:45 pm – 3:00 pm
PANEL: The Ghosts That Haunt Us
Location: Room 502A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: How can hauntings be used to illustrate larger human stories? How can our own personal hauntings create and inspire stories that will haunt readers? From cities haunted by displacement and erasure, to haunted battlefields, to family ghost stories, five writers discuss how hauntings, real and metaphorical, have inspired their poetry and fiction.
Panelists: Presenter: Xochitl Bermejo Moderator: Kate Maruyama Presenter: Latoya Jordan Presenter: Tanzila Ahmed Presenter: Chiwan Choi
2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
SIGNING: Andy Anderegg Signs PLUM
Location: Los Angeles Convention Center, Hub City Booth #730
5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
READING: House Party, a Tin House Prose Reading
Location: Other Books, Comics, and Zines, 2006 East Cesar E Chavez Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90033
Description: Come hear nine authors from Tin House perform “lightning readings” in fiction and nonfiction! Author chats and a book-signing session available afterwards.
Speakers: Alisa Alering (Smothermoss), Myriam J.A. Chancy (Village Weavers), Talia Lakshmi Kolluri (What We Fed to the Manticore), Cleo Qian (LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO), Shze-Hui Tjoa (The Story Game: A Memoir), Lena Valencia (Mystery Lights), Elissa Washuta (White Magic), Jane Wong (Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City), and Ghassan Zeineddine (Dearborn)
7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
OPEN MIC: We Write, We Rise: An L.A. Community Open Mic
Location: Echo Park Writing Lab, 1714 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90026
Description: This event welcomes all 826LA community members, Angelenos, and visiting writers to engage with us during this pivotal moment. Whether you want to perform or simply listen, all are welcome to be part of this gathering.
Free
7:00pm – 10pm
Host Publications Presents Poetics of Liberation: Reading & Community Gathering
Location: The Count’s Den1039 South Olive Street Los Angeles, CA 90015
Description: Poetics of Liberation is an intersectional feminist reading and community gathering celebrating radical and queer writers whose work inspires social transformation. Hosted at The Count’s Den—a stunning, vampiresque theater in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles.
Speakers: Amanda Johnston, heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, mónica teresa ortiz, m. mick powell, Lily Someson, Stephanie Niu, Cloud Delfina Cardona, Jae Nichelle, Tala Khanmalek, Ari Kelly, Em Palughi, and Anel I. Flores
8:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Unruly Bodies: A Community Reading
Location: Pieter Performance Space, 2701 North Broadway Los Angeles, CA 90031
Description: “All of us live in unruly bodies that we’re all trying to take care of as best we can.” —Roxane Gay Readers will share a story about their relationship with a body that refuses to act “as it should.” In a world that controls and punishes bodies that are queer, trans, disabled, mad, sick, fat, and/or racialized, how can we begin to celebrate our unruly bodies?
Speakers: Amanda Choo Quan, Arianne Ayu Alizio, Ashna Ali, Carolyn Collado, Fariha Roisin, Kai Cheng Thom, Lupita Limón Corrales, Margeaux Feldman, Raechel Anne Jolie, Tamar Bresge
Cost: $12.51 – $28.52
SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 2025
9:00am – 10:15am
Panel: Filipino Women Writing Nonfiction
Location: Room 511AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: What craft techniques, including storytelling styles from our own culture, can we utilize to write into and around truth(s)? How can nonfiction subvert or defy expectations imposed on us as women and nonbinary people in underrepresented communities? Filipino women and femme nonfiction writers discuss the complexities and nuances of sharing their experiences, while confronting the uncomfortable truths of a culture that hasn’t always looked favorably on the act of public disclosure.
Speakers: Jen Palmares Meadows, Anna Cabe, Melissa Chadburn, Laurel Flores Fantauzzo, and Anna Cabe
10:00 am – 11 am
SIGNING: BREAKING PATTERN & STORIES ALL OUR OWN
Location: WWS/Macondo: booth 1027
Description: Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguyilera will be signing her books Stories All Our Own and Breaking Pattern.
10:35 am – 11:50 am
Poetry Reading: The Defiance of Pink Poetry Books
Location: Room 405, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: Celebrating titles that feature the color pink on their covers, poets will read work that highlights the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and identity, and discuss how pink came to be a prominent element of their book, and what the color means to them and their writing.
Speakers: Presenter: Chen Chen Moderator: Xochitl Bermejo Presenter: Anatalia Vallez Presenter: Zefyr Lisowski Presenter: Cathy Linh Che
10:35 am – 11:50 am
Panel: Family Secrets: A Storyteller’s Bounty, or Curse?
Location: Room 403B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: In this panel, five award-winning fiction and nonfiction authors and screenwriters discuss the perils and rewards of writing around family secrets.
Panelists: Moderator: Aimee Liu Presenter: David Francis Presenter: Elle Johnson Presenter: Toni Ann Johnson Presenter: Colette Sartor
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
BOOK SIGNING: An Accidental Pilgrim, a memoir in prose and verse by Maria Caponi
Location: Booth 319, Atmosphere Press, Los Angeles Convention Center
1:45 pm – 3:00 pm
PANEL: Out In Public: 5 LGBTQ+ Poets On Writing At One Of The Oldest Pride Parades
Location: Room 411, level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: These five poets representing LA’s diverse identities, including city poet laureates, examine queer community organizing through poetry. This combination discussion panel and reading will pair poems exploring poetry’s ability to hold space where trauma is prevalent and joy and delight are desperately needed.
Panelists: Moderator: Brian Sonia-Wallace Presenter: Jireh Deng Presenter: Jose Rios Presenter: Carla Sameth Presenter: Victor Yates
1:45 pm – 3:00 pm
PANEL: Strength in Numbers: Southern California Women & Femme Organizers in Action
Location: Room 515B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: Our panelists will offer insights on literary activism, identity complexities, collaboration pitfalls, and best practices. We hope to acknowledge the work of women and femmes and ignite a new cohort of community leaders, hosts, teaching artists, and organizers.
Panelists: Presenter: bridgette bianca Presenter: Danielle Mitchell Moderator: Kelsey Bryan-Zwick Presenter: Natalie Graham Presenter: Jessica Wilson
3:20 pm – 4:35 pm
PANEL: Dwelling in Possibility: How Libraries Can Help Your Writing Career
Location: Room 410, Level Two, LA Convention Center
Descriptions: This multigenre panel of writer-librarians will share their knowledge, strategies, and best practices for how writers can connect with libraries and librarians for research, community, workshops, and book promotions.
Panelists: Moderator: Elizabeth Galoozis Presenter: Lisa Eve Cheby Presenter: Cybele García Kohel Presenter: Lauren Salerno
3:20 pm – 4:35 pm
PANEL: What You’ve Heard Isn’t True: Crafting New Salvadoran Myths & Futurities
Location: LA Convention Center, Room 405, Level Two
Description: Contemporary writers of the Salvadoran diaspora use the speculative—the imaginative—to parse through the urgent sociopolitical issues affecting the US and El Salvador. If much of El Salvador’s past was documented by outsiders, its future will be written by these speculative writers and their contemporaries.
Panelists: Presenter: Ruben Reyes Jr. Moderator: Janel Pineda Presenter: Gina María Balibrera Presenter: Leticia Hernández-Linares Presenter: Reyes Ramirez
3:20 pm – 4:35 pm
PANEL: Writing with/about Unruly Bodies
Location: LA Convention Center, Level 2, Room 515B
Description: What does it mean to write about and from an unruly body? In a world that controls and punishes bodies that are queer, trans, disabled, mad, sick, fat, and/or racialized, writing about our unruly bodies can be an act of resistance—but that act can come at a cost. How do we write about our unruly bodies in a way that supports our flourishing? Is such a practice possible, and if not, what is needed to make it so?
Panelists: Moderator: Margeaux Feldman Presenter: Amanda Choo Quan Presenter: Carolyn Collado Presenter: Fariha Roisin Presenter: Kai Cheng Thom
5:30 pm – 7:30 pm
READING: WAWOG-LA: New York War Crimes Reading and Discussion
Location: Espacio 1839, 1839 1st St, Los Angeles, CA 90033
Description: Join us for a community reading and discussion across all 15 issues of the New York War Crimes during Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) week.
*Accessibility notes: Masks are required for this event. Masks will be provided for those without one at the event.
Limited metered street parking is available. Espacio is one block away from the A-line. (formerly Gold line) Mariachi Plaza metro station.
Free but (if you can) please bring cash for donations.
6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
SIGNING: Inlandia Books Road Show
Location: Beyond Baroque 681 Venice Blvd. Venice, CA 90291
Description: Close out your stay in L.A. with an event at the iconic Beyond Baroque with the Inlandia Books Road Show! Inlandia Books authors will share their work and you can meet and mingle and pick up signed copies of their books. Doors open at 5:30 pm and the event will begin promptly at 6 pm.
Speakers: Will Barnes, Elizabeth Cantwell, Lewis deSoto, Tiffany Elliott, Ellen Estilai, Elizabeth Galoozis, Stephanie Barbé Hammer, Jennifer MacKenzie, and Angelica Maria Barraza Tran. Emceed by Cati Porter.
Free
7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
READING: AWP offsite reading for LA fire relief: “Love + Community”
Location: Bar Franca, 438 Main Street Los Angeles, CA 90013
Description: A star-studded lineup of local poets read their life-giving work, in conjunction with the LA-based literary journal Exposition Review. Audience donations on the night will go towards 3 organizations aiding with fire relief: World Central Kitchen, Octavia’s Bookshelf, and the Tongva Nation Eaton Wildfire Recovery Fund. Author signings and chats afterwards.
Free
SUNDAY, MARCH 30, 2025
1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
SUBMISSION DRIVE: WWS SUBMIT ALL
Location: Figat7th Food Court, 925 W. 8th St. DTLA
Description: In celebration of the AWP Writers Conference being in Los Angeles, and with support from the California Arts Council, WWS is hosting an in-person submission drive. Join us with your computer, your list of journals and open calls gathered from the AWP Book Fair, and your drive to “hit send”!
WWS CERTIFIED AT THE 2025 AWP LOS ANGELES BOOK FAIR
In 2019, I walked into the book fair at AWP Portland and into complete overwhelm. The enormous convention space held presses big and large, writing programs both esteemed and unheard of and writers, agents, and publicists everywhere. The whole place was so big and white and male. I had no idea where I might feel welcome me, where my stories my find a home.
So, for those of you heading to AWP LA, here are 21 WWS vetted presses tabling at the book fair. They show an appreciation for diverse voices in their spaces by having at least 50% women and 50% POC on their mastheads. Check them out. Chat them up, and then, after AWP, submit your words.
By Noriko Nakada, WWS Board Member
1. Abode Press – T848
2. Chestnut Review – 1035
3. Guernica – T352
4. Host Publications – 628
5. In-Na-Po – 904
6. Inlandia Institute – T1018
7. iō Literary Journal – T206
8. June Road Press – T318
9. Kaya Press at the Asian/American Book Fair – 637, 639, and 641
10. Literary Namjooning – T905
11. Macondo Writers Workshop – 1027
12. Mizna – 355
13. Mouthfeel Press – 635
14. Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora – T366
15. Santa Fe Writers Project – 563
16. Spectrum Literary Journal – T1149
17. Sundress Publications – T227
18. VONA – 857
19. Wayne State University Press – 529
20. We Are Urban Haiku – 1049
21. Yellow Arrow Publishing – T949
For more resources, be sure to visit Women Who Submit at Booth 1027!
Tammy Delatorre is a writer living in Los Angeles. In previous lives, she’s worked for a Nobel-prize-winning biochemist; helped to build and race a solar car that won the World Solar Challenge in Australia; and danced the hula despite being teased of stiff hips. Her essay, “Out of the Swollen Sea,” was selected by Cheryl Strayed as the winner of the 2015 Payton Prize, and her most recent essay, “Diving Lessons,” won the 2015 Slippery Elm Prose Contest. More of her stories and essays can be found on her website: 
have value? This is a question all poets have asked themselves in the dark of night when they think no one is listening. Shakespeare killed his poets or likened them to lunatics in his plays and Virginia Woolf wrote in A Room of One’s Own, “[The world] does not ask people to write poems and novels and histories; it does not need them. It does not care…Naturally, it will not pay for what it does not want,” so how do we move forward when seemingly no one values our work?