SUBMIT 1 is the one day out of the year WWS encourages woman-identifying and non-binary writers across the globe to send one of their most beloved pieces of writing to tier-one journals as one community. This is an act of solidarity, not only with our writers, but with editors and publishers as well. SUBMIT 1 dares to connect the literary publishing community as a whole.
September 2014 was the first time we called on our WWS community to submit to tier-one literary journals en masse. Inspired by the 2009 VIDA Count from VIDA, Women in Literary Arts, which published quantitative evidence of the dearth of women’s voices in top tier publications, this submission drive became our annual call to action for equity and wider representation in publishing. In 2014, a group of writers gathered at Hermosillo Bar in Highland Park, CA for a day of beers, cheers, and literary submissions. Since then, we’ve hosted an annual submission drive at public places across Los Angeles, but when the pandemic hit in 2020, we pushed to think of a creative solution to gathering, and the @WomenWhoSubmit Instagram Live programming was born.
1. Before September 9th, study THIS LIST of “Top Ranked Journals of 2023” with current open calls to find a good fit for your work. Links to guidelines are included. BE SURE TO READ AND FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES.
2. On September 9th, submit one of your most beloved pieces of writing to at least one tier one magazine from wherever you are in the world at any time of day.
3. Notify us on Twitter or IG. Be sure to tag us @womenwhosubmit, so we can celebrate you with lots of claps, cheers, and funny gifs.
4. Hang with us on IG Live at @WomenWhoSubmit from 9am to 9pm PACIFIC for a full day special guests, support, and resources. Here is where you can ask WWS members for tips on submitting, get encouragement, or receive LIVE claps for when you hit send.
SUBMIT 1 IG Live Schedule (all times are PACIFIC):
5. After submitting, fill out THIS FORM to help us track how many submissions were sent out, which will help us in our continued mission towards gender parity and wider representation of marginalized voices in literary publishing.
How to Support:
If you don’t plan to submit with us, but would like to support our efforts, please consider making a donation at our Paypal account in the name of your favorite WWS member or underrepresented writer.
In years past, we’d called this annual event the “Submission Blitz,” reappropriating a destructive term in pursuit of gender parity and wider representation of marginalized voices in literary publishing. But as the last 20 years has brought unbearable violence punctuated by recent catastrophic times, we at WWS thought it was time for a new direction and outlook.
SUBMIT 1 is the one day out of the year WWS encourages women and nonbinary writers across the globe to send out at least one of their top pieces to one top tier journal as one community. This is no longer about bombarding editors’ desks and slush piles.
SUBMIT 1 is an act of solidarity and faith in our own voices and communities.
WWS hosts quarterly workshops and panels to help demystify the submission process and provide professional development to the writers. One of my personal favorites was “Strategies for Submitting to Contest” in 2016 with Tammy Delatorre, winner of the 2015 Slippery Elm Prose Prize and 2015 Peyton Prize.
On that day she advised us to send our best work, the pieces we loved, the ones we had to see in the world, our absolute favorites. This was an aha moment for me.
If I want an editor to love my work and champion it in their pages, I have to love it first. If I want to turn the heads of the readers at the top journals, the work I send should be top shelf quality.
This year, in our 8th installment of this literary submission drive, I invite you choose one piece of writing, your best and most beloved piece, and do the work of sending it to at least one top journal (Or five!). And when it’s rejected (because chances are it will be), send it out again, and then again, offering as many editors as possible the privilege of reading your work, until you finally find it the right home.
This isn’t an attack. This is an act of love.
How to Participate:
1. Before September 18th, study THIS LIST of “Top Ranked Journals of 2021” with current open calls to find a good fit for your work. Links to guidelines are included.
2. On September 18th, submit one of your best pieces of writing to at least one tier one magazine from where ever you are in the world at any time of day.
3. Notify us on Facebook, Twitter, or IG. Be sure to tag us @womenwhosubmit, so we can celebrate you with lots of claps, cheers, and funny gifs.
4. Hang with us on IG Live at @WomenWhoSubmit from 7am to midnight for a full day special guests, support, and resources. Here is where you can ask WWS members for tips on submitting, get encouragement, or receive LIVE claps for when you hit send.
5. After submitting, fill out THIS FORM to help us track how many submissions were sent out, which will help us in our continued mission towards gender parity and wider representation of marginalized voices in literary publishing.
Submission Drive Origins:
After the first VIDA Count was published in 2009 illustrating the dearth of women’s voices in tier one publications, members of VIDA, Women in Literary Arts, began asking the editors of these journals why they thought the numbers were unbalanced. The most common answer was women don’t submit as often as men. In response, Women Who Submit and the monthly submission party was created in 2011 to support women and nonbinary writers in submitting their work for publication in order to raise the number of such voices coming across editors’ desks.
Our annual submission drive is a call to writers to submit their well-crafted and cared for work en masse to tier-one literary journals that historically have shown gender disparities in their publications. It is a call to action. Our first WWS submission drive was in September 2014 at Hermosillo Bar in Highland Park, CA.
A rejection letter leaves many writers devastated. For years, I would submit one to three pieces a year to literary magazines, and if the work received a rejection, it became dead to me. My nonfiction wellness articles had a 98% acceptance rate, leading me to believe I would have no problem getting my fiction and creative nonfiction published. I did not know about the incredibly low acceptance rates of literary magazines.
There are finite spaces to fill in the literary world, though the internet itself seems infinite. Writers hoping to be published in top-tier literary magazines are faced with startlingly low acceptance rates. According to Duotrope, The New Yorker magazine accepted only 0.14% of 1,447 unsolicited submissions received in a year. The lower-tier magazine Split Lip received 938 unsolicited submissions that same year, andonly 0.11% were accepted.
Rejection feels personal, though it isn’t. It’s a numbers game, even with smaller publications. To prove this, I reached out to Viva Padilla, the editor-in-chief of the annual literary magazine Dryland, and asked her about the submission statistics for her publication. “The most submissions we have ever received [for a single issue] was over 1000,” she said. “Every issue has about 50-55 publishing spots available, with around 40 reserved for poetry.” I did the math. That equates to an acceptance rate of 1%-1.5% for a work of fiction. For poetry, the odds are slightly better at 5%. That’s a rejection rate of 95-99%. The acceptance rate is higher compared to Split Lipand The New Yorker, but even then most of the work is rejected due to space limitations, among other reasons.
The work Dryland publishes is primarily through open calls. Most literary magazines and journals solicit work from writers they know or those with name recognition, presenting an entry barrier to emerging or unrepresented writers. In her 2015 article for The Atlantic, acclaimed writer Joy Lanzendorfer made two interesting assertions. First, that the average published story is likely rejected 20 times before being published; second, that slush pile submissions only account for 1-2% of published work. Simply put, most of the work you see in the literary spaces is based on connection or writer recognition. Despite the rejection stats, and the reality of how many times it takes for a story to stick to a magazine’s pages, this emphasizes the importance of being an active member of the writing community. Editors solicit work from people they know. To be known you have to be an active member of the literary community.
A few years ago, I became a member of Women Who Submit (WWS), a nonprofit focused on elevating the voices of BIPOC, women, and nonbinary writers. This organization helped me see behind the literary curtain. Various members have taken time to offer me guidance and mentorship through both the submission and rejection process. WWS showcases the importance of relationships and elevating each other’s voices. The reality is that writers who know writers get published more, and all editors of literary magazines are writers themselves.
Since having my eyes opened by WWS, I have become a member of other writing communities, including Shut Up and Write. Outside of my WWS bubble, I have seen that other writers in various spaces struggle with the inevitability of rejection like I did. I hope this helps reduce the sting of rejection, and I would encourage you to submit again and again until your work finds its literary home.
Recently, I received a really nice standard rejection from Zyzzyva. The last paragraph said, “I would like to say something to make up for this ungraciousness, but the truth is we have so little space, we must return almost all the work that is submitted, including a great deal that interests us and even some pieces we admire. Inevitably, too, we make mistakes.”
I asked Christopher James, the editor-in-chief of the five-year-old Jellyfish Review, how often his magazine rejects stories they love because of lack of space. He responded, “We frequently say no to a lot of very strong stories, we would never say no to something we loved. We often accept imperfect pieces because we’ve fallen in love with them and hope our readers might fall in love with them too.” As the newer journal matures, they too may have to say no to work they admire. At the moment though, if they read your work and love it they’ll make space for it. Most journals have a limitation and only accept a certain amount of work—Jellyfish is the exception, not the rule.
Rejection is part of the process of getting your work out into the world. Should you default to younger journals? You can, but I believe that as a writer you should submit to the journals that speak to you, the magazines that you envision as a perfect fit. Familiarize yourself with the work they publish, follow their submission guidelines, and keep submitting work that aligns with their aesthetic. It will increase your chances of acceptance.
Even though stats are against them, many writers still manage to succeed, and you could be one of them. I reached out to the writers I know and asked if anyone had received multiple rejections only for a piece to be published later. Carla Sameth, author of “One Day on the Goldline: A Memoir in Essays”shared that her personal essay, “If This Is So, Why Am I?” was rejected 22 times before it was published in The Nervous Breakdown,only to be selected as notable for The Best American Essays of 2019.Just because something receives multiple rejections does not mean it isn’t worthy of recognition, accolades, or publishing. It left me wondering if those other 22 magazine editors felt they missed their window and had inevitably made a mistake.
I asked Kate Maruyama, the author of my favorite novella of 2020, “Family Solstice,” about her experience. Eighteen editors rejected her first novel “Harrowgate”before it was purchased. A short story of hers was rejected 35 times before being published. “For the short story, rejection number 10 was from Roxane Gay when she was reading for a journal,” Maruyama explained. “She said it wasn’t right for that journal but that it was a damn fine story.” Those words of encouragement along with her writing community kept Maruyama submitting.
To improve your odds and to keep a stiff upper lip when rejection inevitably finds its way to your inbox, here are some pointers to help ease the painful experience:
Take resubmission requests seriously. If a magazine rejects a written piece of yours but asks you to resubmit, they are not being nice. They don’t have time to be nice. They enjoy your work! Resubmit.
Familiarize yourself with the places you want to submit. If editors keep telling you that your work doesn’t fit their publication, read the publication. If you can’t access the publication because of monetary restrictions, look for copies in your local library or read the work of the writers who have recently been published by the magazine or journal. A Googlesearch of the author will find other work of theirs that you can read for free. Compare their aesthetic to your own. Are you a fit? Then it’s a good place to submit!
Make sure your work is submission-ready. This is the number one sin of writers, according to Viva Padilla. Dryland doesn’t edit poetry; “…we expect poems to be ready to go,” she said. “When it comes to fiction and nonfiction that gets rejected, it’s mostly work that doesn’t seem to have a focus where we’re left wondering, what was that about?” Workshop your work with other writers and make sure to check your grammar before you submit.
Don’t expect an editor to provide feedback. If a magazine rejected you without giving a reason, pestering an editor for the “why” will quickly slam doors on future opportunities. Personalized rejections are rare. They are nice when they come in, but an editor doesn’t owe you a reason.
The reality is slush piles at literary magazines are immense, and many editors are volunteers or minimally compensated. These magazines are mostly labors of love for the written word. Rejection may seem personal, but it’s not. Even literary magazine editors get rejections from other publications. The more you submit, the greater the chance your work will find a literary home. The more time you take to prepare and research the best market for your work, the greater your odds for acceptance. Don’t be discouraged when you get a no. Look over your work and see if there are any structural or grammatical issues. If not, submit it again ASAP. If there are errors, fix them and send your piece out again.
Bottom line: it’s time to Shut Up & Submit!
Thea Pueschel is a writer, multi-media artist, and the winner of the TAEM 2020 Flash Fiction Summer Contest. Thea enjoys exploring the dark with light and the light with dark and a firm believer that without the shadow art and literature has less soul.
In honor of National Poetry Month, Women Who Submit is hosting a Poetry Submission Blitz on April 9, 2017 from 12pm-3pm at the Arts District Brewing Company. A submission blitz is a call to writers to submit their well-crafted and cared for work en masse to tier one literary journals that historically have shown gender disparities in their publications. A submission blitz is a call to action.
How would you describe your city and your local literary community?
We like to say that Long Beach is a “little ‘big’ city.” We have a big and diverse population and lots of very different communities. In fact, LB was named one of the most diverse cities in the US according to the last census. A fact we are very proud of.
Women Who Submit: How would you describe your city and your local literary community?
Kirsten Major: New York is a big-little city. We are 8 million in number, but the literary scene is small–everyone is about 1 person away from everyone else. Sharing air with literary giants is not uncommon. The five boroughs, plus Jersey City, plus Long Island reading scene is endless. My fantasy day job would be to be the Bill Cunningham of the literati, on my bike every night with a camera around my neck, on my way to a reading somewhere to take pictures of my world.
WWS: How did you hear of Women Who Submit, and why were you drawn to start a WWS chapter in your area?
KM: It just gets so. Darned. Hard. To keep putting yourself out there. Leland Cheuk, who wrote The Misadventures of Sulliver Pong, has written about this beautifully, persevering in the face of unstinting rejection. And also, it is mighty easy to have dedicated writing time co-opted by sending my work out if I haven’t in a while. Above all, it’s lonely. I am pretty active on Twitter so one day I put it out there, “Is there any one who knows if there are submissions parties? Is this a thing?” And someone sent me the WWS Twitter handle and I thought, that’s for me. It was absolutely key that Ashaki Jackson, co-founder, had a training session, coached me about attracting people and then worked her own NYC-based network of poets at Cave Canem,to help me get started. The national organization has supported me at every level and that keeps me going. Continue reading “Highlight on WWS-NYC: An Interview with Chapter Lead, Kirsten Major”
The first time I applied for a fellowship was in spring 2009. I was about to finish grad school, and I sent out a slew of applications like I was applying for a PhD. I figured it was the next logical step as I readied myself to move beyond my MFA program, and I had the mentors close by to help. I gathered transcripts and letters of recommendation, curated samples of work and wrote project proposals. I remember one mentor agreed to write a letter with what I perceived as little enthusiasm. When all the rejections came in that summer, I read the bios of those who won and took notice of all their previous awards and accolades. I thought back to that mentor and considered her lackluster support the response of someone who understood the literary world better than I did at that time.
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.”
Two years ago, I decided I needed to focus my submission process. I’d received acceptances from some wonderful journals, but I’m ambitious as hell and I wanted to take my writing and submission goals to the next level. Around the same time, I also decided to apply for grants and residencies, so I started to target my submissions and applications more strategically.
As I’ve written previously, this approach has had some success, mostly in the form of personal rejections. But the editorial notes and feedback have given me more than just warm, fuzzy feelings of validation—they’ve given me a better sense of my most receptive audience. In the two years since I decided to submit more strategically, I’ve discovered that my writing seems to appeal mostly to editors and directors who are women. The judges and editors who’ve written me the warmest rejections have identified as women or represented women-centric organizations, or both.
When I first started writing essays, I knew that I wanted to become a contributing blogger for The Huffington Post. It’s one of the largest and most trafficked publications in the world, providing an invaluable platform for a fledgling writer like myself.
But getting into HuffPo wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Unlike other publications I’ve managed to get my work in, it would take several attempts—as well as a few different tactics—to land that coveted “Contributing Blogger” title.
When I started submitting essays to The Huffington Post, I used my standard approach. I submitted an article, waited a few weeks, and then submitted another. When a few more weeks passed with no response, I tried one more time.
Each submission was sent to the same category, “Healthy Living,” because my writing at the time focused on mental health. And each time I submitted an article, I received no response whatsoever.
I realized that it was time to approach the situation from another angle. My mother happens to be a contributing blogger for HuffPo after getting connected with an editor through one of her contacts. I decided to try out the same approach and asked her to connect me with her editor. We exchanged a couple of emails, and the editor assured me that my articles were being passed on to the right people at “Healthy Living.” After two months of waiting, there was still absolutely no response.
I was ready to give up hope. I told myself that HuffPo wasn’t the right fit for me. They didn’t like my writing. I wasn’t marketable enough. I should just stop trying. I should give up.
But then I wrote an article that was different than the kinds of articles I’d been writing before. It was about the Netflix series, Orange is the New Black, and how the newest season dealt with the subject of depression. After getting the pitch rejected from Salon, I decided I might as well send it off to HuffPo because it seemed like it would be a good fit.
I chose “Entertainment” as my category for the post and sent it off at a Women Who Submit meeting without any expectations. A few days later, I received an email from an “Entertainment” editor informing me that my piece was going to be published. She sent me the information to set up my account, and I officially became a Huffington Post Contributing Blogger. I was absolutely thrilled.
Once my article, “What Orange is the New Black Gets Right About Depression,” was posted, I submitted an article that had previously been rejected by the “Healthy Living” section. To my surprise, it was also published a few days later…in the “Healthy Living” section. I’m now able to submit pretty much any article I want, and as a contributor, it goes right through.
The entire process from first submission to eventual publication took about eight months and six separate essay submissions. It would have been easy to give up on becoming a HuffPo contributor after any of these attempts and approaches failed. It took rethinking my approach and submitting a different kind of piece to a different set of editors to finally get published on the site.
The thing I’ve learned about getting published is that it’s not just about trying again and again. Persistence and patience aren’t always enough. Sometimes you need to switch gears and approach something from a new angle to get your foot in the door.
Alana Saltz is a writer, freelance editor, and occasional ukulele rocker residing in Los Angeles. Her essays can be found in The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, HelloGiggles, RoleReboot, The Manifest-Station, and more. You can visit her website at alanasaltz.com and follow her on Twitter @alanasaltz.
Alana Saltz is a writer, freelance editor, and occasional ukulele rocker residing in Los Angeles. Her essays can be found in The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, HelloGiggles, RoleReboot, The Manifest-Station, and more. You can visit her website at