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.
Remote community circles and online discussion boards
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.
The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during June of 2024. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
This is my last post as publication roundup editor. I started as editor in July of 2020, when the pandemic was still in its infancy. Women Who Submit became a lifeline for me with our weekly Zoom check-ins and Writing Alone Together sessions. I’m so grateful to be part of this organization and will miss editing the roundup. I look forward, however, to continuing to read updates about our members’ publishing accomplishments under the editorship of Ariadne Makridakis Arroyo.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in June of 2024!
The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during May of 2024. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with 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 May of 2024!
The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during March and April of 2024. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with 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 March and April of 2024!
The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during February 2024. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with 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 February 2024!
The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during January 2024. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with 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 January 2024!
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
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.
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.
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..
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during December 2023. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with 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 December 2023!
The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during November 2023. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with 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 November 2023!
Los Angeles residents have always been stereotyped as Hollywood physically fit with a green juice in hand while driving down Rodeo Drive. I do occasionally enjoy a green juice but I don’t make a habit out of frequenting tourists’ traps. I pass the Disney concert hall while on my way to Chinatown, East L.A., Little Tokyo, or mid-city. Away from the glitz of Tinseltown, the heart beat of the city exists. Some Angelenos leave to seek more affordable pastures while others linger in the only place that they will ever call home. Some come from areas torn by war or in search of the American dream. This is a place where dreams are made and broken. Perhaps that is why I write and listen to stories about Angelenos. We thrive in a paradigm of contradictions.
I always remember to pack a pair of shades, water, sunscreen, notepad and pen while canvassing Los Angeles on the public transportation. They’ve extended the train lines, which suits me just fine. I can lumber around Sawtelle taking in the savory aroma of bone broth, dip out and be in Mariachi Plaza to hear a serenade while the glare of the afternoon sun beams down on all of those poor souls stuck on one of the freeways, which resemble parking lots during rush hours. I watch people as they walk down the street, bus tables in restaurants, attend to their children, or sit at the local coffee shop typing away on their computers while sipping on their coffee. I usually choose to write at home but the city and its inhabitants inspire me to step away from my desk and home library.
I yearn for the smell of incense, buttery Salvadoran quesadillas, jasmine, and marinated meats. I can smell all of these things from the crowded streets when I walk down just the right one. I sometimes wonder about the people that I encounter in those brief moments. What is their life like? What do we have in common? What are our differences?
In a place as diverse as Los Angeles, differences are easy to pick out, but it’s the similarities that can make people bond and feel empathy for others. Stories can be a powerful bridge to understanding one another. On occasion, I find myself imagining that the woman in front of the temple with the incense sticks is praying for forgiveness. The man in front of me at the panadoria is buying breakfast for his family. The basketball players whose movements blow the scent of fresh jasmine onto the street might be worried about their upcoming finals. The cook in the taco truck is wondering how he’s going to make ends meet this month. I don’t know their stories, but I know that we are alike in some ways, and that thought alone makes me take out my notepad.
I sometimes jot down a few notes and ask a few questions here and there. Occasionally, the answers yield more questions that will go without a response. I try to understand people who may have vast differences from me by researching certain topics related to their experiences.
Spending hours in a library conducting research on history, culture, and language is helpful to my writing. I‘d be a liar if I didn’t admit that the mildew smell of used books is a comfort for me. Going to a library is like coming home. My research doesn’t address all of the questions that I have from talking to people. There are times when emotions and the past guide reactions. Feelings can be difficult to explain or even comprehend. Who knows why one motorist will roll down their window and cuss at another person for cutting them off on the freeway while another one won’t even bother. Emotions about situations are a reflection of the past.
I’ve drawn the conclusion that to live here, one has to admit how much and how very little they know about the city’s residents. Although the differences between us can be numerous, we can always offer empathy. I listen with compassion and gain an insight that I would never have acquired had I not spoken to my fellow Angelenos. These life lessons help me in my day-to-day tasks as well as in my writing.
I ran into someone carrying a power tool on the bus. His eyes lit up when he saw the name of the school that I work for emblazoned across my chest in huge white letters on a fire hydrant red t-shirt. He asked if I was a teacher and what subject I taught. When I told him I work with small children, he told me stories about his daughters that ended with him instructing me on how to use a power drill. I sometimes think of him when I write stories about families. That twinkle in his eyes reflects the same starry gaze that I have when I reminisce about my own little “knuckleheads.” Our astronomically different lifestyles bear resemblance as we connect over children and unfinished projects in my apartment. I learn a fair amount about myself while talking to others. Their experiences guide me.
The most prolific life lessons that I have had through stories comes from the families that I work with as a preschool teacher. I used to work for non-profit organizations in areas that experienced frequent gang activity, poverty, and violent crime. The parents told me stories about being refugees, being harassed by cops, not having enough resources for their children. I had to take notes as I devised a way to best help with their children’s needs.
We are people of color, dark skinned and historically marginalized. I saw a bit of myself reflected in their appearance. We shared the same spaces. I visited the same grocery stores, restaurants, and walked down the same streets. In those instances, I become a part of a community story. We would vibe about the store clerk who always picked their nose when they thought that no one is looking. Complain about the higher prices at our favorite heladeria.
I grew up in an all-American suburban town in the San Gabriel valley. Just another pissed off teen in A.P. English writing poetry and journaling. My parents were able to provide a decent living for me and my little brother. While growing up, I didn’t have the same barriers to resources as my students’ families. Learning about life experiences that differ from mine expands my understanding and awareness of the human condition. This fact makes their stories resonate with me. I don’t focus on writing stories that reflect life experiences that are solely my own. A good book makes the reader relate to the characters in some way. A great book will make you emotionally invested in the characters. I am a speculative fiction writer. My aim is to intrigue readers by creating relatable characters in imaginative moments that no one on this good green earth has experienced.
My favorite books growing up were fairy tales or what I would dub as “whimsical flights of fantasy.” My writing reflects my earlier reading choices, but with a sprinkle of darkness and culture. My plot lines used to rack up body counts as if I was playing a video game. I’ve slightly amended my ways and began to focus more on relationships between characters without the climactic death scenes. Some life situations are just as stressful as being torn limb from limb by zombies. Maybe I’ve changed. Motherhood has become a prominent theme in my stories. Exploring folklore from around the world has taken root in my fiction. Fairy tales where Angelenos reside in conflict. Not every story has to have a happy ending, but it always has to end.
The stories that my past students’ families told me were also full of hope. In a city brimming with dreams, hope is contagious. There’s always a chance for a better tomorrow. At the end of the year, the center that I used to work for hosts a pre-kindergarten graduation. Folks filled up the auditorium while clutching balloons, bouquets, and stuffed animals. Some people have to stand because there aren’t enough chairs. The children perform a few songs, dawn graduation caps, and eat over frosted pieces of white sheet cake. The families shifted together. The metal folding chairs were scattered against the wall to make room for the adults’ latest gossip. An older cousin just graduated high school or college. A father just opened his own small business. A mother is expecting a new addition to the family. We share sorrow and rejoice in triumphs.
The last graduation that I attended at the center was a type of farewell ceremony for me as well. By the end of the week, I’d be starting at a new center. The preschool that I was starting at had raised beds for gardening, several fenced in play yards, and a beautiful interconnecting bike path. Outdoor play would be very different from the scenes of police brutality reenacted by my past students. When I told the families that I was close with that I was switching schools and that the new school would serve wealthy families, they rolled their eyes or gave me menacing looks. They were pissed off that I could leave them to serve families that had their pick of great teachers. I politely sympathized and took their outrage and disgust as a complement to my care of their children and teaching abilities.
Everyone faces challenges in life, although the challenges of the new families that I would be serving might be different, they were still plagued with their own obstacles in life. I couldn’t help but question my decision to leave the center for a more privileged population though. The choice to leave the center was not made light-heartedly. I wanted to stay because I had fostered relationships with the families, but ultimately my desire for new challenges and experiences had won out.
I occasionally run into my old students and people in the community that I once served. Our paths intersect when I stop by my favorite restaurants or bakeries in the area. We embrace, talk, and laugh about the old times. Tears come to the corners of our eyes while remnants of our bond bring back once forgotten feelings. Sometimes when I say goodbye, I can feel their resentments in their hugs or handshakes. Other times, I feel their affection and sorrow. As Angelenos, we bring meaning to each other’s lives in our everyday encounters. Stories told and untold about our differences and similarities. Tall tales that seem like legends among the temples, taco trucks, coffee shops, skyscrapers, and congested freeways.
In a city as crowded and spread out as L.A. you can marvel in her diversity. Draw strength from it. The promise of a better future draws people from different walks of life to this city. No matter what, there is always a tomorrow and another story to write.
Sara Chisolm is a speculative fiction writer based in the Los Angeles area. Her urban fantasy short stories “Serenade of the Gangsta,” “The Fortune of the Three and the Kabuki Mask,” and “We Found Love as the Undead,” were featured in the second and third volumes of the Made in L.A. fiction anthology series. Sara has co-edited for the third, fourth, and fifth books for the annual Made In L.A. anthology.
