We at WWS know that many of you are feeling scared, drained, and at a loss on how to help. In response to the murders of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026, Keith Porter by an off-duty ICE agent in Los Angeles on December 31, 2025, Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez by an ICE agent in Chicago on September 12, 2025, and the more than 20 people killed in ICE detention in 2025 alone, WWS has put together a short list of resources on how to get involved.
In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jrโs memory and message, we encourage you to take a few minutes today to look over our list and find a couple of places to donate to, volunteer with, or follow.
Itโs almost time! LA will play host to the iconic writerโs conference, AWP from March 26 – 29th, 2025. So many panels, readings, and off-site gatherings, itโs a lot for a group not especially known as extroverts. Iโm looking at you, fellow writers. But donโt worry, weโve got you covered.
Weโve put together a list to help you connect with other members of Women Who Submit. Itโs 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 canโt 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!
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 Sรกenz, Melinda Palacio, Vickie Vรฉrtiz, Antonieta Villamil, Luis J. Rodriguez, Hosts: Rey M. Rodrรญguez and Jorge H. Rodrรญguez
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 Angรฉlica Villarreal (Magical Realism), Annie Liontas (Sex With a Brain Injury), Shze-Hui Tjoa (The Story Game), Grace Loh Prasad (The Translatorโs 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.
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 โtraditionalโ white supremacist frameworks in college-level composition courses.
Location: Booth T3358 Cรญrculo de poetas and Writers Booth, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description:Conversaciones con los difuntos / Conversations with the Dead is Diosa Xochiquetzacรณatlโs 5th poetry collection, her first fully bilingual book, and first collection to be published and artisanally handcrafted in Mexico by Editorial Desierto Mayor.
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 cityโs 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 Angelesโs cultural and social history.
Panelists: Moderator: Vickie Vertiz Presenter: Steve Gutierrez Presenter: Joelle Mendoza Presenter: Jenise Miller Presenter: Tanzila Ahmed
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.
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 soโwhile also taking into consideration the roles of culture and institutionsโas 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 Placesby Diosa Xochiquetzalcรณatl
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
Location: Room 408A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: This panel explores aspects of erasure, evanescence, and loss, as in the erasure of oneโs identity and subjectivity through racial and historical lenses, as in the extinction of 150 species in an average day, and how poets can โknock on silence,โ 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
Location: LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, 501 N Main St, Los Angeles 90012
Description: Come celebrate the launch of our 30รฑera: 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 Treviรฑo, Denise Tolan, Renรฉ Colato Lainez, Lesley Tรฉllez, Mona Alvarado Frazier, Adela Najarro, Sebha Sanwar, Karina Muรฑiz-Pagรกn, 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
Location: Truly LA, 216 S. Alameda St., Los Angeles, CA 90012
Description: Exposition Review is turning 10! You are officially invited to Expoโs in-person, off-site, literary citizenship extravaganza. Letโs party, seltzer-style!
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 IIโera 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.
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 โthe spirit of a placeโ in ways that challenge and fulfill the literary imagination.
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.
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 donโt build their own institutions.
Panelists: Hiram Sims, Peter Woods, Romeo Guzman, Sarah-Rafael Garcia, traci kato-kiriyama, moderated by Chiwan Choi
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.
Location: Room 404AB, Los Angeles Convention Center, Level Two
Description: The panelโwhich includes editors, reviewers, professors, and scholarsโoffers 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
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
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 โlightning readingsโ 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 (LETโS GO LETโS GO LETโS 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)
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.
Location: The Count’s Den1039 South Olive Street Los Angeles, CA 90015
Description: Poetics of Liberationย is an intersectional feminist reading and community gathering celebrating radical and queer writers whose work inspires social transformation. Hosted at The Count’s Denโa stunning, vampiresque theater in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles.
Speakers: Amanda Johnston, heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, mรณnica teresa ortiz, m. mick powell, Lily Someson, Stephanie Niu, Cloud Delfina Cardona, Jae Nichelle, Tala Khanmalek, Ari Kelly, Em Palughi, andย Anel I. Flores
Location: Pieter Performance Space, 2701 North Broadway Los Angeles, CA 90031
Description: โAll of us live in unruly bodies that weโre all trying to take care of as best we can.” โRoxane Gay Readers will share a story about their relationship with a body that refuses to act โas it should.โ 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?
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 hasnโt always looked favorably on the act of public disclosure.
Speakers: Jen Palmares Meadows, Anna Cabe, Melissa Chadburn, Laurel Flores Fantauzzo, and Anna Cabe
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.
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
Location: Room 411, level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description: These five poets representing LAโs diverse identities, including city poet laureates, examine queer community organizing through poetry. This combination discussion panel and reading will pair poems exploring poetryโs 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
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
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 Garcรญa Kohel Presenter: Lauren Salerno
Location: LA Convention Center, Room 405, Level Two
Description: Contemporary writers of the Salvadoran diaspora use the speculativeโthe imaginativeโto parse through the urgent sociopolitical issues affecting the US and El Salvador. If much of El Salvadorโs past was documented by outsiders, its future will be written by these speculative writers and their contemporaries.
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 resistanceโbut 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
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.
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 Barbรฉ Hammer, Jennifer MacKenzie, and Angelica Maria Barraza Tran. Emceed by Cati Porter.
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.
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.
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 โTop Ranked Journals of 2024โ 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-4pmย 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 youโve 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 WWSโs 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 womenโs 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. Iโve 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 membersโ 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. Iโve 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. Iโve 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. Iโve 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. Iโve 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,ย Carolina Monsivรกis,ย Elisa Garza,ย Katherine Hoerth,ย 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,ย Cloud Delfina Cardona,ย Carlos Espinoza,ย Maria Maloney,ย Edward Vidaurreย
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”โworking 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,ย Sehba Sarwar,ย Emmy Perez,ย Carolina Monsivais,ย Celina Gomez
Description: Poets Against Wallsย anthology/handbook features poetry and hybrid writings from the geopolitical spaces of the borderlands, along with a history of the collectiveโs 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,ย Erika Meitner,ย Carla Sameth,ย Maria Novotny,ย 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,ย Ever Jones,ย Ching-In Chen,ย 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, mรณnica teresa ortiz, cloud deflina cardona, Bianca Alyssa Pรฉrez, lily someson, Ae Hee Lee, Jae Nichelle, and Ashley-Devon Williamston.
Description: Host Publications proudly presents โA Feminist Reading at AWP Kansas Cityโโ 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 CoโขImโขPress, Green Writers Press, Mouthfeel Press, and Noemi Press
7:30 PM – 9:30 PM
Cafรฉ Corazรณn: 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,ย 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. Weโll 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,ย Luivette Resto,ย Adrian Cepeda,ย Vincent Cooper,ย 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 whoโve 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 โtoo quietโ or โtoo small,โ requires courage and persistence. When our own inner critics tell us such stories donโt 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 Viramontesโs AWP 2020 keynote address, Women Who Submitโs third anthology,ย 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: Cรฉsar de Leรณn, 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,ย Karleen Pendelton Jimenez,ย Amelia Marรญa de la Luz Montes,ย Myriam Gurba
Description: tatiana de la tierra (1961โ2012) was a Latina lesbian writer and trailblazer. In the nineties, she cofoundedย Esto No Tiene Nombreย andย Conomociรณnย magazines featuring Latina lesbians in the United States and abroad. She later authored her iconicย For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology. In 2022,ย Redonda y radical: antologรญa poรฉtica de tatiana de la tierraย was published in Colombia (Sincronรญa Press). This panel features some of tatianaโs literary coconspirators to discuss her dangerously delicious life and works.
Room 2103A, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level
Panelists: Meg Day,ย Oliver Bendorf,ย Donika Kelly,ย Ching-In Chen,ย Melissa Crowe
Description: Given our nationโs latest investment in suppressing both bodies and books, what is at stakeโnewly, historicallyโin 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,ย Melissa Ford Lucken,ย Mary Lannon,ย 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 obstaclesโsome common, some uniqueโand 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 Muรฑiz-Pagรกn, Minal Hajratwala, Randy Winston, Maceo Nafisah Cabrera-Estevez, & Juanita E. Mantz (JEM)
Description: Community is essential to a writerโs growth, but what do you do when spaces are inhospitable to your community? Build your own! These innovative authors share how theyโve 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. Iโve 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!
