writing conferences – Women Who Submit

January 30, 2024March 14, 2024

WWS at AWP Kansas City Guide

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

Support friends

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2024

PANEL: Embracing the Body: A Journey of Illness and Celebration

9:00 am to 10:00 am

Virtual

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.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2024

PANEL: Navigating Stormy Waters: Telling your tales when they’re hard to tell

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

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.

PANEL: Sin Fronteras: Navigating, Representing, and Publishing Latine Authors

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

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..

PANEL: Speaking Mosaics: Hybrid Narratives & the Prism of Identity

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Room 2504AB, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 2

Panelists: Marissa Landrigan, Rajiv Mohabir, Monica Prince, Adriana Es Ramirez, Caitlyn Hunter

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

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM

Mouthfeel Press Booth #3021

PANEL: Decolonizing American Literature: The Goals, Challenges, and Strategies of Writers

10:35 AM – 11:50 AM

Room 2502A, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 2

Panelists: GEMINI WAHHAJ, Sehba Sarwar, Oindrila Mukherjee, Namrata Poddar

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.

PANEL: Getting Non-Writers to Write: Teaching Outside of the English Department

12:10 PM – 1:25 PM

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.

PANEL: Poets Against Walls: An Anthology/Handbook for Writing Past the Checkpoints

1:45 PM – 3:00 PM

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.

PANEL: Reproductive Writes: Writing About Reproductive Choice, Loss, and Justice

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

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.

PANEL: To Keep or Not to Keep: Shifting Models in the Post-Pandemic Workshop

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

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.

READING: TRANSFORMATION: A Women Who Submit Anthology – AWP Release Reading

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM

Kansas City Central Library: 14 West 10th Street Kansas City, MO 64105

Room: “The Vault”

Featuring Lisa Allen (WWS-KC), Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Carly Marie DeMento, Toni Ann Johnson, Noriko Nakada, and Nancy Lynée Woo

READING: Host Publications proudly presents “A Feminist Reading at AWP Kansas City’’

7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

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

10:00 AM – 10:30 AM

Letras Latinas Table #830

PANEL: Should I Just Give Up?

12:10 PM – 1:25 PM

Room 2215A, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level

Panelists: Michelle Otero, Anel Flores, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Jackie Cuevas, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera

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

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

FlowerSong Press, Booth #T1051

Panel: Beyond Borderlands: Celebrating Essential Latinx Poetry from Texas Presses

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

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.

PANEL: Too Small For the Patriarchy: Getting Girlhood Stories Past the Gatekeepers

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

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?

PANEL: Transformation: Creating Change Through Collaboration

3:20 PM – 4:35 PM

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

READING: FlowerSong AWP Offsite Reading

6:05 PM

Habitat Contemporary: 2012 Baltimore Avenue

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.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2024

PANEL: Una Mujer Peligrosa: Celebrating the Queer Work and Life of tatiana de la tierra

9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

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.

PANEL: Be Gay, Do Crime: Teaching Queer and Trans Poetics in Dangerous Times

10:35 AM – 11:50 AM

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.

PANEL: Keeping It Lit: Nurturing a Literary Journal Program at Two-Year Colleges

10:35 AM – 11:50 AM

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.

PANEL: Beyond Zoom: Building Vibrant Literary Communities in a New Hybrid Era

12:10 PM – 1:25 PM

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

UCLA Extension Writers Program #831

February 26, 2020February 26, 2020

Breathe and Push: Pushing Publishing at the AWP Book Fair: A Choose Your Own Adventure!

By Noriko Nakada

I’m heading to AWP again this year. Last year was my first because I had the chance to table for Jack Jones Literary Arts. I also listened in on panels, heard from writers I respect and admire, and tackled that book fair.

The book fair is so overwhelming. All of those presses and programs and tables and books and writers. You could run into Jericho Brown wearing a flower crown, or Terese Marie Mailhot signing her memoir, or Wendy Ortiz browsing. In that overwhelm that is the AWP Book Fair, I was star-struck, and buying too many books, and stuck in my head as I wandered the aisles. I saw presses I’d sent work to who had passed. There were presses I’d never heard of. There were presses who’d published me. What did I have to say at these tables where my words were or were not welcome?

I felt lost, and small, so I found my way back to the Jack Jones table again and again. I only tabled there for a few hours over the course of the conference, but it was always a magnet pulling me, and it felt like my home base within that chaos. Even when I wasn’t tabling for them, every time I found myself in that fair, I’d walk by their table, visit with the staff or an author, ask if they needed anything, and help out before making my way to a lecture or panel.

Jack Jones isn’t at AWP this year, but I want to tackle that book fair in a way that feels healthy and productive. I don’t want to feel so lost and overwhelmed. So this is my AWP Book Fair action, and I invite any Women Who Submit members who are attending to join me in putting a little activism into your book fair wanderings.

1) Approach a press with one of our Women Who Submit postcards.

2) Present the card and introduce yourself. Explain a little about Women Who Submit, an organization which, as a response to the VIDA count, empowers women and nonbinary writers to submit their work for publication.

3) Choose your own adventure:

a friendly press: Thank the presses for doing their part to bring more gender equity into the publishing world. Maybe ask how they think they will do on the 2019 count, and what they plan to do to ensure continued equity in 2020. Ask about how they think they’re doing publishing women of color.

a press that is making gains: Acknowledge that the press has improved, but isn’t yet equitable. Ask if they are doing anything to ensure more equitable gains on the 2019 count or for 2020. Ask if they know about their racial representation and how they think they are doing/can do better.

a press that isn’t friendly to women: OK, only one of these is at AWP this year, but go ahead and let them know that they aren’t very equitable in their publishing of women and ask if they’re doing anything to change this. Ask how they might improve their representation of women of color.

a press that isn’t on the VIDA count list: There are so many of these! Ask them how many women editors they have, editors of color, queer editors? Are they actively recruiting marginalized voices? What are their strategies? Do they pay? Are they interested in hearing from our members? Particularly if there are women tabling, and specifically women of color, thank them for the work they are hopefully doing to ensure more equity in publishing.

4) Ask them to look for Women Who Submit members in their slush piles, and to be on the lookout for submissions during our Annual Submission Blitz in August!

5) Record your interaction. Did they seem receptive to WWS’s mission? Any names of editors or upcoming submission deadlines you should note? Will you send them work?

Press/Table	Response to WWS Mission	Editor Names*	Any upcoming call for submissions	Will you submit?

Please record your activism on this google form.

https://forms.gle/MNw1syCdMGbX87z49

It’s that simple! Make the most of your AWP!

Press designations from the 2018 VIDA Count: Book Fair location or N/A (not attending)

Friendly Presses

+60% women published
McSweeney’s: T1930
The Missouri Review: N/A
Prairie Schooner: 1668-1669
The Normal School: N/A
Pleiades: T2034
The Cincinnati Review: 1533, 1534

+50% women published
Tin House: 1635
Granta: N/A
Boston Review: N/A
Ninth Letter: 1532
Jubilat: N/A
Colorado Review: 1430
Conjunctions: N/A
Virginia Quarterly: 1129
Fence: 1751
n+1: T1321
The Believer: 1643-1644
New England Review: N/A
Kenyon Review: 1655

Getting Better: (made improvements >+5% in more equitable representation, but still not to 50%)
Poetry: 1457
The New Yorker: N/A
Gettysburg Review: 1135
Southwest Review: T259
Harvard Review: T1220

Male-Dominated Presses (less than 40% women represented)
The Times Literary Supplement: N/A
The Nation: N/A
The Threepenny Review: N/A
London Review of Books: N/A
The Atlantic: N/A
The New York Review of Books: 1058

Find us for WWS cards at the ACCOLADES Release Party on Thursday, March 5th from 4pm-7pm at La Botanica or at the ACCOLADES Book Signing on Friday, March 6th from 12pm-2pm at table Nosotrxs: More Than Books, 1038.

You can also catch WWS members all over AWP. Here is our AWP San Antonio guide.

Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. Publications include: Through Eyes Like Mine (2010), Overdue Apologies (2012), and I Tried (2019). Excerpts, essays, and poetry have appeared in Catapult, Meridian, Kartika, Hippocampus, Compose, Linden Avenue and elsewhere.

February 25, 2020March 2, 2020

WWS at AWP20 San Antonio

Black woman speaking from podium in a conference room as other women in her black mother collective look on.

By Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

It’s time for our annual WWS-AWP guide. Below you will find a list of panels, readings, and book signings featuring our members, including the release of our very first anthology, ACCOLADES on Thursday, March 5th at La Botanica. Last year in Portland, I chose to only attend WWS events, and the result was inspiring. I wrote about the powerful collaborative panels I was lucky to attend last year in this piece for our blog. If you’re overwhelmed by all the offerings, try what I did and pick a few events from our list.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2020

Neo n Lit Offsite Reading

The Twig Book Shop: 306 Pearl Pkwy #106 San Antonio, TX 78215 / 7pm-9pm / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Lorinda Toledo. From description: “Please join us for our Neon Lit Alumni Reading @ AWP, San Antonio! There will be raffles/prizes.”

THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2020

Making Place in Hybrid Tongues

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 2016A / 10:35am-11:50am / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Sehba Sarwar. From description: “This panel highlights the work of writers who explore remembered and imagined attachments with place. Featuring five women of color whose living and writing transcend national borders and literary genres, the panel asks whether the places we navigate demand their own hybrid literary forms. Writers who wear multiple tags—novelist, memoirist, poet, translator, critic—read from new work. These works embody aesthetic and political choices involved in representing locales across genres.”

One Day on the Gold Line (Black Rose Writing 2019) Book Signing Featuring Carla R Sameth / Bookfair, Table #958 / 1pm-5pm

Accolades: WWS Anthology AWP Release Party

La Botanica: 2911 N Saint Marys St, San Antonio, Texas 78212 / 4pm-7pm / FREE

Join us in celebrating the release of ACCOLADES: a Women Who Submit Anthology at AWP! We will have featured readers, copies of the anthology for sale, and La Botanica will have drinks and food for sale. We’ve been empowering women and nonbinary writers to submit work for publication since 2011, but this is our very first, all our own publication.

One Poem Festival: Canto Mundo, Letras Latinas, and Macondo

San Antonio Public Library: 600 Soledad St, San Antonio, Texas 78205 / 6pm-7:30pm

Featuring WWS member, Vickie Vértiz as well as other writers from Macondo Writers Workshop, Canto Mundo, and Letras Latinas.

Po etry on the River Walk | AWP Offsite

Casa Rio (Veranda Room): 430 E commerce St., San Antonio, TX / 6:30pm-10pm / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Tanya Ko Hong. From description: “Join 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, Poetry Northwest, and Quarterly West for an AWP offsite poetry reading. Walk from the conference center to Casa Rio (Veranda Room), located on the River Walk. Free drinks and appetizers while they last. See you there!”

Tupelo Press 30/30/Conference Alumni Reunion Reading

La Villita Historic Arts Village: 418 Villita St, San Antonio, Texas 78205 / 7pm-9pm / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Donna Spruijt-Metz along side other Tupelo Press alumni. From description: “This fifth annual Alumni Reunion Reading for 30/30 and Conference alums.”

FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2020

ACCOLADES: A WWS Anthology Book Signing Featuring WWS Contributors / Bookfair, Nosotrxs: More Than Books #1038 / 12pm-2pm

The Woven Verse: An Exploration of the Latinx Verse Novel in Kidlit

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 217B / 12:10pm-1:35pm

Featuring WWS Member, Vickie Vértiz. From description: “Latinx novels in verse have burst the children’s and young adult literary world open with award-winning and groundbreaking books. Join celebrated authors as they delve into the craft of writing a novel through the art of poetry as well as how their unique Latinx identity and experiences inform and nourish their work.”

New Suns: Afrofuturist and Cyborg Aesthetics

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 214B / 1:45pm-3pm

Featuring WWS member, Karolyn Gehrig. From description: “Octavia Butler writes, “There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” Taking a cue from Butler—Afrofuturist and disabled writer—this panel will discuss and demonstrate some new suns. What can a poem do in the 21st century? What is the strange new grammar of screens? How do we create and conscript images for activism? Panelists work in multiple genres including creative nonfiction, mixed media, performance, and poetry.”

To Be Young, Black, & Tenure Track: Diversity in Higher Education

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 008 / 1:45 pm to 3:00 pm

Featuring WWS member, Ryane Granados. From description: “What does it mean when you walk into a classroom and the person at the podium looks like you? As colleges across the nation increase diversity and inclusion efforts to close equity gaps for students of color, they may be overlooking one thing—diverse faculty representation. Published authors and professors, our panelists share best practices for culturally responsive pedagogy, their experiences in academia, tips for supporting Black teachers, as well as how they make time for writing.”

UGA Author Signing Featuring Colette Sartor / Bookfair, UGA Press Booth #1730 / 3pm

Veliz Books, offsite reading

Menger Hotel: 204 Alamo Plaza, San Antonio, TX 78205, United States / 5:30pm / FREE

Featuring WWS member, Sehba Sarwar.

3×3: Offsite With ALR, The Pinch, and The Arkansas International

Francis Bogside: 803 S Saint Marys St, San Antonio, Texas 78205 / 6pm-8pm

Featuring WWS member, Soleil Davíd. From description: “3×3: A reading hosted by American Literary Review, The Pinch Literary Journal, and The Arkansas International. Come join us for another #awp off-site reading.”

New Futures: Apogee x Offing Off-Site

The Cherrity Bar: 302 Montana St., San Antonio, Texas 78203 / 6pm-8pm FREE

From description: “2020 is The Offing’s fifth birthday and Apogee’s ten-year anniversary! Come celebrate with six authors (all joint contributors) who are writing what’s possible for literatures to come. We’ll dream up what our communities need for ten more years of extraordinary publishing—writing for us and by us, another decade at the outermost.”

Saturday, March 7, 2020

Women Trespassing: Women Breaking the Rules in Fiction and Their Writing Careers

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 008 / 9am-10:15am

Featuring WWS member, Liz Harmer. From description: “A Catholic-turned-Buddhist has sex with her Zen master. A biomechanist builds a deer suit to live in the woods. A woman stalks the celebrity living on her street. A girl basketball player navigates a male-dominated world. In this panel, women writers discuss how they write trespassing women and break rules in their writing lives. Women writers have been too long excluded from spaces of authority. We’re taking the power back. This panel is for writers ready to make risky choices and daring work.”

In Limbo: The Dilemma of Digital Thesis Repositories

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 210B / 10:35 am to 11:50 am

Featuring WWS member, Lorinda Toledo. From description: “As universities across the nation have transitioned to electronic theses, many graduate students face a dilemma: to earn a degree they are required to submit their work to a digital thesis repository. And though several top programs offer exemptions, not all programs protect students from having to submit their creative work to open-access repositories. What solutions exist for programs to protect creative theses from future publication roadblocks or potential piracy? We’ll describe a few.”

Macondo Writers Workshop Book Signing Featuring Sehba Sarwar / Bookfair, Gemini Ink/Macondo Booth #1471 / 12pm

Writing Medicine: The Role of Artists in Cultural and Community Healing

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 213 / 12:10 pm to 1:25 pm

Featuring WWS member, Maya Chanchilla. From description: “In November 2018, the FBI reported that hate crimes increased for the third consecutive year. Writers and artists build resilience and help communities heal, not only through our work on the page, but through our work in the world. Panelists offer reflections on their healing practices, from hosting pláticas following the Pulse Nightclub shooting, to working with Central American migrants at the border, to rewriting the centuries-old proclamation for the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico.”

Being an Accomplice: Supporting Local Communities through Literary Programming

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 206B / 1:45-3pm

Featuring WWS members, Kate Maruyama and Traci Kato-Kiriyama. From description: “There is an explosion of literary events all over the country, from readings showcasing famous writers to poetry nights at the local bookstore. But a neighborhood, a community, a city needs more. Literary accomplices can work together to create events that open spaces, fight erasure, and shift culture, providing environments that are safe, generative, supportive, and inclusive. Join four panelists producing events around the country to elevate the unique communities in which they work.”

Chicanas de la Frontera: Writing and Activism from the Border States

Henry B. González Convention Center, Room 205 / 1:45pm-3pm

Featuring WWS members Marisol Baca, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, and Viktoria Valenzuela. From description: “In the tradition of the 1960s Chicano Movement, made well-known by the United Farm Workers strikes of Central Valley, California, and high school blowouts of Los Angeles, Chicana poets and writers from the four border states—Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California—discuss creative writing, activism, and the connections between the two. Listen to poems and stories from the borderlands, learn about current day actions to fight tyranny, and gain strategies for organizing in your own communities.”

#DignidadLiteraria Read-In at AWP

The Grassy Slope Outside the Henry B. González Convention Center / 5pm / FREE

Featuring many Latinx and BIPOC writers. From description: “No badges. No featured writers. Just us, our words, our people, our dignity.”

May 8, 2019May 6, 2019

The WWS Guide to LitFest Pasadena

The 7th Annual LitFest Pasadena is coming Saturday, May 18th and Sunday, May 19th. This two-day event will take over well-known Pasadena literary and arts venues such as Vroman’s Bookstore and the Pasadena Playhouse with over 50 panels, workshops, and readings featuring authors, publishers, editors, and educators from all around Southern California and beyond. This year individuals from our WWS community make a big splash featuring in 10 events. Here is a breakdown of where you can find our celebrated members.

See you in Pasadena!

Languas Revoltosas
Women of Color Disrupting Traditional Literary Zones
May 18, Saturday, 3-4 p.m. at The Stand

“Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity—I am my language,” wrote the legendary poet-scholar Gloria Anzaldúa. Despite rich linguistic/cultural diversity within the United States, the primary passport in mainstream publishing continues to be monolinguistic. This multi-genre reading features writers of color with unruly tongues disrupting English-only literary zones and challenging perceptions of what constitutes Latinx and POC writing and identity. Featuring Angelina Sáenz, Tanya Ko Hong, Veronica Reyes, and Sehba Sarwar. Hosted by Olga Echeverría Garcia.

Writing Our Own Codices
Acts of Resistance to 500 Years of Detentions and Killings
May 18, Saturday, 4:30-5:30 p.m., Vroman’s Bookstore, courtyard

Project 1521 gathers artists, writers, and scholars to generate new visual and literary works as we approach the 500 year anniversary of the conquest of Mexico. The goal is to make sense of current acts of detention and killings and create works as acts of resistance. Participants will read new texts with a reproduction of Sandy Rodriguez’s “Codex Rodriguez-Mondragón” as outdoor installation, and dialogue with the audience. Featuring Adrian Arancibia, Letiticia Hernández, Arminé Iknadossian, Darren J. de Leon, Dr. Diana Magaloni, Linda Ravenswood, Yago S. Cura, Sandy Rodriguez, and Adolfo Guzman-Lopez.

You Might as Well Live
Traversing Pain, Pleasure, and Everything in Between in the Queer Memoir
May 18, Saturday, 7:30-8:30 p.m., Vroman’s Bookstore, upstairs

This lively and thought-provoking panel discussion will feature an eclectic and electric group of LGBTQ authors discussing their recent memoirs, the writing process, inspiration(s), and much more. Featuring Alex Espinoza, Ali Liebegott, Carla Sameth, Jacob Tobia, and Corey Roskin as moderator.

Diving into the Wreck
The Inheritance of Trauma
May 18, Saturday, 7:30-8:30 p.m., Pasadena Playhouse, courtyard

Award-winning poets William Archila, Lory Bedikian, Douglas Manuel, and Michelle Brittan Rosado read from their harrowing collections about family, what we inherit, and trauma that haunts through generations. Their works swim in the wake of Adrienne Rich’s 1973 Diving into the Wreck and seek “the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth” of their own subjective experiences.

Power Treaties
May 19, Sunday, 3-4:30 p.m., Battery Books & Music
26. S. Robles Ave., Pasadena 91101

Enjoy a literary performance of poetry, prose, and music about the topic of power. The artists will stretch and play with the different dimensions of power —how they use it, lose it, abuse it, shape or share it. The performance will at Battery Books and Music will highlight the work of the following poets, essayists, and lyricists: Amy Shimshon-Santo, Adrian Ernesto, Mireya Vela, Brennan DeFrisco, and Avila Santo.

East Pasadena Poets
Celebrating Each Other Through Poetry
May 19, Sunday, 4:30-5:30 p.m., Pasadena Playhouse, courtyard

This six-year-old writers’ group has been gathering to share poetry, help one another improve, and to celebrate and support the art and craft of poetry. Members will read their own and others’ poetry in a round-robin style, focusing on the themes of community and connection. Featuring Beverly Lafontaine, Cathie Sandstrom, Elline Lipkin, Genevieve Kaplan, and Mary Fitzpatrick.

The Citizen Poets Sparking Our Civic Imagination
May 19, Sunday, 4:30-5:30 p.m., El Portal, banquet room

The Pasadena Rose Poets are a group of citizen poets who have been reading poetry during the public comment period of Pasadena City Council meetings since February 2017. “I believe that because of the poetry reading at City Council our meetings are more civil,” says Pasadena Mayor Terry Tornek. Featuring Hazel Clayton Harrison, Gerda Govine Ituarte, Shahé Mankerian, and Toni Mosley.

Queer, Adoptive, and Nontraditional Families
Writing Our Truth
May 19, Sunday, 6-7 p.m., Pasadena Playhouse, library

Whether writing about child-rearing or unrelated topics, parenthood intersects at every level of the professional author experience. Queer parents are often intentional in creating their families and in how they position themselves as writers. This panel features diverse authors who define themselves as something other than a “traditional” mother. Featuring Pat Alderete, Nefertiti Austin, Cheryl Klein, Carroll Sun Yang, and Carla Sameth as moderator.

Is Traditional Masculinity “Toxic”?
May 19, Sunday, 6-7 p.m., El Portal, banquet room

This panel discussion will provide a basic overview of the key guidelines in the recent American Psychological Associations’ Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men. This report has generated considerable attention and controversy in the popular press in its description of some traditional tropes of masculinity as problematic and maladaptive, especially within the context of the #MeToo movement and on-going debates regarding “toxic masculinity.” The panelists, which includes one of the leadauthors of the report as well as an expert on adolescent development, will reflect on competing and often contradictory pressures that boys face in this environment, and how data indicate serious challenges in academic and health outcomes. Featuring Ioakim Boutakidis, Matt Englar Carlson, Sehba Sarwar, and Jinghuan Liu Tervalon, moderator.

No Longer the Scream Queen
Women’s Roles in Horror
May 19, Sunday, 6-7 p.m., Vanessa’s Café

Women creators in the horror genre discuss the roles and representation of female characters and archetypes in horror literature and film. Featuring Kate Maruyama, Kate Jonez, Kathryn McGee, Lisa Morton, and Ashley Santana, moderator.

March 6, 2018

Writing on a Budget: Discounts

By Lisbeth Coiman

Although writing involves a desk and countless hours sitting in front of computer, it has a significant overhead cost. Expenses add up pretty quickly and include items as varied as office supplies to car expenses. We learn to make informed decisions, and find the discounts to finance projects or conferences.

Early Bird Registration

Careful planning is the key to take advantage of the Early Bird Registration for conferences, especially those asking up to $300 (airfare, lodging, and food & beverages not included). Early registration can save you 15% off the total cost. The Early Bird discount is not restricted to large events and can be found in most small and local workshops and classes. Plan ahead to catch limited-time opportunities for conferences like Mendocino Coast Writers Conferences. Continue reading “Writing on a Budget: Discounts”

July 19, 2017

I’m a Writing Conference/Workshop Junkie

Two women on a workshop panel face a workshop group, presenting A Crash Course in Literary Submissions

by Tisha Reichle

I don’t know if it’s being surrounded by the energy of other writers or pretending for a week, a few days, an afternoon, that I’m a student again, but I sit dutifully in the hotel ballroom chair or at a classroom table or around the cozy fireplace with a view of nearby nature, and listen carefully, take notes, ask thoughtful questions, and offer my insight when appropriate. In 2015-2016, I attended more than ten different conferences and workshops, traveled to seven cities, and spent a lot of my teacher salary. Various notebooks strewn about my apartment and a pile of receipts can attest to this. The experience thrills me every time and after each one, I’m eager for the next.

There are many writing conferences and workshops to choose from in the US and abroad. Which one is “the best” depends on your needs as a writer, your budget, and your desire for distance (or not). I usually looked for conferences/workshops in summer when I wasn’t teaching, in places I love (like New Mexico), where a writer I admire is an instructor, or a topic I’m passionate about is the focus. This strategy led me to my first workshop, Flight of the Mind, in 1995 in Eugene, Oregon with Helena Maria Viramontes. Continue reading “I’m a Writing Conference/Workshop Junkie”

February 5, 2017March 7, 2018

WWS at AWP17

Are you feeling anxious just yet about this year’s AWP conference? Not to worry because we have a guide to all events where you can find the happy, shining faces of Women Who Submit and friends. And while you are combing the bookfair, be sure to find us at booth 975 with Roar Feminist Magazine and Dandelion Review to pick up an “I submitted!” button and to add your name to the WWS daily giveaway. It will include one WWS tote with books, chapbooks, and zines from our members including copies of Posada: Offerings of Wintess and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016) by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Gent/Re Place Ing (Write Large Press 2016) by Jessica Ceballos Campbell, Surveillance (Write Large Press 2016) by Ashaki M. Jackson, Cake Time (Red Hen Press 2017) by Siel Ju, Excavation (Future Tense Books 2014) by Wendy C. Ortiz, Wrestling Alligators (Martin Brown Publishers 2016) by Diane Sherlock, Traci Traci Love Fest, a collection of poems from L.A. poets writing in support of poet, performer and community activist Traci Kato Kiriyama as she battles breast cancer and more!

Plus, don’t forget to reread this piece by Lauren Eggert-Crowe for reminders on how to stay happy and healthy over the next week, and we recommend checking out Entropy’s guide if you are looking for avenues of resistance and action. Continue reading “WWS at AWP17”

December 2, 2015

Women Who Share: Désirée Zamorano on Daily Goals and the Power of Conferences

In 1997, more years ago than I care to admit to, I attended a Bouchercon mystery conference and listened to the writer Patricia Sprinkle speak about the “seasons” in a writer’s life. At that time I had two small children, taught 5th grade, and had committed myself to carve time out of my day to write. But, I had given myself a daily quota that I was daily unable to make. I goaded, scolded and loathed myself for not accomplishing my daily goal, day after day after day. When Ms. Sprinkle spoke, she reminded her audience of the different seasons in our lives, to recognize and honor them. I took her words in, deeply. I vowed not to beat myself up for missing arbitrary targets.

Continue reading “Women Who Share: Désirée Zamorano on Daily Goals and the Power of Conferences”