Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Cofounder/Executive Director, is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and the author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016). A former Steinbeck Fellow, Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grantee, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, National Parks Arts Foundation, and Poetry Foundation. She has work published in Acentos Review, CALYX, crazyhorse, [Pank], and American Poetry Review among others. Most recently her poem, “Battlegrounds” featured at The Academy of American Poets, Poem-A-Day. She’s coordinated workshops and panels with artworxLA, Latina Writers Conference, and #dignidadliteraria. Learn more at her website.
Alyss Dixson, Cofounder/Advisor, grew up in Portland, Oregon. She received the 2015 Joseph Henry Jackson Award in fiction from the San Francisco Foundation and is writing a collection entitled Fukuoka Woman. She has publications in The Callaloo Journal, Day One, and The Atlantic. She studied at Yale, Columbia, and earned an MFA in fiction from San Francisco State University. She is a graduate Fellow of Cave Canem Foundation, a Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Poetry Fellow, and a Visiting Scholar-Artist in Residence at The Ohio State University. She is the creator of the WWS “submission party.” She also makes movies.
Dr. Ashaki M. Jackson, Co-founder, is a social psychologist and poet who works with youth through research, evaluation and creative writing mentoring. She is a Cave Canem alumna, VONA alumna and co-founder of Women Who Submit. Her work appears in CURA and Prairie Schooner among other publications. Writ Large Press published her chapbook, Surveillance, in March 2016. A second chapbook, Language Lesson, is forthcoming from MIEL. She earned a creative writing MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and a psychology doctorate from Claremont Graduate University. She lives in Los Angeles, California. Learn more at www.ashakijackson.com.