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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.
Contact: admin@womenwhosubmitlit.org
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.
Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera, Anthology Advisor, is a Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen. She writes so the desert landscape of her childhood can be heard as loudly as the urban chaos of her adulthood. She is obsessed with food. She is a Macondista and has been an editor for Border Senses Literary and Art Journal, VIDA Review, and Ricochet Editions. A former high school teacher, she earned an MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles and is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern California where she is an Annenberg Fellow. Her YA novel, Breaking Pattern, is forthcoming with Inlandia Books. Her play Blind Thrust Fault was featured in Center Theater Group Writers’ Workshop Festival. Her flash fiction was included in Best Small Fictions 2022. You can read some of her published work on her website.
Contact: anthology@womenwhosubmitlit.org
Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley, Chapters Director & WWS-Long Beach Chapter Lead, a creative non-fiction writer, filmmaker, and mom. She creates engaging stories for and about bilingual, bicultural brown girls and women. Her writing is featured in The Latinx Project at NYU, Gathering: A Women Who Submit Anthology, Made in LA Volume 4: Beyond the Precipice and HarperVia’s Somewhere We Are Human edited by Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiñansaca. She is the drama editor of Transformation: A Women Who Submit Anthology. She has been awarded fellowships from Tin House, Macondo and VONA. Her film, The Big Deal, won the Imagen Award for Best Theatrical Short and screened at festivals throughout the US. A Dominicana via Washington Heights, she lives in Long Beach, CA with her husband and two children. Her films and writing samples can be found at https://www.
Thea Pueschel, Chapters Liaison, resides one inch behind the Orange Curtain and has more hyphens than a merry-go-round and is sometimes referred to as a Renaissance person whose mother’s favorite way to introduce them is, “This my daughter Thea. Who isn’t a doctor yet.” The psychosocial aspect of human development draws Thea to paint, write, direct and create. Whether the work is floating along the ethere through the binary code searing blue light into your retinas, in paperback or hardback form, on stage or flickering dancing light, or through bodies forming shapes or minds going on journeys, it is Thea’s hope that you feel more connected, grounded and seen after you interact or experience the work. Thea is a repeated Dorland Mountain Arts Resident and has had artwork exhibited at the Center in Orange and Fullerton Museum, directed plays for Short + Sweet Hollywood, and has had written work published in the Made in L.A. Anthology Vol 5. Vantage Points, and Short EditĂon among others. www.theapueschel.com
Ashton Cynthia Clarke, Social Media Manager, is a Los Angeles-based writer and storyteller. She performs true, personal stories throughout the L.A. area and New York City, as well as virtually. Since joining Women Who Submit, her work has appeared in publications including The Storytelling Bistro; Olney Magazine; and These Black Bodies Are . . . (A Blacklandia Anthology). Born in NYC and of African American/Caribbean heritage, much of her work references that ancestry. She developed an animated short based on a family member’s life in Jamaica, “Titta and the Mango,” which you may enjoy on her YouTube channel: : https://youtube.com/ashtoncynthiaclarke
Contact: socialmedia@womenwhosubmitlit.org
Ariadne Makridakis Arroyo, Publication Round Up Editor, (she/they) is a Los Angeles-based writer, arts administrator, and feminist of Greek and Guatemalan descent who grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. They completed their Bachelor’s degree in Critical Theory & Social Justice at Occidental College in 2020 where they were awarded the 2019 Argonaut Summer Research/Creative Writing Fellowship under the guidance of fiction writer Zinzi Clemmons. Her work has been featured in Evocations Review, Stellium Literary Magazine, Stonecoast Review, Stanchion Zine, Latin@ Literatures, Tasteful Rude, Text Power Telling, and Acentos Review. They are a 2023 Speculative Fiction Fellow in the Words of Resistance & Restoration Fellowship provided by Roots. Wounds. Words.
Contact: membernews@womenwhosubmitlit.org
Website Manager, Lorinda Toledo’s (she/her) novel-in-progress, The Nature of Fire, was named first runner-up for the 2019 James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Her creative fiction and nonfiction has been published in the Mississippi Review, The Normal School, and Lit Angels, among others. She holds a PhD from UNLV and an MFA from AULA. She has been a Barrick Graduate Fellow and a Black Mountain Institute PhD Fellow. As an educator, she developed a coaching program to help creatives cultivate sustainable practice. She is currently revising her novel with her agent.
Contact: website@womenwhosubmitlit.org
Jesenia Chavez, Open Mic Host, is a Chicanita, poeta, public school teacher, and storyteller. She is inspired by the borderlands, and her parents’ migration to Los Angeles from Chihuahua, México #abolishice. Her poetry collection, This Poem Might Save You (me) is a journey through the streets of Los Angeles that explores intersectionality and the rituals of survival. She has an MFA in creative writing from UCR where she was the poetry editor for The Coachella Review and she recently participated in Tin House Autumn workshop in non-fiction. Find more of her work at jeseniachavez.com
Contact: openmic@womenwhosubmitlit.org
Lily Caraballo, Saturday Check In Contact, is a writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in The Rumpus and Black Girl Nerds. While a committee of WWS members manage the online Saturday Check In, you can email Lily for questions, links, or to request being included in reminders. Check In meetings are at 10am on Zoom on the first and third Saturday’s of the month.
Contact: saturdaycheckin@womenwhosubmitlit.org
Jessica Ceballos y Campbell, Blog Series Editor, is a writer, content strategist, publisher, and advocate whose work has been published in numerous anthologies and journals. She has published three chapbooks: Gent/Re De Place Ing (2016), End of the Road (2017), and Facilitating Spaces 101:A Manual For Arts Programming (2018), and has produced a ton of literary events throughout LA. She currently lives with her partner, seven-year-old, and their gato in her hometown, Highland Park, where she runs a small press and is working on Happiest Place on Earth, a poetic contribution to conversations around memory, place, and belonging, inspired by a trip to Disneyland while in foster care.