The Book Pages: Women Who Submit prepare for a day of panels, workshops and more
In the Book Pages, Erik Pedersen talked to one of the organizers of a daylong event to help and celebrate a new group of writers.
Sometimes the most difficult part of writing is just getting started.
Fortunately, help is available.
The 2024 Women Who Submit Submission Conference, dubbed “Beyond the Writing: Building Community, Advocacy, and a Literary Career,” is an all-day event on Saturday, Aug. 10 that aims to help woman-identifying and nonbinary writers achieve their goals.
“A conference like this is such a great opportunity to establish and reinforce community,” says Luivette Resto, a poet, teacher and Women Who Submit board member – one of several who spent months planning the event. “This is a perfect opportunity for someone who’s just starting … to really connect with other writers.”
Connecting with fellow writers, in fact, should be even easier this year.
“This is the first time it’s going to be in-person,” says Resto, who explained that conferences in 2020 and 2022 had been virtual due to the pandemic. “So there’s a lot of excitement.”
The one-day conference, which still has spaces available, is free for members of Women Who Submit. The group doesn’t charge to join, but asks new members to attend an orientation meeting (there will be one during the first programming block for new members). Tickets for nonmembers are $25 and pay-what-you-can options can go as low as $1.
Running from 9:00 a.m. – 6 p.m. at L.A.’s Plaza de la Raza (registration begins at 8:30 a.m.), the event will feature panels, workshops and readings designed to aid emerging writers and foster community. Authors taking part in panels include Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera, Diane Marie Brown, Lisbeth Coiman, traci kato-kiriyama, Kate Maruyama, Mimzy Reiner, Désirée Zamorano and more.
“It’s going to be really nice to have about eight hours of togetherness, and really feeling that genuine support for each other’s art and creativity with no egos and no judgments,” says Resto.
Vendors include Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural, which will be selling books by panelists, along with WriteGirl, Lunch Ticket literary journal and other literary organizations. There will also be vendors selling food, coffee, mugs and even massages.
A tattoo artist is creating special designs for the event, too, though the work won’t be done on site that day.
“I’m getting one, that’s for sure,” says Resto (who, FYI, will be one of the poets reading at Mike Sonksen’s LA Stories: Music Is History event at L.A.’s Grand Performances tonight, July 26).
While this is a Women Who Submit event, Resto says men can attend.
“The focus of the conference is for women writers – women-identified, nonbinary writers – that is definitely the focus. But that doesn’t mean men or allies cannot attend,” says Resto. “Allies are welcome, but male voices, you know, are not at the center of the conversation.”
“Allyship, true allyship, is what’s welcomed,” says Resto.
For those who can’t attend but want to support the nonprofit, Resto suggests checking out the website, social media accounts and making a donation.
It promises to be a good day, she says. “When I read the program … and see the illustrious panelists and workshop facilitators and what we’re offering,” says Resto, “I am very, very proud of that work. Because we know this is what people are asking for, and this is what they need in order to advance or move forward in their art.”
“And if we can just help one writer,” she says. “I think our job is done that day.”
Dan Slater searched through century-old documents for ‘The Incorruptibles’
Dan Slater, the author of “Wolf Boys” and other books, has written for publications that include the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Atlantic, GQ, and The New Yorker online. His new book, “The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld” was published this month.
Q. Please tell readers about your new book.
“The Incorruptibles” is about the Lower East Side underworld in the years prior to World War I, and a secretive vice crusade to clean those streets of vice and crime.
Q. Can you share a little about your research? Is that how you learned about the “horse poisoners” and other unusual-sounding crimes from the past?
During seven years of research, I was fortunate to uncover materials that had never been seen or had been cited only sparingly in previous books – from unpublished memoirs to indictment files and vintage photos that had been sitting in storage for more than a century. One of the richest troves was an archive of trial transcripts from the Manhattan criminal courts of the early 1900s. I found the saga of the horse poisoners – known as the Yiddish Camorra, or Yiddish Black Hand – described in great detail in several of those trials.
Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?
“The Quickening Maze” by Adam Foulds is a really great novel. “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” by Katherine Boo showed writers in my niche – narrative non-fiction – what could be achieved with a true story, when the reporting is so deep that a writer can almost disappear behind her characters.
Q. What are you reading now?
“Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver, and “H is for Hawk” by Helen Macdonald.
Q. Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?
“The Mick,” by Mickey Mantle (with Herb Gluck), which I read when I was seven or eight. It was amazing to discover that baseball players were just ordinary people.
Q. Can you recall a book that felt like it was written with you in mind?
John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden,” which I read at 16, spoke to me more directly than any book I’d read as a kid.
Q. Do you listen to audiobooks? If so, are there any titles or narrators you’d recommend?
Jonathan Todd Ross, who reads “The Incorruptibles,” is one of those rare narrators who hits the sweet spot of verve and rigor. His genuine enthusiasm for the material left me wanting to know what was going to happen next in the book I myself had written. And then there’s Charlie Thurston’s narration of Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead,” a performance that just leaves me speechless.
Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?
I think most people don’t know that the old Christian ban on moneylending – which Christians, drawing on Aristotle, deemed a sin – was perhaps the first anti-vice law that maneuvered Jews into a legal grey area.
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Next on ‘Bookish’
The next event is scheduled for Aug. 16, at 5 p.m. Cathryn Michon will discuss “I’m Still Here,” an illustrated book for grieving pet owners, and journalist Carol Mithers talks about “Rethinking Rescue: Dog Lady and the Story of America’s Forgotten People and Pets.” Sign up for free now.
Want to catch up on all the previous Bookish shows? Catch up on previous virtual events and more!