Washington Writers' Publishing House
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WWPH WRITES 122... and big news first:
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The Washington Writers' Publishing House will begin publishing the Grace & Gravity series, a biannual anthology of women prose writers from the DC area, in 2027. A press announcement with complete details is available here. Caroline Bock will be the series editor, and each volume will have a special guest editor. Award-winning novelist Melanie S. Hatter will serve as our first guest editor for the upcoming volume 12. We are grateful to Melissa Scholes Young and Richard Peabody for all they have built with the groundbreaking Grace & Gravity series. We are excited for the future of this iconic series at WWPH. And we hope that many of you will join us on this journey!
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Right now, CAPITAL LOVE, our 2026 anthology, featuring 55 writers on the power of love in these divisive times, is officially available everywhere books are sold (and only $10.00 a copy!). Join us as we celebrate with a series of readings and events, including a big one -- Capital Love Lit Fest -- on Sunday, June 28th, from 10-6 pm at the Writer's Center of Bethesda. Details below.
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And more good news: on June 1, we will open CAPITAL TRANSLATION for submissions. This is our 2027 entry in our 'Capital' series of pocket-sized, collectible anthologies...following Capital Queer (2025) and Capital Love (2026). We are seeking poetry and prose in any language, along with their English translations. Translators must be residents of DC, Maryland, and Virginia, or have connections to the DMV. Complete guidelines can be found here.
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We hope you appreciate the bold moves your Washington Writers' Publishing House is making to expand publishing opportunities in the DMV and uplift our literary voices in an inclusive, thoughtful, and joyful way for readers across the nation.
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In this issue of WWPH WRITES, we are spotlighting two thought-provoking voices and rising talents...poet Josh Whitlock and essayist Erin Challenor. Read on!
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Caroline Bock & Jona Colson
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Josh Whitlock wrote his first poem at age 18, didn’t write another until age 44, and has written (better:channeled) hundreds in the four years since. His first collection is on track for 2027publication in both English and Spanish, with a foreword by Uruguayan poet Miguel Avero. Josh is a partner in a Panamanian chocolate company; is a practicing attorney; and lives between North Carolina, Virginia, Panama, and Uruguay. He received “My Part” as the solution to an until-then-unnecessarily-protracted-disagreement, and he hopes that the poem hears far more than it says.
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DEAR FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
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May 1, 2025 Oh, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I’m 23, and I miss eating blackberries off the bush. I’m writing this as I sit at your memorial, and I haven’t swam in a river in a long time, felt wet stone mountain tears and ham sandwiches eaten on a blow-up raft, summer sun-warmed. Your memorial is the one that I like to sit at the most. It isn’t as busy as the others. I’ve lived in DC for nine months now. I miss rain. Cold rain, that is. A constant mist of melted silverware, like back in Oregon. I’ve lived in Iowa, too, where the rain is warm, crashing down mustard-yellow and sticky. I do not miss that. Other Iowa things, yes. Perhaps you campaigned there, years ago. I wonder if it rained then. I lived there for the past four years, among that warm rain, making a home at a college 2,000 miles from home in an attempt to see if I got any of my parent’s immigrant blood and if writing was something I was actually good at. I learned a lot there, like what to drink and how to love. But then I graduated and moved here and have been living in a constant state of mourning ever since. Mourning for when I was only ever alone if I wanted to be, and I had a plan for my life. I don’t have that anymore, and I don’t know how to make it come back. I don’t know how to make DC a home. It is weird to think that this was your home too once. I wonder if anything in DC is the same as when you lived here. Did people get engagement announcement photos taken on the staircase to the basement of the National Gallery of Art? I see that all the time these days. The men are always clean-shaven, and the women wear pastel-colored stilettos, and the cameraman tells them to look into each other’s eyes. I doubt there were coffee shops everywhere like there are now. Many have philodendrons dripping off the counters, leafy dendrites of velvet and emerald, arms stretching further and further from home every day. Searching, perhaps. Moving out, even. I left my philodendron in Iowa. And a boy. I wonder if there were plants in your White House. I want a new plant, one that does not remind me of the boy I left behind. I also want candles and a mattress topper. But I can’t afford any of those things. I walk dogs for a living. It barely pays the rent, and my feet hurt all the time, and I always smell like processed beef dog treats. I’ve been thinking about selling my penny collection. I keep them in old tomato soup cans. I have one from 1940. It feels soft in my hand. Otherworldly, really. Pennies are made almost entirely of zinc these days, not copper, like they were in your day. I wonder if you could tell the difference if you were able to hold one today. Did they keep the grass on the National Mall green all year, too? I play Solitaire there sometimes, watching the eighth graders on their field trips and foreigners try to order hot dogs from food trucks run by other foreigners, thinking about everything that I am not. People tell me that your 20s are for figuring yourself out, that moving somewhere completely new and starting over is always scary and lonely at first, that becoming takes time. There were far more terminal things to worry about when you were my age. The words etched into the stones of your memorial tell me so. But I still wonder if you ever felt similar to how I do now, if the ambiguity of one’s 20s is intergenerational. I wonder if you kept up with any of your friends from college. I don’t have any friends here besides my roommate, but she has ones from her grad school classes. These days, she and I drink cheap pinot gris from the corner store, not double vodkas in plastic cups left out on the dining table for a week, like we would a year ago. She has a real job, whereas I forget to take the dog treats out of my pockets before I do laundry, and then I have to scrape meaty brown mush out of the lint filter. In front of me there are ducks bobbing around the Tidal Basin in pairs, by the dormant cherry blossom trees. There was a whole festival for the trees last month. It was advertised on the side of buses and on the train platforms. The last of their petals are bunched up against dead rats in gutters, blood-softened. My god, Mr. Roosevelt, change is hard. I wanted to spend the summer where forest meets sea, in love with backyard barbecues and my mom’s perfume and maybe even him. But instead, I moved. I started again, here, in a city of politics and memorials, and I will never, ever, see that boy from Iowa again. How many times in your life did you think what if? The lip of the skyline has gone orange by now. It’s making marmalade patches on the statues of people going into the workhouses in the Great Depression wing of your memorial, which is violently humbling. It has been 120 years since you could have felt what I’m feeling. This glass-half-empty and bone-tired and melancholic kind of way, consumed by the happy memories that replay every time you look out a bus window, trying to forget the idea that you might not ever make new ones again. This stagnant way. This horrible way. The only way I seem to be these days. Oh, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I’m 23, and I miss eating blackberries off the bush.
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Erin Challenor received a BA in English & Creative Writing from the University of Iowa in 2024. She reads for The Chestnut Review, The Good Life Review, Sad Girl Diaries, and Trio House Press. She lives in Washington DC.
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WWPH SUBMISSIONS are now open. Deadline June 30th. Updated guidelines, FAQs on our website...
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All WWPH Manuscript Contests are judged by past winners of the contest...read their insights here...(consider reading their award-winning WWPH books too!)...
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JOIN US AT THE CAPITAL LOVE LITFEST! Sunday, June 28th from 10-6 pm at the Writer's Center.
What is this? It's an all-day literary lovefest! It's Pay-As You-Can (and that starts at free!). It's workshops, discussions, a small press book fair, and, it all culminates in a reading and reception with writers from Capital Love! Capacity is limited to about 120 people and spots are going fast!
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CAPITAL LOVE: A WWPH LOVE Celebration
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55 writers. 56 works of poetry and prose on the power of love ...as an antidote to the divisions of hate. From the Washington Writers' Publishing House, based in our nation's capital since 1975. As of May 5th, officially available books everywhere books are sold! Support your WWPH and buy WWPH DIRECT here.
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We believe AMERICA'S FUTURE has a place in your classroom, and we hope you do too With 179 works of poetry, fiction, essays, and visual language spanning 526 pages, it offers a rich mosaic of writers looking at what's next for our nation through a literary lens. We have developed sample lesson plans suitable for AP-level high school classes and college-level work. We offer a special …
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CAPITAL TRANSLATION
OPENS FOR SUBMISSIONS on JUNE 1st
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CAPITAL TRANSLATION: WWPH CELEBRATES LITERARY TRANSLATION IN THE DMV
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“Without translation, we would be living in provinces bordering on silence.” – George Steiner
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We are proud to announce a call for submissions for our third Capital Anthology, Capital Translation.
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Open to all languages. Translators must live in DC, Maryland, and Virginia.
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$25.00 contributor payment and author copy.
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An opportunity to be part of our joyful celebration of voices in our region and our world. Publication targeted for May of 2027.
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Last note: WWPH WRITES is currently closed for submissions. We will open again later this summer. Until then, keep reading WWPH WRITES. Stay connected. Join us at a WWPH literary event!
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Have a memorable Memorial Day!
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Prose editor, WWPH Writes
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Thank you for being part of the Washington Writers' Publishing House community!
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Poetry editor, WWPH Writes
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Copyright © 2025 The Washington Writers' Publishing House, All rights reserved.
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