Washington Writers' Publishing House
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WWPH WRITES 125... featuring poet Garrett J. Brown and prose writer Jessica Worley and works that take the ordinary and make it provocatively new.
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WWPH's Summer of Love Literary Salons continue. Free. Cool events! Come write with us, hear our contributors to Capital Love, and learn more about the Washington Writers' Publishing House and how you can be published with us at Busboys & Poets on this Monday, July 13 at 7 pm and at Little District Books in Washington DC on Wednesday, July 15th at 6 pm!
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We have two wonderful post-event pieces from our big Capital Love LitFest, held on June 28th at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, to share with you! Our WWPH Fellow, Jupiter Berrysmith, wrote this reflection on the true meaning of the Capital Love LitFest, which was published in the Washington Independent Review of Books. Plus, check out our WWPH YouTube Channel -- there are videos featuring highlights from the WWPH Through the Decade panel, the How Do We Find Joy in our Writing NOW panel? and the Music & Reading Jam. WWPH YouTube here.
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- TINY POEMS: AWE. Our August issues will be filled with lunes. See below for details and insights into writing a lune (or two!). Only 3 lines! Deadline: July 15th.
- CAPITAL Translation. This is our 2027 entry in our 'Capital' series of pocket-sized, collectible anthologies...following Capital Queer (2025) and Capital Love (2026). Deadline: September 1.
- Worlds Beyond. Literary speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy, or horror -- our inaugural poetry and prose contest specifically seeking genre work that bends into the literary. Cash prizes and publication in WWPH WRITES in October. Special guest judge: Myna Chang. Opens: August 1st.
- Grace & Gravity, volume 12, series editor: Caroline Bock, special guest editor: Melanie Hatter. The theme for the first-ever Grace & Gravity edited by the Washington Writers' Publishing House: GRACE IN JUSTICE. We will be seeking fiction or literary nonfiction (up to 2,000 words) from women writers. Opens: August 15. Publication in late 2027.
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Caroline Bock & Jona Colson
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Garrett J. Brown is the author of Manna Sifting (Briary Creek Press, 2009), Cubicles (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and Galileo in the Uecker Seats (Match Factory Editions, forthcoming). His work has appeared or is upcoming in TriQuarterly, Black Warrior Review, Passages North, The Account, Broadkill Review, and Beyond Words Magazine. He lives in Baltimore. (Photo Credit: Shantel Mitchell)
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SAVE THE PLANET
There is self-adhesive on the back of the aluminum casing holding the seat on the Metro. Adhesive clearly left over from a sticker that had once lived there, probably not for a long time because it didn’t have that gray-brown tinge of stickers that lived so long on aluminum that they simply dried up and flaked off. Like the aged stickers on used books dredged out of the back of musty, used bookstores. People don’t buy books in bookstores anymore because we have the internet and we have these ebooks that everyone likes to say are more convenient than real books, or even worse, are the audio books that everyone likes to say are the same as real books, but I don’t actually think anyone is really listening to what is going on. Those aged stickers on the real books dried up and fell off with the slightest touch when you pulled the book off the shelf. That adhesive leaves behind a clean scar, a clear square where the sticker lived and died.
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The adhesive on the back of the aluminum casing holding the seat on the Metro was still white with small pieces of white sticker bunched up and left over from the time when someone tried to peel it off but couldn’t peel it off, so they resorted to scratching it off in pieces and leaving behind small pieces of white sticker. It might have been a Metro worker required to clean up the car, but it was probably someone like me. I get a lot of joy out of peeling stickers off things, yet I still get frustrated when the sticker won’t cooperate.
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At work, I have a sticker-making device to print file labels, but I frequently print anything I can just so I can peel the sticker off the waxy paper behind. I think there is some part of the Neanderthal brain that wants to peel sticky things because I know that it cannot just be me. The fact that there is deformed sticker residue on the back of this Metro seat’s aluminum casing proves that humans, generally, sit down on metro seats and see stickers where there should not be stickers or even where there should be stickers and impulsively wedge their fingernails between the paper and the aluminum in order to remove, in a rather clumsy way, the paper with the tactilely pleasing stickiness from the smooth metal finish of a deteriorating Metro seat. Humans do this generally, and I know that anyone else in my position would accidentally print a few extra file labels on their sticker-making device at work just to remove the waxy paper and rub between their fingers in a tactilely pleasing way.
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The irony of working in an environmental law office while needlessly printing and touching stickers and then throwing away their carcasses is not lost on me. The human experience of peeling stickers is only proven further by the desire of women with acrylic fingernails to also wedge their plastic, bejeweled claws between paper and aluminum, or paper and cardboard, or paper and other paper. These women have acrylic nails that cost a lot of money and take a lot of time. I only know this because for some reason Reddit thought I would be interested in a forum dedicated to the discussion of nail polish quality, and nail salon experience, and nail art techniques, and the rising cost of “getting your nails done.” Since Reddit thought I would be interested after just one time of pausing to look at a post suggesting healthy habits for healthy nails, not even clicking on the post, but scrolling by a little bit slower than the other posts, I am inundated with pictures of long, adorned nails.
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The people on the Metro see me scrolling through pages and pages of nails, and they look at my short, unpainted nails and assume that I am just “between bookings.” But I’m not between bookings. I do the opposite of what the healthy habits for healthy nails article suggested: I use my nails as tools for everything, including peeling off stickers. Like postage stickers affixed to Amazon boxes, or “save the planet, turn off the light” stickers strategically placed on light switch covers at work from the person before me who had my office before me and wanted to save energy.
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The person in my office before me with the “save the planet” sticker did not have the Neanderthal brain habit of peeling because he moved out of this office and walked away for the last time without even trying to strategically lodge his fingernail between the plastic, mass-produced light switch plate and the sticker with a small little planet earth between the “save the planet” and “turn off the light.” This is also ironic because several years ago, the building installed motion-detected lights in all the offices, so even if you forgot to “save the planet,” the smart, non-Neanderthal brains of the light bulbs would force you to anyway once you left the office. Or even before you left the office.
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It turns out that the work of environmental law is quite sedentary, and if you sit at your desk for too long, the light bulb will assume that you have dissipated into the air and turn off the light, knowing that you should no longer require light. Even if you wanted to leave the light on, in direct opposition of saving the planet, you cannot without knowing the secret button-pressing code to override the motion detection that I found a folded-up pamphlet for the light switch in the office desk, but the instructions had no pictures to correspond to the light switch. I just have to wave my arms around when I sit at my desk for too long, and then disappear.
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Jessica Worley writes from College Park about the rich inner dialogue that accompanies mundane life with decadence and glamour. She used to be a high school English teacher, but she works in an office now. With her husband Stephen, she is raising two dogs to be contributing members of society.
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CALL FOR TINY POEMS- LUNES - THEME: AWE
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TINY POEMS: AWE... Every August for the past four years, WWPH WRITES has published TINY POEMS, and so we will again this year! We love TINY POEMS and their contributors, but it is the only submission we ask contributors to do because they love TINY POEMS too (i.e., we do not offer our regular contributor honorarium of $25.00). 2026 TINY …
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AND THERE'S MORE! This summer, WWPH will be on the road with a SUMMER OF LOVE series of literary salons where we will write together, hear readings from our Capital Love contributors, and be in discussion on the power of love in these divisive times.
Made possible with the support of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Maryland State Arts Council...and FREE! Reserve your seat now... link to more information below...
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Summer of Love at Busboys and Poets, Hyattsville
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Welcome to the Summer of Love Tour, where Washington Writers’ Publishing House is bringing authors all over the DMV to celebrate our new mini-anthology, Capital Love. These writing salons will reflect the intention of Capital Love, which is the belief that love is the antidote to hate and that love is action, intent, healing, and hope. This event is designed to …
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Summer of Love at Little District Books
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Welcome to the Summer of Love Tour, where Washington Writers’ Publishing House is bringing authors all over the DMV to celebrate our new mini-anthology, Capital Love. These writing salons will reflect the intention of Capital Love, which is the belief that love is the antidote to hate and that love is action, intent, healing, and hope. This event is designed to …
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CAPITAL TRANSLATION
Now open for submissions
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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. Free to submit.
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Open to all source 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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Also, our first work of poetry in translation, AGUAS by Miguel Avero, translated by Jona Colson, was just selected by the Bilingual Press at Arizona State University as one of their summer reading recommendations! Available everywhere books are sold. Special classroom discounts are available directly from your WWPH.
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For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus
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The WWPH award-winning FOR THE BLESSINGS OF JUPITER AND VENUS by Varun Gauri gets a big shout-out from PEN/Faulkner Foundation as a summer must-read (and we agree!)!
Find this acclaimed love story and novel of small-town American politics everywhere, including here...
https://bookshop.org/lists/2025-26-pen-faulkner-literary-event-titles
Here's more!
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Disillusioned with modern romance, globe-trotting Meena tries an arranged marriage with Avi, an aspiring politician in Ohio. But when Avi's political opponent launches racist attacks, Meena and Avi are forced to defend their immigrant community, which narrowly understands its own traditions, and protect their increasingly shaky relationship. This is an intimate, funny, and heartbreaking novel about small-town America and the …
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Last thank you...for your beautiful support of my new novel, The Other Beautiful People (Regal House Publishing, 2026). Now available everywhere books/ebooks are sold... and I will be at Kramers Books in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, July 21st and up at The Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore on Wednesday, July 29th ...I will be in conversation with novelist Michelle Brafman at both of these fabulous independent bookstores. Join us! Caroline
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Prose editor, WWPH Writes
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Thank you for being part of the Washington Writers' Publishing House community! Join us at one of our upcoming events!
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Poetry editor, WWPH Writes
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Copyright © 2026 The Washington Writers' Publishing House, All rights reserved.
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