Washington Writers' Publishing House
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WWPH WRITES 130...spotlights "Small Things," poetry by Keith David Parsons, and "The White Shirts," flash creative nonfiction by Seth Biderman, plus so much more!
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Find a peek here at all of our fabulous upcoming award-winning books from Emily Holland, Jason Gebhardt, Yael Kiken, and Samantha Neugebauer, all now available for pre-order. Official publication date: January 26, 2027. Mark your calendars for our big launch at Politics & Prose (Connecticut Avenue store) on Friday, January 29th at 7 pm (you can pre-order your copies here)!
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We're already planning our 2028 books! We are thrilled to announce the winner of our 2028 Jean Feldman Award: Cristi Donoso of Alexandria, VA, for her collection, Certain Species of Want, and the winner of our WWPH Nonfiction Award, Stella Dawson of Washington, DC, for Death and Wild Dogs: A Journey Through the Politics of Dying in America. Look for their books in January of 2028. Our Fiction review committee is still reading, so more news coming soon! Find the news on all the poetry and nonfiction honorees here.
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Read on for poetry and prose and news of submission opportunities from your WWPH, including GRACE IN JUSTICE.
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Caroline Bock & Jona Colson
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Keith David Parsons is from West Virginia, lives in DC, and less conflicted about it than you might think. Believes a poem without a message is like a big hole without spikes at the bottom—why would you dig it? Featured in Capital Love from WWPH. The AdMo Parsons Project kristophanes.substack.com
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The White Shirts
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My first summer as a school principal in Washington, DC, I set aside my books and binders one afternoon and got on my bike to find me a barber. I was not from DC, had only been there a couple of years, and had been getting my hair cut at $20 a pop at random shops near my home. Now that I’d landed this job, I wanted to find a regular barber near the school, someone who could tell me stories about the neighborhood. Bring me up to speed.
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It was mid-July. I biked slowly to avoid breaking a sweat, passed through the rowhomes with their tiny front yards and shutters, the narrow staircases running up to the covered stoops.
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On the other side of the train tracks, things turned commercial: Here was a WINGS CHINESE SUBS carryout place on the corner, a couple of liquor stores, and an organic supermarket that seemed out of place. And in the middle of the block, an old-fashioned barber pole hanging out over the sidewalk, its red, white, and blue spiral twisting infinitely upwards.
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I locked up my bike and walked in. It was a bright, three-chair shop where an older barber was working on a client in one chair, and a younger barber sat in another, watching something on his phone. The walls were plastered with pictures of men with all sorts of fades and buzz cuts and cornrows and twists. The only white person in that room, live or in portrait, was me.
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I stood in the doorway, uncertain if they served my type, but then the older barber said hello and hissed at the younger barber. Maybe he was 20, 23. He set down his phone, jumped up out of his chair, invited me to take a seat in his chair, and in a flash, had me aproned me up.
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He spun me to face the mirror and asked me how I liked my hair cut. I looked at the pictures of the fades and flattops and cornrows, and then looked at myself in the mirror with my dark brown hair, wispy on top and wavy on the sides, and told him what I always tell barbers: to clip the sides and leave some length on top and trim the beard a bit, and then I took off my glasses so I couldn’t see what was happening and let the professional ply his trade.
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He got to work with the clippers. At first, he bantered with the other men, but when he noticed my bike helmet, he told me that he and his friends used to mountain bike through Rock Creek Park when they were kids.
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I said I thought you weren’t supposed to bike in Rock Creek Park, and he said you weren’t. The older barber chuckled. Or maybe he was just clearing his throat. I told the young barber I was from New Mexico and used to mountain bike all the time out there. That I missed it.
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The barber fell silent for a while.
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“Got a girl down south,” he said. “In South Carolina. Trying to get some money together to get down to her.”
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He turned away, wiped down his scissors.
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“We got a kid,” he said to his scissors. “I gotta get back to our kid. But it ain’t easy.”
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The older barber grunted.
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When the barber turned around, he was holding a straight razor. He stropped it a few times and began shaping my beard, starting around the sides, then carefully scraping along my jawline, just above my neck.
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That’s when he asked me what I did.
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“I work at a school,” I said. “Just a few blocks from here.”
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The blade stopped. Pulled away from my skin.
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He turned to the older barber. “Dale, this man right here a White Shirt.”
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The older barber did not respond. The barbershop was silent. The young barber turned back to the mirror, but with my glasses off, I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or at himself.
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“I got me a White Shirt,” he said. He spoke solemnly. “I got me a White Shirt, right here in my chair.”
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He set the blade on my throat and began scraping it along my skin, pulling upward toward my jawline.
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“I remember them White Shirts coming down the school hall,” the young barber said. He didn’t seem to be speaking to me. “Them White Shirts come for you, and it’s trouble.”
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He lifted the blade from my neck, wiped it clean.
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“It’s my first year,” I offered. “I was a teacher for about 15 years.”
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He pushed my head back, gently. Brought the blade down again on my throat. “A White Shirt,” he said. “Right here in my chair.”
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DC resident Seth Biderman was born and raised in Santa Fe, NM. A graduate of the University of New Mexico Creative Writing program, he has published in the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Colorado Review and elsewhere. He was a teacher and principal in public schools for 20 years.
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GRACE & GRAVITY OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS
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GRACE IN JUSTICE… exploring the great divides in our nation today and the hope for a better tomorrow. Guest editor MELANIE S. HATTER. Series Editor: Caroline Bock The distance between survival and security has never felt greater. Across our communities, rising housing costs, stagnant wages, mounting debt, widening inequality, and challenges to our dignity and basic rights as women are …
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WWPH WRITES SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
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WWPH WRITES is now open for submissions! In each bi-weekly issue, we feature one poem and one work of prose (either fiction or creative nonfiction up to 1,000 words) from a writer in DC, Maryland, or Virginia. Submitting to WWPH WRITES and subscribing are free (click through to sign up). We pay contributors $25.00. If accepted, and if any minor …
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CAPITAL LOVE - the last WWPH Literary Salon of 2026 - The Big Wrap-Up Event!
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Join us at KBird Bar in Washington, DC, for our last WWPH literary salon for CAPITAL LOVE! We're celebrating our last CAPITAL LOVE event of 2026 by raising up our voices in love, hope, joy, and a happy hour drink or two! Join us for a creative writing workshop and a reading with contributors from CAPITAL LOVE. When: Sunday, October 4 …
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Kudos to our friends at 1455 Books and executive editor Sean Murphy!
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WWPH EDUCATOR RESOURCES
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We believe AMERICA'S FUTURE has a place in your classroom. 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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Prose editor, WWPH Writes
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Thank you for being part of the Washington Writers' Publishing House community! Join us at KBIRD on Sunday!
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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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