​About Event

​Publishing 101: Submitting Your Work with Strategy and Grace

​Sending your work out into the world can feel equal parts thrilling and nerve-wracking. In this practical, behind-the-scenes session, we’ll take the mystery out of submissions and talk honestly about what actually helps your work find the right home. We’ll discuss how editors read, what makes a submission or manuscript stand out (for the right or wrong reasons), and how professionalism, patience, and generosity of spirit go a long way in the publishing world.

​Led by Kelli Russell Agodon, who has been on every side of the desk—as a submitting poet, a cofounder of an independent press, and a former editor-in-chief of one of Seattle’s oldest literary journals—this session offers practical guidance on how to track your work without losing your mind and how to read responses/rejections from editors without taking them personally. Throughout the session, we’ll leave space for your specific questions and end with clear next steps to help you move your work forward.

​​​About the Editor

​Kelli Russell Agodon is a bi/queer poet and author of five books of poems, three craft books, and one anthology of poetry. Her collection, Accidental Devotions, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in May 2026. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and teaches in Pacific Lutheran University’s low-residency MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. From 2008 to 2014, she served as editor-in-chief of Seattle’s 40-year-old literary journal, Crab Creek Review. Kelli is also the cohost of the poetry series Poems You Need with Melissa Studdard.  www.twosylviaspress.com / www.youtube.com@PoemsYouNeed