Click on the video above to hear about Alise’s experience with Writer’s Relief!

Alise Versella is a Pushcart-nominated contributing writer for Rebelle Society, but when she first started writing, she was just like any other poet without publication credits. Then she met author David Henry Sterry at a writers’ conference, and he encouraged her to submit work to Writer’s Relief. That decision changed the course of her career as a poet. Now Alise has an impressive (and growing) list of credits in literary journals such as Crack the Spine, Entropy, Enclave, The Opiate, and Penumbra Literary and Art Journal, just to name a few. She recently published her poetry collection When Wolves Become Birds (Golden Dragonfly Press).

Read on and watch the video to hear how Writer’s Relief’s expert targeting helped Alise move from rejections to acceptances and build her publication credits!

In Alise’s Own Words

Back in 2018, I met David Henry Sterry and his wife, Arielle Eckstut, at the Rutgers Writers’ Conference. He edited my poetry manuscript, which would soon become When Wolves Become Birds. He liked what he saw, but I was for the most part an unpublished poet. He was the one who told me about Writer’s Relief, and so I took the leap and submitted my work to them.

I remember that acceptance email—how I had an actual response as to which poems of the submitted group were well liked. Not many people say anything about the work, so I was sold. Here were people I didn’t know telling me this was good work and that they’d help me place it.

With the help of Writer’s Relief, poems I had rejection after rejection for were finally accepted. Since that first acceptance with them, I have had twenty-eight more. I have seen my work published in literary magazines—physical copies that hold weight in my hands…that sit on my bookshelf…that smell of ink and acid-free paper. A long-dreamt dream come true! I have a book now—a full collection with an actual press—and the previously published poems list is lengthy on the acknowledgments page, which gives me great pride.

Working with Writer’s Relief gave me confidence. They celebrate with me and they keep me going when the rejections come. It all goes back to the beginning: “This is good work.” If you believe that, and you find the people to support you and help you, the literary magazines will see that too.

Thank you, Writer’s Relief, my quasi family in an industry that is often daunting.

More About Alise

Alise Versella has also been published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Circle Show, COG Magazine, Poydras Review, Ultraviolet Tribe, What Rough Beast, Steam Ticket, Elephant Journal, and Wrath-Bearing Tree, among others. Alise has worked with author Francesca Lia Block and Women’s Spiritual Poetry, whose latest anthology, Goddess: When She Rules, raised money for the Malala Fund. Kirkus has called her “…[A] boundlessly energetic and promising technician [who] crafts a unique blend of the symbolist and the confessional; a talented, promising newcomer.” Alise performs at local coffeehouses in southern New Jersey and has taught poetry workshops at local libraries and schools.

To learn more about Alise and her writing, visit her website and follow her on Instagram.