Via Jule Gardner of the Washington City Paper. Posted May 10, 2007.

Laura Brylawski-Miller is not exactly the picture of a struggling writer. She answers the door of her corner penthouse in Rosslyn impeccably dressed in a brown wrap dress, artful jewelry, her silver bob cut by someone who knows her way around a pair of scissors.

“They say you get tired of the view,” she says with an Italian accent, in the center of her glassed-in living room. “But I don’t think that’s possible.”

Brylawski-Miller, in her 70s, is the author of two novels and a book of poetry published through the Washington Writers’ Publishing House (WWPH), a small press collective that chooses two books—one novel and one book of poetry—each year.

Many writers in the WWPH have come and gone since its inception as a nonprofit publisher of poetry in 1973. (The collective added fiction to its lineup in 2000.) Authors chosen for publication are required to help edit the next year’s picks, but some are more committed than others.

Brylawski-Miller became involved when the WWPH published her book of poems, The Snow on Lake Como, in 1991. Since then, she’s remained among a core group that keeps the publishing house a vital outlet for local writers who don’t churn out stiletto-heeled chick lit or endless analyses of the Bush presidency. “You have all this talent here and most of it goes unrecognized, at least at a bigger level, at a buyer level. That is sad to me,” she says.

The writers range in age, experience, and background. The novelist published in 2001, Phillip Kurata of Wheaton, Md., works for the U.S. Foreign Service and is in his third year in Iraq. The poet picked last year, 28-year-old Carly Sachs, was a transplant from New York and is now the president of WWPH.

“I feel this is an opportunity to meet and be a part of the history of the Washington literary scene,” Sachs says, citing Brylawski-Miller as an example. “I met her when we were reading together; her book came out when mine did…and it really spoke to me with its images, its sensory details. Laura is somebody who inspired me to write fiction.”

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Source: Washington City Paper

Washington Writers' Publishing House is a non-profit organization that has published over 50 volumes of poetry since 1973 and so far nearly a dozen volumes of fiction. The press sponsors an annual competition for poets and fiction writers living in the Washington-Baltimore area.

WWPH has received grants from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Nation magazine, and the Poetry Society of America. Many individuals have also assisted, encouraged, and supported our work through the years.

Some nationally known poets and writers the press has published include Terence Winch, Myra Sklarew, Grace Cavalieri, E. Ethelbert Miller, Elisavietta Ritchie, Jean Nordhaus, Martin Galvin, Nancy Naomi Carlson, Ned Balbo, and Moira Egan.

Washington Writers' Publishing House involves some of the best writers in the area in its activities and has built an audience of national significance. It is among the most successful recent literary experiments in the country
          —Henry Taylor, Pulitzer Prize Winner

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