Yellow Arrow Journal is a biannual publication of creative nonfiction, poetry, and cover art by writers and artists who identify as women.

About Yellow Arrow Journal

WONDER, Yellow Arrow Journal Vol. XI, No. 1 (spring 2026), guest edited by Heather Brown Barrett, is available as a paperback and PDF from the Yellow Arrow bookstore and elsewhere.

yellowarrowpublishing.com/news/yaj-wonder-release-weaving-curiosity-creativity

The cover of WONDER features the artwork Twin Heathers by Anita Grace Brown, a multidisciplinary artist exploring the intersections of the imaginal, the spiritual, and the visceral, somatic human experience. For Heather, choosing the final cover came down to the mystery and expressive brush strokes offered by Anita’s Twin Heathers. Two subtle figures, similar but not exact; do they represent two selves present in each of us, or two different entities, like friends, or enemies? Are they children, or spirits, or flowers? Are they all of these? Interpretations abound. It’s a garden, a riot of color, and it’s thought-provoking. Thank you, Anita, for sending us your artwork and for letting us showcase it to our community. Learn more about Twin Heathers in an interview between Anita and Heather at yellowarrowpublishing.com/news/spotlight-anita-grace-brown-yaj-wonder.

Heather Brown Barrett is an award-winning poet in southeastern Virginia. She mothers her young son and contemplates life, the universe, and everything with her writer husband. Heather is a Cherokee Nation citizen, the membership chair of The Poetry Society of Virginia, a member of The Muse Writers Center, and a former board member of Hampton Roads Writers. She’s the author of Water in Every Room (Kelsay Books, 2025), a collection of poems embodying the fluctuations of emotion and form in new motherhood.

For more information on how to submit to the next (fall 2026) issue, visit our submissions page.

Support the journal by ordering a discounted bundle of the 2026 issues (No. 1 WONDER, No. 2 TBD), for yourself, for your office, or as a gift. Bundles of volumes IX (2024 ELEVATE and kitalo) and X (2025 UNFURL and KAIROS) are also available. Learn more about our bundles at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/yellow-arrow-journal-bundle.

Past issues of Yellow Arrow Journal are available in the Yellow Arrow bookstore, on Amazon and through most online distributors, and in bookstores in Baltimore and beyond. Thank you to all who submit and share and for your continued support. For an editorial statement from our Editor-in-Chief, see below.

Meet the Guest Editors

Editorial statement

At Yellow Arrow Publishing, we pride ourselves on nontraditional publishing methods that align with our nontraditional publishing company. We seek to uplift underrepresented voices and to allow women-identifying writers to exist and be heard exactly as they are.

We believe that publishing is a vehicle for storytelling and that each storyteller should have the freedom to tell the truest version of their story. This means that we don’t focus on common style guides and norms and that we don’t change our authors’ voices into something they are not.

While we provide a basic copyedit of each journal issue, manuscript, and chapbook that we publish, we prioritize maintaining the unique voice and style of each of our authors. Instead of fixating on grammar perfection (though we will fix errant commas), we focus on the heart of each piece: we want the ideas, themes, and styles of our writers to shine.

We believe that every writer has a story to tell and that every story is worth telling.

We want every writer we publish to come out of the process feeling heard, valued, and needed.

We believe that your story matters. That you matter.

And we want you to be heard.

Kapua Iao, Editor-in-Chief

JOURNAL ISSUES: FROM JOURNEY (VOL. I) TO WONDER (VOL. XI)