Yellow Arrow Publishing Blog

Kapua Iao 11/19/24 Kapua Iao 11/19/24

Meet the Yellow Arrow Publishing 2025 chapbook authors

From 2020 to 2024, Yellow Arrow Publishing has had the privilege of publishing 14 chapbooks (for information about the creative minds behind these collections, visit yellowarrowpublishing.com/publish-with-us). Some of our authors published their first books with us while others had gotten their feet wet in the past but wanted to dive into something slightly different and more intimate. Several are from the Baltimore area while others are from all over the United States, with one author (shout out to Roz Weaver . . . are guinea pig and first chapbook author) from England. We’ve learned so much over the years and grown with each writer, figuring out with each book how to best support our authors. With 2025, we were looking for collections that sang to us, made us cry, made us commiserate, made us proud.

In two rounds over several months, we read through the beautiful submissions we received, first creating a longlist, then shortlist, and eventually selecting the three authors we would love to work with in 2025. It was difficult to email submitters to let them know our decision (writing an acceptance email is as hard as a decline as you never know how either message will be received), but the process is done, and we are so excited to work with the three chosen.

So, without further ado, let’s meet the 2025 Yellow Arrow chapbook authors!

**Ann marie Houghtailing**

*Little by Little*
coming April 2025

Ann marie Houghtailing has an ALM in American Literature from Harvard University Extension. She has delivered a TEDx Talk entitled Raising Humans and performed her critically acclaimed one woman show, Renegade Princess, in New York, Chicago, Santa Fe, San Francisco, and San Diego. Houghtailing is a visual artist and cofounder of the firm, Story Imprinting. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Huffington Post, Daily Worth, XO Jane, San Diego Business Journal, Yahoo! Finance, and Thought Catalog.

Find her on Instagram @trailsnotpaths and on Facebook and LinkedIn @annmariehoughtailing.

About Little by Little: “Little by little” is the phrase my mother used to say when things were hard. Things were almost always hard. I grew up in a culture of poverty and witnessed violence, struggle, and wild resilience everyday. What I did not know was that my mother’s phrase would become a life affirming strategy. It was a map that took me back to myself when life took so much from me. From 2019–2020 four members of my family, including my mother, died in rapid succession. Their deaths would be an extension of historic and epigenetic trauma that would require me to sit inside of suffering and paint, write, and garden my way through to transformation. This collection, Little by Little, seeks to explore the universality of human suffering and how we find our way to meaning and purpose. Everyday we experience loss. The loss of innocence, youth, relationships, jobs, money, confidence, power, life, and hope are in constant play. Learning to sit inside of deep suffering can be intellectually, emotionally, and physically demanding territory that invites us to examine who we are and what we’re made of. Little by Little is a way to see, a way to suffer, and ultimately live.

Why is it important to you to have your voice heard and amplified?

Just as there is generational wealth, there is generational poverty. I was raised by a mother who grew up on a sugar cane plantation in Waialua, O’ahu. My mother was born when Hawai’i was still a territory of the U.S. This story is completely absent in American culture consciousness. My mother raised me on a pharmacy clerk’s hourly wage and when she died I didn’t inherit property or expensive jewelry; I inherited her stories that are etched in my bones. Stories that will die if I don’t tell them. I’m also a postmenopausal woman, which means that in midlife I’m invisible, pushed to the margins in our youth obsessed culture And finally, I’ve had a long history of staggering loss; 2019–2020 was a particularly devastating year. I produced all the poetry in Little by Little in a period of deep grief. I lost four members of my family in one year. The intersection of these elements of my experience informs the way I see and process the world. Poverty, death, and middle age are not always the subject matter of my writing, but my writing cannot be separated from these truths that have shaped me.

What made you decide to submit this chapbook to Yellow Arrow Publishing this year?

Candace Walsh [author of Iridescent Pigeons, published by Yellow Arrow in 2024] posted the call for submissions. The publication of Iridescent Pigeons was beautiful, and I had a shock of bravery that inspired me to submit my work that had been swimming in the amniotic fluid of grief for several years.

**Emily Decker**

*Homing*
coming July 2025

Emily Decker was born in Virginia, on the Chesapeake Bay, and spent her childhood in Ghana and her growing-up years in Atlanta, Georgia. She holds degrees in literature and secondary English education from Georgia State University, and her poetry has appeared in Yellow Arrow Journal, Full Bleed, Hole in the Head Review, and Bay to Ocean Journal. Decker currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland, where she also loves to participate in local theater, sing, and sail. Homing is her first collection.

Find her on Instagram and Facebook @emadeck.

About Homing: Where is home? All my life, this question has been a complicated one to answer. I can tell you where I was born, where I spent my childhood, where I’ve lived the most, and where I live now. But home? I’m not sure. Is it a location? Or is it found within the communities and relationships where we feel loved, safe, part of something outside of ourselves? Does it change? And what about the times when we don’t know where—or if—to return? The search for these answers is what led to the poems in this collection. At its core, Homing is an exploration of the transitory nature of belonging and its innate role in our desire for home, even as we try to define it. These poems reflect on the interconnectedness of the paths we take and the moments along the way—between tides and seasons, in nature, amidst love and friendship, within memory and loss, over generations, and most of all, within ourselves—as we seek, find, and return to a place called home.

Why is it important to you to have your voice heard and amplified?

I don’t think it’s important to have my voice heard, per se. But I do hope my poems represent many voices—ones that don’t always know how to be heard but are searching for ways to have their experiences reflected back to them, on a page, in an image, in metaphor. The poet Eavan Boland once wrote that “at the end of the day, what matters is language. Is the unspoken at the edge of the spoken.” If amplifying my words helps someone connect language to their own, perhaps unspoken, search for home and belonging, then I’m happy to be part of the great host of writers bridging the gap between the spoken and unspoken.

What made you decide to submit this chapbook to Yellow Arrow Publishing this year?

Yellow Arrow Journal’s KINDLING issue (2023) was the home of my first published poem and since then [Yellow Arrow] has held a special place in my heart. I also wanted to finish and submit this chapbook before I turned 40 this past September—as a sort of capstone to my 30s. Aging is such a complicated process of self-discovery and acceptance for a woman, and Yellow Arrow’s women-amplifying, community-driven mission further underscored my choice to submit this collection—another first publication—to them.

**Vic Nogay**

*Naming a Dying Thing*
coming October 2025

Vic Nogay is a Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction nominated writer from Ohio. Her work has been published in Gone Lawn, Tiny Molecules, Fractured Lit, Lost Balloon, and other journals. She is the author of the micropoetry chapbook under fire under water (tiny wren, 2022) and the microeditor of Identity Theory. Find her online @vicnogaywrites or haunting rural roadsides where the wildflowers grow.

About Naming a Dying Thing: Naming a Dying Thing is a collection of poems rooted in place, in loss, and in reckoning. Much of the content is sieved through native Ohio wildlife imagery of all seasons, though primarily summer. This is a sticky collection, like humid Ohio summers, often wistful and lovely, but also heavy and heightened. The primary struggle in this body of work is with womanhood, motherhood—how to be a woman and a mother in a society demanding we be somehow everything and nothing all at once. These poems also contemplate and subvert success and failure in love, holding a marriage up to the concurrent events of our hostile American reality. There are no answers here. Topics include pregnancy, motherhood, miscarriage, child loss, abortion, reproductive injustices, gun violence, climate change, marriage, relationships, memory, and the hidden intersections I'm finding between them and the native Ohio wildlife near my home.

Why is it important to you to have your voice heard and amplified?

Sharing my voice is self-sovereignty, it’s how I choose to take up space, to let my little life unfurl beyond itself, catching the wind if only for a moment.

What made you decide to submit this chapbook to Yellow Arrow Publishing this year?

I love that Yellow Arrow is a nonprofit publisher committed to championing cis and trans women writers. I knew my poems and I would be safe and supported in this exemplary community.

We can’t wait to work with Ann marie, Emily, and Vic next year and put out there beautiful collections but would like to acknowledge all the incredible collections we received this summer. Thank you to everyone who submitted and shared. In particular, we would love to give a shout out to both our longlisted (part of the top 25) and shortlisted authors (part of the top 11).

Meet our shortlisted authors:

Rachel R. Baum

Melanie Hyo-In Han

Kathleen Hellen

Beth Kanter

Beth Konkoski

Elina Kumra

Pia Taavila-Borsheim

Bethany Tap

Meet our longlisted authors:

Torey Akers

Jody Brooks

Hannah Burns

Alyx Chandler

Jenn Frayer-Griggs

Victoria Grageda-Smith

Jennifer Grant

Jamie Hennick

Arya F. Jenkins

Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka

Kathryn LeBey

Elizabeth Sine

Sam VanNorden

Thank you to everyone who took the time to send your words to us. Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling. We are so proud of everyone we publish at Yellow Arrow.

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women-identifying writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we AMPLIFY women-identifying creatives this year by purchasing one of our publications or a workshop from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, for yourself or as a gift, joining our newsletter, following us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, or subscribing to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 65185, Baltimore, Maryland 21209). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Kapua Iao 11/12/24 Kapua Iao 11/12/24

Memorializing Griefulness: Yellow Arrow Journal (Vol. IX, No. 2) kitalo

How brave you are
Confronting things you cannot control

“Temporary Homes” by Kat Flores

Kitalo, the just released issue of Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. IX, No. 2, guest edited by Tramaine Suubi, explores the poignant intersection of grief and gratitude. While deciding on the theme of the issue, the term “kitalo” spoke to everyone on staff as it seems to have for those who submitted to Yellow Arrow Journal in August. “Kitalo” is an empathetic Luganda term of solidarity offered when someone experiences a spectrum of loss. Directly translating to “this/that is tragic” but far richer than that, the term and the pieces within kitalo represent so much that we want to say on the concept of griefulness, as individuals and as a collective.

We are honored to release the latest issue of Yellow Arrow Journal and are fortunate to share the voices within. In the issue’s introduction, Tramaine adds:

“Being the guest editor is a privilege, but the greatest gift I received in this role is true vulnerability. I grieve and give thanks alongside each of our artists here. I hope their words are lifegiving for you, just as they are for me.”

Paperback and PDF versions are now available from the Yellow Arrow bookstore. Discounts are also available (here) if you would like to purchase copies for friends and family (minimum purchase of five). You can also search for Yellow Arrow Journal on any e-book device or anywhere you purchase print and electronic books, including Amazon and most other distribution channels. Discounted bundles of our 2024 issues (ELEVATE and kitalo) are also available from our bookstore.

Tramaine Suubi (she/they) is a multilingual writer who was born in Kampala, Uganda. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Their forthcoming debut is a full-length poetry collection titled phases, which will be published in January 2025. Their forthcoming second book is also a full-length poetry collection titled stages, which will be published in January 2026. Both books will be published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins.

The cover image (cover design by Alexa Laharty) is called Growing by Dark Rivers by Liz Jakimow. According to Liz, “There is often a lot of darkness in my photographs now. While some may find it depressing, it feels more authentic to who I am. Yet there are also often elements that draw attention to the light, symbolizing hope.” Thank you Liz for expressing the heart of kitalo through your photograph and your words.

We hope you enjoy reading kitalo as much as we enjoyed creating it. Thank you for your continued encouragement of Yellow Arrow Publishing and the creatives involved in kitalo.

*****

Kapua Iao 11/7/24 Kapua Iao 11/7/24

Gratitude is a Divine Emotion: Yellow Arrow Interns

“Gratitude is a divine emotion: it fills the heart, but not to bursting; it warms it, but not to fever.”

from Shirley by Charlotte Brontë

One of the many ways Yellow Arrow Publishing encourages women writers and women in publishing is through inclusion within the organization itself. We welcome (and thrive with) our volunteers and interns, not only for our own benefit but to also (hopefully) provide a prospective future publisher with some necessary tools and knowledge about the publishing world. And even if a volunteer/intern does not plan to continue within the publishing world, the tools and knowledge of working in a women-led, collaborative organization. One that champions the different and the unique. One that looks for partners and allies rather than simple connections (see our growing list of partners here).

We try to find each volunteer, each intern, space in our organization to grow and flourish in the area they are most interested in (and of course where we need the most help!). Past staff members have worked at our live events and at Yellow Arrow House. They hand bound our publications and put as much love and tenderness into each copy as we could hope. Today they focus on the ins and outs of releasing a publication, running a publishing company, and our community-driven projects. Tasks can range from editing to formatting, marketing, and putting together events and workshops. Above all else, our interns support and champion staff/board, authors, workshop attendees, and themselves. We are so thankful to have had them with us on this journey.

So let’s introduce the fall 2024 interns. Each has our appreciation.

Alexa Lesniak

Program Management Intern

From Media, Pennsylvania but currently living in College Park, Maryland
*What do you do*? My main role at Yellow Arrow is to help support workshops and events through social media posts by creating graphics in Canva to promote different activities. I also write the monthly newsletter and will get to write two blog posts.
*Where do you go to school*? I am currently an English major at the University of Maryland, College Park, and I will graduate this upcoming May!
*What are you currently working on*? Currently, I have been focused on learning how to cook. While many stores have gluten-free frozen options, I have been trying to create my own with whole foods. So far this journey has been very frustrating but very rewarding.

Alexa Lesniak (she/her) is a current senior at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is an English major with a concentration in media studies and minors in creative writing and professional writing. Alexa is very passionate about the craft of poetry and how it can portray nature. She recently has discovered a love of journaling and scrapbooking. After she graduates, Alexa hopes to pursue a career in publishing. She can be found on Instagram @alexalesniak.

Once she graduates, she plans on pursuing a career in publishing. She would love to help craft the next generation of great literature. Before that though, she plans to travel the U.S. and visit all of the national parks.

Why did you choose an internship with Yellow Arrow?

I chose an internship with Yellow Arrow because of the organization’s mission and workplace culture. It has been amazing to help highlight women writers and learn more about events being held locally in Baltimore. I have already met so many amazing people and have been introduced to such wonderful written work.

How are things going so far?

So far, things have been going well. I have learned so much about how Yellow Arrow functions and just how many people play a role in the organization’s success. I also have gained many design and writing skills through my weekly tasks.

Elizabeth Ottenritter

Publications Intern

Lives in Baltimore, Maryland
*What do you do*? Assist with Yellow Arrow’s publications program on a variety of projects, and act as an editorial associate as needed, working directly with the Editor-in-Chief.
*Where do you go to school*? Loyola University Maryland. I am a senior and will graduate in May of 2025.
*What are you currently working on*? As of right now, I am working on applying to graduate programs. I am writing a lot of poetry and prose for my courses as well. I am also a DJ at my university’s radio station, WLOY, so I go live and play music once a week.

Elizabeth Ottenritter (she/her) is a senior at Loyola University Maryland, where she studies writing. She is passionate about reading, crafting poetry, contributing to Loyola’s literary art magazine, Corridors, and traveling worldwide. Upon graduation, Elizabeth hopes to continue her love of learning and language in a graduate program.

She hopes to be accepted into a graduate program for an MFA in either creative writing or poetry. After school, she would like to begin a career in editing or publications, alongside publishing her own writing one day.

Why did you choose to do an internship with Yellow Arrow?

Yellow Arrow has an incredible reputation of publishing and encouraging women-identifying voices, with their numerous chapbook publications, workshops, and journal issues. I truly resonated with allowing writers to be heard exactly as they are, focusing on the heart of the work above anything else. I was also moved by the upcoming (at the time) Yellow Arrow Journal issue kitalo. I felt a strong connection to the premise of grief and gratitude coming together to create something beautiful.

How are things going so far?

Great! I get to do what I love, surrounded by talented and passionate professionals. I get to read the work of others, copyedit publications, and write to amplify Yellow Arrow on social media. I’m learning a lot in such a short period of time, and I know this experience will stay with me.

*****

Thank you to everyone who supports these women and all writers who toil away day after day. Please show them some love in the comments below or on Yellow Arrow’s Facebook or Instagram. If interested in joining us as an editorial associate or intern, fill out an application at yellowarrowpublishing.com/internships.

Guest User 10/29/24 Guest User 10/29/24

Meet the 2025 Yellow Arrow Publishing Best of the Net Nominees

Best of the Net recognizes the work of writers published online by independent presses. The project was started in 2006 by Sundress Publications to create a community among the online literary magazines, journals, and self-publishing platforms. The award represents an incredible opportunity for Yellow Arrow Publishing to further showcase and support our authors. Our staff is committed to letting our authors’ shine. Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling.

Here are our Best of the Net 2025 nominees from Vignette SPARK. You can find some of our authors reading from SPARK on the Yellow Arrow YouTube channel. Best of the Net announces the winners in January.

Angela Acosta

“A Centennial for Herstory”
*poetry*
I didn’t have to, but I remembered you.

Angela Acosta (she/her) is a bilingual Latina poet and an assistant professor of Spanish at the University of South Carolina. She is a 2022 Dream Foundry Contest for Emerging Writers finalist, 2022 Somos en Escrito Extra-Fiction Contest honorable mention, and Utopia Award nominee. Her work has appeared in Panochazine, Pluma, Toyon Literary Magazine, and The Acentos Review. Her creative and academic work centers on imagining possible worlds and preserving the cultural legacies of women writers. She is the author of Summoning Space Travelers (Hiraeth Publishing, 2022), A Belief in Cosmic Dailiness (Red Ogre Review, 2023), and her forthcoming chapbook, Fourth Generation Chicana Unicorn (Dancing Girl Press, 2024).

Tijanna O. Eaton

“And Her Eyes Fell from the Scale”
*creative nonfiction*
Finally, animated by their generous and generative support, the chapter was complete. The ouroboros had uncoiled fully, metamorphosing into a dragon.

Tijanna O. Eaton (Tə-zha-na; she/her) is a Black poly kinkster queerdo pocket butch with a high school diploma and a rap sheet. She has been published in Honey Literary, Noyo Review, Panorama Journal (nominated for a Pushcart Prize), and Yellow Arrow Vignette SPARK. She received the 2021 Unicorn Authors Club Alumni award, was a 2023 Rooted & Written Fellow, and was the 2024 Best of the Net nonfiction judge. Tijanna is board chair of Five Keys Schools and Programs, served on QWOCMAP’s board from 2016 to 2018, and was IMsL’s POC liaison from 2015 to 2017. Visit bolt-cutters.com for more information.

Marisa Victoria Gedgaudas

“Colygraphia”
*poetry*
. . . . The syrupy seduction of believing that I can be a keeper of stories but not the teller of them.

Marisa Victoria Gedgaudas is a writer originally from Colorado who now lives on the windswept bluffs of northern California. She is most inspired by the wild beauty around her and is often found exploring the mountains of her childhood, the unspoiled Pacific coast, and the desert landscapes in between. She is currently working on her first collection of poetry.

Charlene Langfur

“The Way Back”
*poetry*
. . . steady
or true, a time to rebuild a small world
that works when I am trying to put
myself back together this way
in time . . .

Charlene Langfur is an LGBTQ and green writer and an organic gardener living in the very hot, southern Californian desert. She was a graduate fellow in the Syracuse University Writing Program and her most recent publications include poems in Poetry East (the special Monet edition), The Hiram Poetry Review, London’s Acumen, and The North Dakota Quarterly.

Laurel Maxwell

“A Full Life”
*poetry*
. . . . To fold ourselves like a paper crane into the creases of delicate existence.

Laurel Maxwell is a poet from Santa Cruz, California, whose work is inspired by life’s mundane and the natural world. Her work has appeared at baseballballard.com, coffecontrails, phren-z, Verse-Virtual, Tulip Tree Review, and Yellow Arrow Vignette SPARK. Her creative fiction was a finalist for Women on Writing Flash Fiction Contest. She has a chapbook forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2025. When not writing Laurel enjoys putting her feet in the sand, reading, traveling, and trying not to make too much of a mess baking in a too small kitchen. She works in education.

Katherine Shehadeh

“My son wants to know what happened before the universe &”
*poetry*
today we learned the universe was created by fire—an explosion tinier than a tiny pin prick, and the universe, it’s expanding all the time, stretching this way, pulling that, until a moment when it isn’t and it gets smaller & tighter, until it turns back into a tiny little thing, tinier than a pin prick.

Katherine Shehadeh is a poet, artist, and current reader for Chestnut Review who resides with her family in Miami, Florida. Her recent poems appear in Maudlin House, Drunk Monkeys, Saw Palm, and others. Find her on Twitter @your_mominlaw or Instagram @katherinesarts.

Ann van Wijgerden

“Dear Planet”
*poetry*
. . . . But it was the waters captivating me in aqua hues, light scattering diamantine, undulating surfaces, their expanses exhaling, inhaling, exhaling.

Ann van Wijgerden, born in the United Kingdom, has spent most of her adult life in the Netherlands and the Philippines. She has had nonfiction, poetry, and fiction published (or accepted for future publication) in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Genre: Urban Arts, Orion, Orbis, The Sunlight Press, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Yellow Arrow Vignette SPARK, The Wild Umbrella, and the Queen’s Quarterly. Ann cofounded and works for an NGO called Young Focus (youngfocus.org), which provides education for children living in Manila’s area of ‘Smokey Mountain.’

Veronica Wasson

“On Clothing (Five Pieces)”
*creative nonfiction*
Clothing was the most visible manifestation of what I was and what I wasn’t; of who I wanted to be and who I dreamed of becoming.

Veronica Wasson (she/her) is a trans writer living in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in Spectrum, smoke + mold, The Seventh Wave, Yellow Arrow Vignette SPARK, and elsewhere. You can find her work at veronica-wasson.com.

*****

Kapua Iao 10/22/24 Kapua Iao 10/22/24

The Evolution of My Writing

By Amaya Lambert, written April 2024

Well, writing evolves throughout time.

I believe that your writing changes forms as you grow into it. When I started out writing, my stories took a more comedic turn; sparkled with humor and jests alongside wacky situations that made me burst out laughing as a child.

I read middle grade books. The Percy Jackson series. The Kane Chronicles. The Monster High series. All targeted to young children with big imaginations and short attention spans. One of my favorite books of all time was the Web of Magic series where the power of friendship triumphs over.

I emulated that in my writing.

Then came high school, where young adult books grew popular. I grabbed fantasy books from my sister’s shelves. I begged my parents to let me read Game of Thrones. I devoured the Court of Thorns and Roses and An Ember in the Ashes.

I played more mature games with violence and sexuality. My prose grew, my vocabulary expanded.

I emulated that in my writing.

It wasn’t until my junior year of college that I seriously considered the form of my writing, what my style should be and how it will dictate my career for years to come.

I fell in love with lyrical and poetic prose. I realized my knack for emotionally charged stories and complex characters. I discovered my fascination with the profound and the psychanalysis of humanity. I grabbed books that challenged my mind and made me think about the world differently. I learned about my place in this world and how I can either meet or exceed its expectations.

My writing takes on the form of song, almost lyrical and melodious in its prose. I think carefully about how the words fit together and what type of picture it paints. I take inspiration from song lyrics, poems, quotes, and movie soundtracks. I think about the mood of my story, what atmosphere I’m creating, what tone the words speak.

I meticulously go over my pieces, creatively constructing a symphony of prose.

Some of my favorite lines were that of:

“She wants to run, but her feet remain on the ground. It’s like her mind says one thing but her heart says another.”

“There’s something rotten in the air, congealing.”

The construction of sentences and piecing of words takes form in my writing. I can see the emotions conveyed in the words. I can see what type of messages they evoke.

The evolution of writing is an integral process for any creative. Our writing grows as we grow. Many authors have certain types of branding to stick onto their shifting forms. It is one of the reasons as to why many of my favorite authors have a certain niche woven into their words. To make up for the change of writing, they make sure the reader can recognize their style.

I’ve been reading Chinese light novels translated by passionate fans. Though the author’s style dramatically changed from her first novel, The Scum Villian’s Self-Saving System, to her latest work, Heaven Official’s Blessing; I can see traces of her signature style in both novels. Her multifaceted characters. A focus on the internal arc of the main characters. The love and attention to the side characters. The slow burn of the romance relationship. Even if she changed her writing form, I’d still find her within the novel’s pages.

There’s a reason why fans will have authors on their immediate purchase list because they fell in love with their signature style. They say as you begin to write, you grow more comfortable in words. There’s a shift in language, a change in prose, and your writing form evolves with time and effort.

I hope in time when my writing twists and turns and is still able to retain its original concept, as a song.

Amaya Lambert is a senior at Towson University, studying English and creative writing. She loves a good book, slow music, and tasty food. When she isn’t reading, she’s writing, lost in her inner world. Amaya tutored for her high school’s writing center and the elementary school across from it. One of her proudest accomplishments is winning second place in a writing competition in the seventh grade.

*****

Kapua Iao 10/15/24 Kapua Iao 10/15/24

Why is Creative Nonfiction Important?

By Mel Silberger, written March 2024

Creative nonfiction is my favorite genre to write! I love the opportunity to write about moments in my life with a creative lens, allowing me to combine my outward experiences with my inward thought processes and feelings. At times, creative nonfiction serves as an outlet to discuss the topics I am most passionate about and the interactions they have brought me, whereas in others, I can write about the vulnerable and life-changing moments I have undergone.

Difference Between Fiction and Creative Nonfiction

First, it is important to establish the differences between fiction and creative nonfiction. Fiction can be described as a story about (possibly) pretend characters in a (possibly) pretend setting with a (possibly) pretend plot; there can be elements of truth, such as the setting being a real place or characters being real people, but it overall does not fully reflect experiences as they factually happened.

Creative nonfiction, on the other hand, is about real people in a real setting with a plot that really happened. When writing creative nonfiction, the author has the creative freedom to combine events that have happened with their thought processes and emotions in those moments, but they must adhere to the accurate retelling of events as truthfully as possible.

Purpose of Creative Nonfiction

The purpose of creative nonfiction is to convey a story’s facts and information in a fiction-like manner, entertaining the reader and allowing them to understand their author’s perspective. In other words, creative nonfiction lets the reader get a firsthand account of what the author was thinking throughout the experience or moment they are writing about. The author becomes a character themselves and takes their reader through the events that unfold.

When writing creative nonfiction, the author has the obligation to tell the events as accurately as they happened, but the creative freedom to retell them with attention to specific details or thought processes. Through their description of these events, the author’s voice is able to shine through for the reader to understand.

Creative nonfiction encapsulates countless forms of writing, such as journalism, memoirs, personal essays, and biographies.

Importance of Creative Nonfiction

On a personal level, creative nonfiction is important because it allows an author to write about themselves and the experiences they have gone through; for some, it could be a way to write about a simple day in the life, whereas for others, it can be an outlet to tell a greater, life-changing story and the effects it had. Writing creative nonfiction can also serve to reflect; it can be as easy as a brief journal entry detailing the events of the day, or as complicated as retelling ongoing moments or events experienced or observed.

Creative nonfiction is also incredibly important on a community level, as writers are able to use their lived experiences and perspectives to impact larger communities and groups worldwide. By combining true events with creative language, these authors can elevate one seemingly small moment about a certain topic into a story with a larger purpose and potential for advocacy or change. They can write vulnerable stories grounded in facts to convey how others worldwide may be going through something similar and express this in an engaging way.

Additionally, creative nonfiction allows the audience to be educated about a topic, idea, or concept they might otherwise know little about. Many creative nonfiction authors combine true, personal events with facts, giving them the power to share knowledge about a specific subject matter with their readers. For example, if an author is passionate about science, they can write a firsthand account of a moment in a laboratory or class and partner it with facts about their field.

Current Creative Nonfiction Reads

My favorite creative nonfiction read (so far) of 2024 is T Kira Madden’s Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls: A Memoir (2019), a coming-of-age story centered around identity and sexuality, specifically displayed through emotional experiences with family and fellow classmates. I also thoroughly enjoyed reading World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments (2020) by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, a series of essays combining inspirational features of the natural world with personal experiences.

There is so much creative nonfiction I am eager to read throughout the remainder of this year! Recent recommendations I’ve received include Here After (2024), a memoir by Amy Lin describing love after loss and the processes of grief and memory, and Everything I Know About Love (2018), a memoir by Dolly Alderton about the stages of early adulthood, such as finding a job and falling in love.

I don’t think there’s ever been a creative nonfiction piece I disliked, and because of this, I would not say I have an all-time favorite creative nonfiction story; the more I read, the more I enjoy and appreciate each individual work I come across. My favorite piece recently is “Anatomy of a Lumpia Girl,” a beautiful, vulnerable, and uplifting story by Angelica Terso, which can be found in Yellow Arrow Journal’s ELEVATE issue (Vol. IX, No. 1) (you should totally go check it out!).

Closing Thoughts

Overall, creative nonfiction gives an author the outlet to tell their story, no matter how big/small, by discussing true events in a creative, authentic, and engaging way. These stories have the potential to impact both the author and a greater community by showing that a moment one person experiences can be felt and understood by many.

This is my favorite genre to write in because I love how I can retell certain moments in my life and connect them to other experiences, facts, and/or ideas. For example, I wrote a piece a few weeks ago about rock climbing (one of my biggest passions) and combined a moment of me physically on the rock wall with factual information about the activity and safety systems.

So, my question to you is what topic do you enjoy writing about? What are you passionate about? Are there specific experiences that center around some of your greatest passions, and/or explore meaningful, impactful moments in your life?

Amelia (Mel) Silberger is a recent graduate of Loyola University Maryland who received her degree in psychology and writing with a minor in political science. She is an aspiring creative nonfiction writer and editor who is originally from Long Island, New York. Mel has spent the past two summers living in Orlando, Florida, while participating in the Disney College Program. She has loved creating stories since she was six years old and hopes to continue to grow and build with other writers in the future.

*****

Kapua Iao 10/8/24 Kapua Iao 10/8/24

The value of reflection and moving forward: Ghosts Only I Can See by Julie Alden Cullinane

Yellow Arrow Publishing announces the release of our third chapbook of 2024, Ghosts Only I Can See by Julie Alden Cullinane. Since its establishment in 2016, Yellow Arrow has devoted its efforts to advocate for all women writers through inclusion in the biannual Yellow Arrow Journal as well as single-author publications and Yellow Arrow Vignette, and by providing strong author support, writing workshops, and volunteering opportunities. We at Yellow Arrow are excited to continue our mission by supporting Cullinane in all her writing and publishing endeavors.

Ghosts Only I Can See by Julie Alden Cullinane peeks back in time to Cullinane’s younger self and the ghosts through time that until now, only she could see. It focuses not on literal ghosts, but the ghosts—the shells—of her former self. With this hauntingly woven collection of creative nonfiction and poetry, Cullinane shares these ghosts and the painful, powerful, and wonderful experiences that made her the woman she is today. Cullinane is a neurodivergent poet, author, and mom in Boston. After raising a family and working for many years as a young mom, she was able to return to her graduate studies later in life and earned her master’s in 2021. Under the guidance of many amazing and supportive female professors, Cullinane began submitting her work for publication.

Her latest work, Ghosts Only I Can See, wields Cullinane’s story to encourage readers to look into the past, present, and future of all women’s lives. Growing up with many resilient and strong women, Cullinane was an avid spectator of their lives, their passions, and their trauma as she found her own way through the world. As she got older and decided to grasp her ghosts even closer, Cullinane truly began to understand the tender weaving of women’s lives and their multitude of shared experiences—both of which often remain invisible today because of collective shame, individual shame, and the pressures of perfection in society. The desire to make visible the invisible underlies Ghosts Only I Can See.

Cover photography was by Cullinane and cover design and interior images by Alexa Laharty. Cullinane states, “The photos came out beautifully, capturing isolation and Americana vibes with an old western feel but also modern. I couldn’t be happier with the image I selected. Right down to the sunglasses. I hope everyone loves it as much as I do.”

Paperback and PDF versions of Ghosts Only I Can See are now available from the Yellow Arrow bookstore. If interested in purchasing more than one paperback copy for friends and family, check out our discounted wholesale prices here. You can also search for Ghosts Only I Can See wherever you purchase your books including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. To learn more about Cullinane and Ghosts Only I Can See, check out our recent interview with her.

You can find Cullinane online at julie.wildinkpages.com/poetry, on Instagram or Threads @HerLoudMind, and on Twitter or Blue Sky @AldenCullinane and connect with Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram, to share some love for this chapbook. You can also share a review to any of the major distributors or by emailing editor@yellowarrowpublishing.com. We’d love to hear from you.

*****

Kapua Iao 10/4/24 Kapua Iao 10/4/24

Her View Friday

Yellow Arrow Publishing supports women-identifying writers from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes us stronger. Women’s voices have historically been underrepresented in literature, and we aim to elevate those voices and stories through our programs, publications, and support.

Part of our mission in supporting and uplifting women writers is to promote the Yellow Arrow community’s individual accomplishments. We’d like to further expand that support and promotion outside of our Yellow Arrow publications. Twice a month, we’d like to give a shout out to those within the Yellow Arrow community who recently published:

single-author publications
single pieces in journals, anthologies, etc., as well as prizes/awards, book reviews, and podcasts/interviews

You can support our authors by reading this blog and their work, sharing their news, and commenting below or on the blog. Congratulations to all the included authors. We are so proud of you!

Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling.

Author: Yuemin He

Tell us about yourself: I have published on East Asian literature and visual art, Asian American literature, Buddhist American literature, composition pedagogy, and translational studies. My poems and poetry translations have appeared in more than 30 literary magazines, journals, and anthologies, including The Cincinnati Review, The Massachusetts Review, the Oxford Anthology of Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (2nd ed.), and Yellow Arrow Journal. In October 2024, my book of poetry translations, I’ve Seen the Yellow Crane: Selected Poems of Zhang Zhihao, will be released by Foreign Languages Press in Beijing, China. Currently, I am an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College.

Where are you from: Chengdu, China

What describes your main writing space: challenging, enabling, and fulfilling

Tell us about your publication: I’ve Seen the Yellow Crane: Selected Poems of Zhang Zhihao features 183 poems, selected mainly from the award-winning poetry collection, Wild Flowers on the Plateau, and the new poetry collection, The Everlasting Pot, both by contemporary Chinese poet Zhang Zhihao. I’ve Seen the Yellow Crane showcases the poet’s remarkable ability to stay close with daily life. It unravels the subtlest meanings from trivial happenings in the streets and alleys and the natural world, and then conveys them in an extraordinary poetic language. It transforms quotidian realities into poetic subject matter, vivid images, and highly relatable feelings. Ultimately, it offers the readers a vicarious experience of sizzling youth along the Yangtze River and the wide Jiang Han Plain, capacious understanding of the multitudes, and subtle critique of the social and human foibles. This book marks the first book-length English-language translation of Zhang’s poetry, providing access to the writings of a major contemporary Chinese poet.

Why this book? Why now? How did it happen for you: I had translated classic Chinese poetry, such as The Book of Songs and a Cao Zhi poem, and published my translations in Metamorphoses, Ezra, and Rattle Poetry. During the pandemic I decided to translate poetry that was more relevant to our daily life. I translated nearly a score of modern and contemporary poets, Chinese and American (such as Louise Glück, Lydia Child, Sonia Greenfield, Maisie Williams, Hai Zi, Zhang Zhihao, and Chi Li). Eventually I decided to focus on Chinese to English translation because of my excellent Chinese language background and years of formal English education and teaching experiences. I first translated Zhang’s pandemic poems and after the pandemic I moved onto his broader subjects. Translators are restricted by the need to get the original author’s permission to translate and publish their work. For instance, my friend and I did a unique translation of Hai Zi’s poem “Facing the Sea,” but because of the lack of authorization, we could not get it published. I was lucky that I like Zhang’s writing style, and I did get his permission. So far I have written two academic articles on Zhang’s poetry and published more than 30 poem translations in literary magazines in this country, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. I have always been reading, writing, and translating but now I am more focused.

What advice do you have for other writers: I started with a novel, which was never published, and it took me four years. I am leaning toward writing shorter pieces. I also only write what I like to write and translate what I like to translate. I have always entwined my teaching, creative activities, and academic research into one big strand; this means opportunities are there one way or another. In the past month, I have written several songs and AI-ed them into recordings. Very fun. They can be found on my Twitter @HebeR32123. I just keep doing what I like, which is writing.

What else are you working on/doing that you’d like to share: Gardening, cooking, walking, reminiscing my dog that passed away earlier this year, reviewing academic articles for two journals, being an editor for our college’s magazine, and volunteering at MLA as an indexer.

Yellow Arrow (past and present) board, staff, interns, authors, residents, and instructors alike! Got a publication coming out? Let us help celebrate for you in Her View Friday.

Single-author publications: here.

Single pieces as well as prizes/awards, book reviews, and podcasts/interviews: here.

Please read the instructions on each form carefully; we look forward to congratulating you!

*****

Kapua Iao 10/1/24 Kapua Iao 10/1/24

Meet a Staff Member: Amelia (Mel) Silberger

Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to (re)introduce Amelia (Mel) Silberger, our spring 2024 publications intern turned reader. Mel is a recent graduate of Loyola University Maryland who received her degree in psychology and writing with a minor in political science. She is an aspiring creative nonfiction writer and editor who is originally from Long Island, New York. Mel has spent the past two summers living in Orlando, Florida, while participating in the Disney College Program. She has loved creating stories since she was six years old and hopes to continue to grow and build with other writers in the future.

Mel says, “I’m looking forward to reading more of the amazing poems and creative nonfiction pieces submitted by talented writers throughout the world, and amplifying their voices through our chapbooks, journals, and vignettes. I am also eager to continue working alongside a brilliant group of women-identifying creatives whose passion for building each other up is unlike any other.”

Tell us a little something about yourself.

I was raised on Long Island, New York, but spent the past four years living in Baltimore, Maryland, while studying at Loyola University Maryland. While at Loyola, I served as the marketing intern for the Kennedy Krieger Institute before joining Yellow Arrow as a publications intern. I recently graduated with a degree in psychology and writing and am planning to work for the next year before applying to graduate schools. I love rock climbing, watching hockey, squishmallows, and all things Disney.

What do you love most about Long Island?

My favorite part about Long Island has to either be the food (who doesn’t love New York pizza and bagels!?) or the proximity to so many destinations. I love that I can take a short ride to the beach or a train into New York City and find so much to do in between. Most importantly, most of my extended family lives on Long Island and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities to see them after four years of being away.

How did you get involved with Yellow Arrow?

I got involved with Yellow Arrow during my senior year of college after meeting with my writing professor about potential internship placements that aligned with my goals. She immediately suggested applying to the Yellow Arrow team and after reading the Yellow Arrow mission, I knew this was something I wanted to be a part of. I was the publications intern for spring 2024 and now I am a reader for the selection process of our chapbooks and journals. I originally wanted to join Yellow Arrow because I loved the idea of being able to empower and elevate the voices of other women-identifying creatives, and it has been amazing to do that and more!

What are you working on currently?

Since graduation, most of my time has been spent visiting family and traveling. I have been building my writing portfolio along with my website (to be published soon!) and looking into graduate school programs for next year.

What genre do you write or read the most?

Creative nonfiction! I love highlighting what may seem like simple moments by telling them in a creative way. I also appreciate the opportunity to share my lived experiences with others so we can elevate and advocate for each other.

What book is on the top of your to-be-read pile?

On Beauty by Zadie Smith was recently recommended to me, and I’m eager to give it a try! I am also looking forward to reading Tramaine Suubi’s Phases, which will be published in January 2025.

Who is your favorite writer and why?

I don’t have a favorite writer—it’s constantly changing! No stories have ever sat with me as heavy as those of Ken Liu though, and I highly recommend reading his short story collection titled The Paper Menagerie.

Who has inspired and/or supported you most in your writing journey?

My writing professors at Loyola have inspired me most throughout my writing journey, and I am confident I would not be the person nor writer I am today without their feedback and encouragement. I am also forever inspired by my three younger siblings and the people they have grown to be, as many of my pieces center around our relationship and shared childhood.

My biggest supporters are my partner, Logan, and friend, Sophia. From bouncing story ideas off one another to editing every piece of punctuation, they are unwaveringly present in helping my writing journey in any way that I need.

What do you love most about writing?

My favorite part about writing is the connection it builds with those around me, especially those who I might not know otherwise. Whether it be relating to similar experiences or learning something new, I appreciate the opportunity to share pieces of myself and my story with others and hearing theirs in return. It’s a truly special way to connect.

What advice do you have for new writers?

Don’t stare at the page and wait for the “perfect” poem or story—if you do that, the idea will likely never come. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is write all your thoughts down on a page, no matter how long it may be, and come back later to edit them to fit the story you want to tell. Don’t worry about getting it right on the first try—you’re not supposed to.

What’s the most important thing you always keep near where you work?

My Rubik’s cube! It is a great fidget for when I’m feeling restless and allows me to take quick mental breaks if I need to. Aside from that, I always bring a journal or notebook to write down any general thoughts that may distract me from my task at hand.

What’s your vision for Yellow Arrow in 2024?

I envision Yellow Arrow continuing to amplify the diverse voices of women-identifying creatives all over the world. I’d also love to gain more awareness about our team and what we do and reach more writers throughout each submission period. I can’t wait to see how Yellow Arrow grows this year and beyond, and I am so grateful to be a part of it!

*****

Kapua Iao 9/27/24 Kapua Iao 9/27/24

Her View Friday

Part of our mission in supporting and uplifting women-identifying creatives is to promote the Yellow Arrow community’s individual accomplishments. We’d like to further expand that support and promotion outside of our Yellow Arrow publications. Twice a month, we’d like to give a shout out to those within the Yellow Arrow community who recently published:

single-author publications
single pieces in journals, anthologies, etc., as well as prizes/awards, book reviews, and podcasts/interviews

You can support our authors by reading this blog and their work, sharing their news, and commenting below or on the blog. Congratulations to all the included authors. We are so proud of you!

Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling

“Intercession: ER Waiting Room” by Nancy Hugget from Ottawa, Canada

Genre: poetry

Name of publication: Mom Egg Review for MER: Motherhood Literature & Art

Date Released: September 10, 2024

Type of publication: online

hmerliterary.com/2024/09/10/nancy-huggett-intercession-er-waiting-room-poetry

Connect with Nancy on Twitter @nancyhuggett, Instagram @nanhug, Bluesky @nancyhuggett.bsky.social, and Facebook @nancy.huggett.35.

EXHIBITIONS

Four Poems by Laura Rockhold from Minneapolis, Minnesota

Where you can find the poems: Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport

Date on display: September 2024- October 2025

Project locations & poems displayed:

Minnesota Landscapes in Terminal 1 at Gate F10): “LICHEN BLOOMS” and “TAKING HANDS”

Minnesota Waters in Terminal 1 at Gate E8: “CONFLUENCE” and “BDE MAKA SKA (LAKE WHITE EARTH)”

“LICHEN BLOOMS” was included in Yellow Arrow Journal PEREGRINE, Vol. VII, No. 2, Fall 2022. Besides in person at the airport, you can also find the exhibits and the poems (including audio recordings) online at laurarockhold.com/exhibits. Learn more about Laura on Instagram @laurarockhold_.

Yellow Arrow (past and present) board, staff, interns, authors, residents, and instructors alike! Got a publication coming out? Let us help celebrate for you in Her View Friday.

Single-author publications: here.

Single pieces as well as prizes/awards, book reviews, and podcasts/interviews: here.

Please read the instructions on each form carefully; we look forward to congratulating you!

*****

Kapua Iao 9/24/24 Kapua Iao 9/24/24

Finding a Writing Community

By Sarah Josephine Pennington, written April 2024

I’d never given much thought to finding a community of writers when I was younger. In middle and high school, I always had friends who wrote. We’d share work back and forth, emailing or instant messaging poems and stories while conversation flowed over MSN Messenger, or we’d pass handwritten work folded into tight rectangles during class. When I left home for college, I lucked into a vibrant university writing community, falling into easy camaraderie with students in the workshops I took, sharing work freely at open mics and in the campus literary magazine. Everywhere I looked, other folks were just as in love with words as I was, and writing as a community was a given.

After I left those workshops, though, that sense of community was slowly lost. All those beautiful writers still wrote or wanted to write. Some of those friends went on to publish (and what wonderful things they published!), while others wrote for their own enjoyment. When I’d see members of those former writing communities, we’d talk about projects we were dreaming up, but somewhere along the way that life of words became harder and harder for me to maintain. Once my course work was done, I worked two jobs while still plugging away at graduate school and in the few hours I had left, I couldn’t make myself pick up my pen to create. Instead of enjoying the creative ideas I’d once turned into poems, I felt plagued by them during those times when my hours were so confined, and eventually writing became more of an idle thought, something I wanted to do but something that I always put on the back burner.

Eventually, the pace of my life slowed, and I was able to start writing again. I recommitted to writing, spending hours in my favorite coffee shop polishing old work and crafting new worlds. My writing expanded, and I moved from only writing poetry to moonlighting as someone who wrote fiction and memoir. I felt a pull and tug in my soul between genres and tried my best to spend time with them all, watching my poems grow and swell, sometimes into prose forms and sometimes blazing paths into new shapes. I conjured characters, giving them names, and watching their paths across the page, holding my breath to see what they do next.

As much as I loved being back in the world of writing, though, something felt off. Writing needs community. It’s a common enough refrain, repeated in every workshop, but without the structure of a degree program, I felt adrift.

How do you find a writing community outside of academia?

Louisville is blessed with a thriving public library system, and one branch hosts a rotating cast of artists-in-residence. About the time I was getting my writing feet wet again, the library was offering a free series of workshops from a local author. I convinced a friend to accompany me, and we set off, not realizing those meetings would be the start of a new community. Inspired and armed with generous resources, I began sending out work for the first time in nearly a decade. I soon had my first acceptance, an enthusiastic response from a journal I’d long loved. In true writing fashion, that first acceptance was followed by innumerable rejections, all of which made the publications I managed even more sweet. Even with that success, I was still left with a desire to find more community—I wanted folks just as committed to writing with whom I could share my wins and losses, and bond over theirs.

While there are some open writing groups in my city, either the topics felt off or their meeting times didn’t work. I was also afraid. Even though I was sending some work out, I was petrified of showing my work to anyone. I felt rusty and dusty, and while I thought I was doing good work, I wasn’t yet ready to share it in person. Getting a rejection sent to my email felt safer than listening to supportive comments in person. I just wasn’t ready.

Unable to find a purely generative space, I met with a nonprofit in my neighborhood that runs a local used bookstore and pitched the idea of a monthly generative meeting that would be open to writers of all levels and genres. I’d been volunteering off and on since they opened, and I was thrilled when they agreed to help with my group. Together we came up with a rough structure—a queer affirming space, open to all, and catered to those in our neighborhood. I would host the group, creating monthly prompts and providing time for socializing so that the members could meet other local writers without the pressure of sharing work with strangers. The nonprofit would share meetings on their social media accounts, and their volunteer manager kindly agreed to make fliers. The first Writer’s Gathering drew more than a dozen attendees, all hungry for community. A year later, the group is still strong with a core group of dedicated community members. In fact, the group has solidified enough that we’re expanding to have a separate workshopping circle in the coming months for folks interested in sharing work.

Since that first meeting, I’ve also been lucky to find community with an assortment of other folks, including people I’ve met through in-person and online workshops, some of whom have served as generous readers. Earlier this year, I signed up for The Stafford Challenge, a year-long commitment to write a poem a day, named after the prolific writer William Stafford, who maintained a daily practice of writing and journaling. While I’ve failed at writing a daily poem, having other writers to share work with has kept me writing more than I otherwise would have—and my randomly assigned small group includes some of the most enthusiastic writers I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. Our biweekly zoom sessions keep me accountable, ensuring I have dedicated time to write and pushes me to share. I’ve also found community in online workshops and social media groups. While my writing life looks different than it did in college, the communities are no less rich, providing wonderful support, encouragement, and camaraderie.

Tips on finding writing communities:

Check with your local library. Many libraries host dedicated times for writers to gather, and if yours does not, staff may be open to starting one.
Go to pen mic nights. Many coffee shops and other small businesses host occasional or regular nights to share work, and these are wonderful ways to find other writers! Even if you’re nervous about sharing, showing up and meeting others costs nothing. You might luck into someone who has a group open for membership or find someone you can write with.
Seek out local, open book clubs. Many libraries, bookstores, and community organizations host book clubs with open (anyone can join) memberships. Any place literature is loved is a potential space to connect to other writers.
Attend online workshops. Many small presses like Yellow Arrow Publishing host online programming, like workshops and virtual retreats, and these can be great places to meet other writers with similar interests.
Join The Stafford Challenge in January. Having a commitment to write can be so helpful. Programming for 2024 has included social media groups, voluntary small writing and workshop groups, and monthly presentations by prominent poets.
Start your own community! If you have a large circle that includes a lot of writers, it’s possible to find other people with your shared passions. If you don’t know enough folks personally to form a consistent group, reach out to places in your community where people gather and with good social media presences. Many coffee shops, bookstores, libraries, and community groups allow the community to schedule events, and some will even do the advertising for you.

Remember:

Be brave and vulnerable. It’s hard to face possible rejection, but there’s everything to gain by staying in contact with folks you’ve met in other writing spaces. Ask friendly folks you meet for their social media handles or email addresses. The only way to find a writing community is by being brave enough to seek one out. Not everyone you meet will be part of your writing journey, but you won’t know until you take those first steps.
Don’t take things personally if your favorite writing community goes quiet. Everyone has busy lives, and sometimes folks with the best of intentions fail to stay in contact. It’s natural for communication to wax and wane. Having multiple outlets for writing in the community can be helpful.

Sarah Josephine Pennington (she/her) is a queer writer and artist from Louisville, Kentucky, by way of Appalachia. Her writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Still: The Journal, The Anthology of Appalachian Writers, and riddlebird, and has been supported through a residency from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Her art can be found on Instagram @SarahJosephineCreates.

*****

Kapua Iao 9/17/24 Kapua Iao 9/17/24

A Review of The Safety of Small Things by Jane Hicks

By Kellie D. Brown, written April 2024

“Open to air and sky, one feels none other / than small, a particle, a part, a leaf, a blade of a great whole”

In a world that seems to value bigger and grander, The Safety of Small Things, the third collection by award-winning Appalachian poet Jane Hicks, offers a counterpoint that speaks to the beauty and the necessity of the small and quotidian—“scraps, pieces, remnants of / a saving life” that help us inhabit the present and renegotiate with the past.

In Blood & Bone Remember (2008), Jane examined the generations who impacted her and the Appalachian region through their quilts, biscuits, music, coal mines, and sacrifice. In Driving with the Dead (2014), she beckoned readers to her beloved Appalachia to celebrate its tenacity and grace, and also to lament the suffering of its land and people. And now, Jane provides us with 51 poems that revisit the delights and trials of the distant past, and tackle her more recent journey of breast cancer, from the diagnostic phase to treatment and its aftermath. Throughout the collection, Jane traverses the complications of family and our own mortality, all the while reminding us to look to the natural world, where we can find strength and refugia. She is uniquely attuned to nature and how it can create a conduit for the voices of spirits from bygone eras—“I hear them speak in leaf-language.”

To those familiar with her, Jane is the “cosmic possum,” a term she coined in a 1998 poem (“How We Became Cosmic Possums”) that symbolizes the liminal space of her generation of educated folks, newly emerged from their mountain communities, who were often misunderstood and forced to bear the brunt of hillbilly jokes. “First generation out of the holler / . . . Neither feedsack nor cashmere / . . . Caught between Country Club and 4-H.” But rather than a limiter, Jane considers her experience of inhabiting both these worlds as an advantage, and she never apologizes for braiding the old mountain ways into modern life.

The bridge Jane uses to cross seamlessly from past to present and ridge to burg is her lifelong love affair with words, her “companions and confidantes.” In the epigraph to this collection, Jane quotes William Butler Yeats—“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” And indeed, this poetry collection issues a call to open our eyes, to perk up our ears, to let tingles run up our arms. She is particularly skilled in curating word sounds that luxuriate in melody and cadence—“rain-glazed,” “rusted reprimand,” “sun-dappled drowsy.” Our senses grow heightened to hear “the skitter of leaf-fall” and the “whir of hummingbird wing,” to feel the “sharp and flinty cold” and the “dew-wet meadow,” and to glimpse “dogwoods rusted at woods’ edge” and “the bob of flower heads as bees lift away.”

Alongside her depictions of nature’s simple extravagance, Jane refuses to shy away from the vulnerability of sickness and loss. In “Agent of Providence” and “The Unseen,” she revisits the extended illness of her mother whose “IV tubes arc out and glitter” in places where “hallways stir with the clatter of carts.” In “Spotlight,” she offers up her own diagnosis weighted by a “gel-sodden towel” after a damning ultrasound. She reminds us that we don’t emerge from the traumatic unscathed. Even as we become whole, “an undertow that lurks beneath/predictable waves” can still sweep us under.

She also pulls back the curtain of a painful childhood. A photograph from her fourth birthday in 1956 already reveals a wearier and more worldly wise girl than her age should bear (12–13). She has already learned the difficult lessons that “the dark shows truth” and that “hate hides / its face in unexpected places.” In school, she rehearses the duck and cover exercises of her Cold War youth, as she realizes that not all daddies are like her father, that some “hugged and kissed children, / helped with homework” and “that a daddy / most often was a good thing / and I learned to be sad.”

In addition to telling us what she has learned, Jane draws on her life’s work as a teacher to make this collection a series of lessons for the reader. She instructs us about the science of solar eclipses (“Safe Route”) and constellations (“Night Music”), and the theories of Galileo and Einstein (“Shine”). More importantly, she speaks about a point “where science and soul meet.” She describes a radiation treatment that coincides with the “moon-bitten sun” of a solar eclipse, and how she stands outside with staff and other patients to watch “the sunbeam crescent shadows.” In “Ode on an Onion,” her connection with the soul of science revisits the ridge of her childhood through her beloved granny who knew the secrets of an onion with its “layer by layer” and “golden skin”—a “poultice for a rattling chest” and fried with potatoes it “staved off hunger.” The onion—ordinary and yet “a miracle.”

As with the onion, Jane examines commonplace household items—twine, hoe, fabric, beeswax; and the ordinary of nature—leaf, deer, moon, moss, feather. She writes about artifacts from the women in her family that she cherishes and continues to use. She longs “to touch things my women touched” (Kept Things), even as she acknowledges the blessed release from materiality that comes with death—her grandmother’s objects became “things she no longer need carry.” These words about the paradox of seemingly unremarkable items of daily life resonate with those of the American writer and naturalist Henry Beston, who chronicled a year on his farm Maine in the 1930s. “When this twentieth century of ours became obsessed with a passion for mere size, what was lost sight of was the ancient wisdom that the emotions have their own standards of judgment and their own sense of scale. In the emotional world a small thing can touch the heart and the imagination every bit as much as something impressively gigantic.”

This act of elevating the small things often appears in her poems as dancing, both literal and metaphorical. In “Night Music,” Jane describes the thrill of being a hippie during the counterrevolution, when the soundtrack of Hendrix and Joplin and the exhilaration of dancing “sent us into crip autumn / sweat-soaked, long hair damp curtains” then inevitably grew tempered by “classmates called / to war.” Recalling a visit to her mother’s grave, “Dancing in the Stars” records a tribute as she “jitterbugged to the car” without “caring what an observer would think.” Then laden with chemotherapy’s needles, bruises, hair loss, and brain fog, the poet finds herself partnered in a “Dance with the Red Devil” that would ultimately be a “Dance for my life.”

“What is the importance of poetry in our world today?” To this question in a 2023 interview, Jane responded, “I always think of poetry as a shared experience. If the reader can say, ‘Hey, I feel that way, too!’ or ‘I never thought of it that way,’ life can be less complicated or frightening.” Perhaps this is truly the message of The Safety of Small Things, that our human journey, with its inherent triumphs and tribulations, can be easier if we open our eyes and hearts to the extravagant beauty of the ordinary and to each other. While we desire “a mirror that does not change / . . . a sunset that does / not bleed into the bruise of night,” Hicks helps us confront the inevitable evolution that brings illness and aging and loss, and she does so without grimness. Foregoing even a hint of the maudlin, she provides a hopeful lifeline to readers—“let go the hornets of worry, bathe in the stream of life.” “Expect gifts. / Shine!”

You can find The Safety of Small Things (2024) by Jane Hicks from the University of Kentucky Press at kentuckypress.com/9781950564378/the-safety-of-small-things.

Dr. Kellie D. Brown is a violinist, conductor, music educator, poet, and award-winning writer whose book, The Sound of Hope: Music as Solace, Resistance and Salvation during the Holocaust and World War II (McFarland Publishing, 2020), received one of the Choice Outstanding Academic Titles awards. Her words have appeared in Earth & Altar, Ekstasis, Psaltery & Lyre, Still, The Primer, Writerly, and others. More information about her and her writing can be found at kelliedbrown.com.

*****

Kapua Iao 9/10/24 Kapua Iao 9/10/24

Specters of Ourselves: A Conversation with Julie Alden Cullinane, author of Ghosts Only I Can See

My hands have deep scars, they are the map keepers

The wolf will be here soon

I will meet you at the bottom of the sky

“Almost Alive”

Julie Alden Cullinane is not one to shy away from the complex and chaotic aspects of life. In fact, she readily writes about all manner of topics, from the mucky to the moving. Cullinane is a neurodivergent poet, author, and mom in Boston whose work is a must read for those who appreciate an honest voice that aptly balances the humorous, the serious, and all the circadian in-betweens of the female experience. Cullinane’s debut hybrid chapbook Ghosts Only I Can See will be published by Yellow Arrow Publishing in October 2024. Today, we are excited to introduce Cullinane along with the provocative cover of Ghosts Only I Can See. Reserve your copy at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/ghosts-only-i-can-see-paperback and make sure to leave some love for Cullinane here or on social media.

Ghosts Only I Can See peeks back in time to Cullinane’s younger self and the ghosts through time that until now, only she could see. It focuses not on literal ghosts, but the ghosts—the shells—of her former self. With this hauntingly woven collection of creative nonfiction and poetry, Cullinane shares these ghosts and the painful, powerful, and wonderful experiences that made her the woman she is today. After raising a family and working for many years as a young mom, she was able to return to her graduate studies later in life and earned her master’s in 2021. Under the guidance of many amazing and supportive female professors, Cullinane began submitting her work for publication.

Her latest work, Ghosts Only I Can See, wields Cullinane’s story to encourage readers to look into the past, present, and future of all women’s lives. Growing up with many resilient and strong women, Cullinane was an avid spectator of their lives, their passions, and their trauma as she found her own way through the world. As she grew older and decided to grasp her ghosts even closer, Cullinane truly began to understand the tender weaving of women’s lives and their multitude of shared experiences—both of which often remain invisible today because of collective shame, individual shame, and the pressures of perfection.

The desire to make visible the invisible underlies Ghosts Only I Can See, combining reflection on the universal and intimate experiences of womanhood with the wisdom that comes from confronting and embracing the specters of self: past, present, and future. Melissa Nunez, Yellow Arrow interviewer, and Cullinane engaged in conversation over Zoom where they discussed the creative inspirations behind this collection and embracing the messiness that comes with being human.

Can you share some women-identified writers who inspire you?

Anne Enright is probably my favorite writer. She writes in French, and her translations are always beautiful, lending the language more artistry. Sylvia Plath is my favorite poet. Those two are the big ones for me. For modern writers, Maggie Smith is a huge inspiration. I’ve read her past three books. Her hybrid book, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, was a great inspiration for my chapbook. Her poetry and short stories, especially after her divorce, have been very influential.

How did you connect with Yellow Arrow? What made you decide to submit your chapbook?

I first came across Yellow Arrow in grad school. One of our assignments was to seek out publishers who would be a good fit for our chapbooks. I read Yellow Arrow’s intro about women-identified writers and how important their stories are, and it felt like the perfect place for my work. I felt strongly about sending it there because my book is so female-centric. It felt like kismet.

Can you talk a little bit about the process of cover design and what vibe you are going for?

I have been thinking about the cover of this book since the moment I found out it was going to be published. I have fantasized for almost a year. As a writer and visual artist, the cover meant as much to me as the words, and I wanted it to be something symbolic but also artistic. I found it fascinating that the graphic designer [and Yellow Arrow creative director] Alexa [Laharty] is in Berlin. It gave me a cool international feel, this woman being out there in the world with my pages thinking about it with an artistic sense. I went to college originally for fine art and hoped I hadn’t lost my touch because I haven’t painted in so long. I also love photography. The original idea that I sent to Alexa was very rock ‘n’ roll. I pictured this uber-cool woman sitting on a toilet seat smoking a cigarette with expensive sunglasses on.

Some main themes in this book are visualized by toilets, women in the bathroom, reminiscent of all the fluids that come about in being a woman, then connecting to themes of water, birth, and death. I took photos with a sheet over my head as a ghost, playing with how to portray these ghosts throughout my life. My niece is three years old, and she looks just like me. I was playing with the idea of maybe taking pictures of her, taking pictures of me, melding them together with the faces blurred out, it just wasn’t happening. Surprisingly, it was my husband who suggested taking pictures in our barn, which looks very rural America. I know ghosts can be cliché, so I wanted the idea of ghosts to not be too Halloween. I also wanted to make sure the American flag made its way into the photo because this book is very much about being an American woman. The photos came out beautifully, capturing isolation and Americana vibes with an old western feel but also modern. I couldn’t be happier with the image I selected. Right down to the sunglasses. I hope everyone loves it as much as I do.

I love the hybrid nature of this chapbook. Can you talk about your decision to write in both genres, poetry and prose?

My first writing was poetry. I started writing poems when I was 7–8 years old and was also a big journal writer. I encourage young writers to journal. I have four fiction novels I have been working on that are almost finished. But this chapbook came together more easily and quickly than anything else, partly because I was finishing graduate school when I wrote it. It started as my thesis, but it ended up turning into something else. Many of my assignments shaped into this chapbook without me realizing it. One of my professors encouraged me to submit it to indie presses. When I put the collection together, I realized there was a theme. I didn’t realize how much I had written about my childhood until I put it together. I’ve been rushing through life trying to get through school, trying to get all my work done and taking care of my family. It has been a goal of mine to write a book since I was old enough to think, so it just felt like the culmination of all my studies, graduate school, being an adult. It just really kind of created itself and it felt like closing out that chapter in my life.

I put the rest of the pearls into a velvet bag and put them in my underwear drawer where no one will find them. I keep them safe to dispose of at will, when I can’t breathe under the weight of my ancestors. When I need to slay ghosts.

“Beheading Pearls”

Can you talk about the title, Ghosts Only I Can See? I love the mystery and the nod to mental health awareness. How important is that theme for your writing?

I wanted the title to be about women throughout their life stages. I played with the idea of ghosts and mental health. A woman turns into so many different people in her life. When I look back at my teenage self, it feels like another whole person. It’s almost like a birth and a death as we grow and change. I really wanted the title to speak to this concept. The title reflects the ghosts of your past selves.

You mentioned planning the cover design in relation to the messiness of femininity. I love how you embrace the messiness of humanity and femininity, both emotionally and physically in your writing. Can you expand on the necessity of this kind of honesty?

I grew up with five women, all my sisters are like nine months apart, and we went through school and puberty—just everything together. I remember reading books about women very young (Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, for example) and realizing I wasn’t the only one thinking certain things. I wanted to tell stories that people think are too much or too raw. I had the story “Red Line” published in Underscore_Magazine and received many supportive emails from women. It may seem gross or disgusting to some, but it’s important to take off the masks and show the messiness of being a woman. People expect so much, and not everyone realizes what’s going on in a woman’s mind and body at any given moment. It’s so hard to hold it all together. The more I can get those stories out and have people read them, the more I can inspire other writers to do so as well.

Do you have any self-care rituals, personally or as a writer?

I’m much better at self-care now than in my 20s and 30s. Therapy saved my life. I regularly get massages because I have high anxiety and ADHD. I like to walk and enjoy alone time. My family knows not to disturb me when I need to read or write. My doctor prescribed me a dog 10 years ago, and he’s helped me with emotional regulation. He brings my body back to center and is part of my self-care ritual. It’s my favorite thing to read a great new novel, drink coffee, and sit with the dog on a Sunday morning.

I really like the way you included “How to Feel a Poem” at the end of your collection. What led you to write this piece and why did you put it where you did?

I struggled with putting this poem last because I love it so much. I think it’s one of my favorites, but it didn’t get any love. I tried to publish this poem. I sent it everywhere. I gave it to one of my graduate instructors who had a lukewarm reception to it. So, I wasn’t sure, but I really felt strongly about ending it with that. It’s inspired by writing things on my bedroom wall in high school with colored sharpies. I would hear a line of poetry at school or in something I was reading and I would go home and put that line on my wall. It looked like horrible graffiti all over my bedroom. Technically this is a poem, but it started out as an instruction manual, that’s how I framed it in my mind at first. It’s very much about the words but more so the actions within it. I visualized being in my childhood bedroom, hiding under the sheets, and hearing Bruce Springsteen for the first time. To me, those are all actions of poetry. Poetry is not just the study of elevated language; it’s finding beauty in the world and putting it onto the page.

His words are like hands that reach down my throat and hold my lungs in a fist. Sound is touching all the yuck that cannot be spoken that I have stored in my belly.

“How to Feel a Poem: Instructions”

Do you have any advice for fellow women writers?

As I mentioned earlier, I recommend for everyone to journal, and journal honestly. I’ve been blessed with a supportive writer’s group formed with some of my fellow graduate students who still meet to this day. I am grateful for their support. Share your work with friends and send it out. The worst they can do is say no. But writing is cathartic and personal. Write for you. I write every day and keep notes on napkins and receipts. I compile them into poems or stories. Don’t be afraid to write things down and share them.

Do you have any new projects in the works that you'd like to share with our readers?

Yes, I’m writing a novel titled The Price of Land. It’s my first fiction piece, set in the future, and very different from anything I’ve written to date. While my chapbook deals with feminist politics, this novel deals with the politics of economy. It takes place in 2060 and deals with the rising cost of land and how Americans navigate and survive that world. I’m looking for an agent and hope to finish it soon. It’s been a long-time goal to write and publish a novel.

You can order your copy of Ghosts Only I Can See from Yellow Arrow Publishing at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/ghosts-only-i-can-see-paperback and find out more about Cullinane and follow her publication news at julie.wildinkpages.com/poetry or on Instagram or Threads @HerLoudMind and Twitter of BlueSky @AldenCullinane. Ghosts Only I Can See will be released in October 2024.

Julie Alden Cullinane is a neurodivergent poet, author, and mom in Boston. Her first publication was a poem in The Boston Globe at age eight; she has been writing ever since. After raising a family and working for many years as a young mom, she was able to return to her graduate studies later in life and earned her master’s in 2021. Under the guidance of many amazing and supportive female professors, she began submitting her work for publication. She has published poems and short stories in 20+ literary magazines since 2020. She works in academia full time when she is not writing. Julie’s focus of writing is often on the untold seasons and shades of a woman’s life. She loves to highlight the dichotomy of the modern pressures on women and mothers, between having a successful career and an expected perfect domestic life. When she is not writing she enjoys long naps on the couch with her beloved dog. She is currently knee-deep in a midlife crisis. It takes up all her time. She will definitely be writing about it.

Melissa Nunez makes her home in the Rio Grande Valley region of south Texas, where she enjoys exploring and photographing the local wild with her homeschooling family. She writes an anime column at The Daily Drunk Mag and is a prose reader for Moss Puppy Mag. She is also a staff writer for Alebrijes Review and an interviewer for Yellow Arrow Publishing. You can find her work on her website melissaknunez.com and follow her on Twitter @MelissaKNunez.

*****

Kapua Iao 9/3/24 Kapua Iao 9/3/24

Meet a Board Member: Barbara Frey

Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to introduce Barbara Frey, new director of fundraising (co-chair with Nikita Rimal Sharma). Barbara wears two hats. She is an event design specialist, most recently providing decorations for the June 20, 2024, Friends of Yellow Arrow gathering, and she is an online learning consultant, drawing on more than two decades of experience with Connections Academy, Baltimore City Schools, and beyond. Her articles have been published in educational journals and magazines.

Tell us a little something about yourself:

I live in the Roland Park neighborhood of Baltimore city with my husband and miniature poodle, Lillet. I love spending time with my seven grandchildren. I belong to two book clubs and an art seminar group. My husband and I love to travel and learn the culture, art, and history of the countries we visit.

What do you love most about Baltimore?

Growing up in New York, it did take me a few years to appreciate the charm of Baltimore. I grew to love the quirky neighborhoods and the diversity of Baltimore. Although a small city, Baltimore has a lot to offer. As an art and music lover I appreciate the many museums, galleries, local theatres, and music venues especially the Baltimore Symphony.

How did you get involved with Yellow Arrow?

I got involved with Yellow Arrow when I was asked by [board president] Mickey Revenaugh, who I worked closely with for many years at Connections Academy, to join the board.

What are you working on currently?

Currently I am working on two projects that reflect my dual interests. I am spearheading a redesign of the public areas of the condominium building where I live that was designed by Frank Gehry in 1975. My other project is researching and collecting photos and stories of my family’s heritage.

What genre do you write or read the most?

I enjoy reading historical fiction and short stories. I am always interested in all the research that goes into writing historical fiction that makes real places culturally recognizable. Short stories have always fascinated me as they have a short time to tell their story. Short stories have to be discreet and deliberate, often bridging a partnership between the reader and the writer.

What book is on the top of your to-be-read pile?

Table for Two: Fictions by Amor Towles.

Who is your favorite writer and why?

My contemporary author favorite is Zaide Smith. She has written novels, short stories, essays, and plays. She combines wit, reflection, and social issues.

Who has inspired and/or supported you most in your writing journey?

I have only done technical and grant writing; the person who most inspired and supported me in these pursuits has been Mickey Revenaugh.

What do you love most about writing?

When I hit send!!

What advice do you have for new writers?

Believe in yourself. Find your voice.

What’s the most important thing you always keep near your computer?

Coffee.

What’s your vision for Yellow Arrow in 2024?

To provide more opportunities for culturally diverse woman writers and to raise awareness about us!!

*****

Kapua Iao 8/30/24 Kapua Iao 8/30/24

Her View Friday

single-author publications
single pieces in journals, anthologies, etc., as well as prizes/awards, book reviews, and podcasts/interviews

You can support our authors by reading this blog and their work, sharing their news, and commenting below or on the blog. Congratulations to all the included authors. We are so proud of you!

Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling

“The Calf” by Kay Smith-Blum from Seattle, Washington

Genre: Fiction

Name of anthology: Feisty Deeds: Historical Fictions of Daring Women

Date released: June 8, 2024

Type of publication: print

Kay was also the coeditor of the anthology; all proceeds benefit the scholarship fund at Women’s Fiction Writers Association. Find the anthology on Amazon.

Find Kay on Instagram @discerningKSB, Facebook @kay.smithblum, and Twitter @kaysmithblum.

PRIZES/AWARDS

Revelation by Nancy Hugget from Ottawa, Canada

Genre: poetry

Name of award: 2024 RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award

Date: July 11, 2024

pencanada.ca/news/nancy-huggett-wins-2024-rbc-pen-canada-new-voices-award/

Connect with Nancy on Twitter @nancyhuggett, Instagram @nanhug, Bluesky @nancyhuggett.bsky.social, and Facebook @nancy.huggett.35.

Yellow Arrow (past and present) board, staff, interns, authors, residents, and instructors alike! Got a publication coming out? Let us help celebrate for you in Her View Friday.

Single-author publications: here.

Single pieces as well as prizes/awards, book reviews, and podcasts/interviews: here.

Please read the instructions on each form carefully; we look forward to congratulating you!

*****

Kapua Iao 8/27/24 Kapua Iao 8/27/24

Splendid and Tender: A Review of When Your Sky Runs Into Mine by Rooja Mohassessy

By Naomi Thiers, written March 2024

Rooja Mohassessy’s book of poems, When Your Sky Runs Into Mine (Elixir Press, 2023), is extraordinary—and not just because of its extraordinary content. Many poems describe living as a female child in Iran under the Islamic Republic government in the 1980s, witnessing the growing repression and the deprivation people endured during the Iran–Iraq war, and Mohassessy’s later experiences as a very young immigrant. When she was 12—for her own safety, as the war dragged on—her parents sent her to live with her uncle, a successful artist in Europe. Mohassessy’s description of these experiences is arresting, but her poems are intoxicating more because of the splendid and varied ways they use language: exceptionally long, flowing lines thick with war imagery, solemn poems that weave in Arabic words or Islamic prayers, or terse lines evoking the numbness of wartime:

Chemical warfare is child friendly
smelling of sweet apples,
geraniums,

fresh mustard fields mode at blooming stage.

“They Were Blind and Mad, Some of Them Were Laughing. There Was Nobody to Lead the Blind People”

There are also polished stanzaic forms, highly experimental structures, and plain language vignettes of daily life:

It’s autumn of 1981. Radiators in the hall
clang in time for a new uniform.
Her mother hands the shop lady a list.
There’s no need to undress, she says.
Shaking out a full-length overcoat
she slides the schoolgirl’s arms
through both sleeves. Wide hems overhang
the shirred cuffs of her peacock-green peacoat.

“Hijab in Third Grade”

Mohassessy is a masterful poet with many styles—yet her book coheres. The first section shows through a child’s eyes how the constriction of females’ freedom draws tighter, and cruelty increases as the Islamic Republic government led by Khomeini solidifies their power. She doesn’t soft pedal the pain of this, but describes it sort of from the side, focusing on small details and sensations a child would notice, as in “Hijab in Third Grade”:

An opaque cutout of a cloud is folded
into a triangle and cast over her head.
Fingers wedge her bangs under repeatedly,
pleading stars to retreat and keep
out of sight.

Or this stanza from “Before and After the Revolution”:

By the late 80s, the definition of Dirty Dancing grows
so broad as to embrace lashes, lips,
and other indecencies, young women are urged
to keep still, not fiddle with their faces. Then stoning
comes in vogue. Most, me included, miss out
entirely on Swazey’s steps. Some friends of friends
get 99 lashes for playing
the clandestine soundtrack . . .

In later poems that show the precarious life of people in Tehran during the Iran–Iraq war, the syntax becomes looser, and surreal imagery appears, as if the poems, like Iran’s citizens, are unraveling. A favorite of mine is “War,” a portrait of how Mohassessy’s parents, who both are deaf and nonspeaking, somehow regularly created a party at their house during those bleak days—“tucking/ the good-sized deaf and dumb society of Tehran/ into our three bedroom flat she’d decked/ into a close semblance of a French brothel.”

The second section helps the reader see through the speaker’s eyes as she emigrates to live with her uncle who lives a sophisticated life in Europe. Poems like “The Immigrant Leaving Home And Guilt,” “The Immigrant and Skin,” and “The Immigrant and Lament” express the slippery cultural shock of coming from a repressive country to a place with freedom and safety—but also the pain of leaving a warm, entangled family to move in with a reserved relative, the burden of “survivor guilt,” and the confusion of figuring out adolescence and desire in a strange land. Several poems imagine what the speaker’s left-behind parents are going through and even what this experience is like for her uncle: there are two impressive poems in his voice reflecting on the challenge of connecting with a shy teenage girl.

The stunning poem “All About Me” lays bare how the immigrant experience can strip a young person of any sense of solidity or self-knowledge, how a child dropped into a culture vastly different from “home” (even if living with a kind relative) can feel desperately cut off from herself—and silenced. There isn’t even an “I” telling about this feeling in the poem: the speaker addresses her soul and refers to her young self as “the child in the front row” in French class. When the French teacher asks the child to tell “all about herself,”

She drew a blank, although she could’ve told him
he was her favorite, and les nommes de toutes les fleurs,
colors and every disparate part
of her body she knew to name without checking, the way she knew
her country, the cat hunched unwell on the world map—

Instead of answering, the child freezes, and feels her soul has let her down:

Had you shown as from a plastic tiara
on her brow, steadied her hand, though she slouched
homesick at her desk, she would’ve scribed then with the flourish
of a Persian calligrapher, a catalogue of herself, warriorlike . . .
she would’ve spun in her Baluchi skirt stitched
with mirrors and demi-moons, to show
and tell

Because her soul “forgot your song, your tongue,” the child stays silent, and scribbles in her notebook “Je ne sais pas qui je suis.”

In the last sections, the voice is that of an adult, traveling or living in several countries—and she clearly knows who she is. These poems deal again with the immigrant experience (including applying for asylum), but also with trying to find a healthy sexuality and a way to live in a country (the U.S.) that is often suspicious or hostile to Muslims. There’s much toughness and tenderness in these poems, especially several to the speaker’s parents and about a lover who died. The poems never take a shortcut and never settle into a predictable style. That’s a good thing! I suggest you find this book and enter Mohassessy’s layered experiences.

You can find Rooja Mohassessy’s book When Your Sky Runs Into Mine (2023) at Elixir Press: elixirpress.com/when-your-sky-runs-into-mine.

Naomi Thiers (naomihope@comcast.net) grew up in California and Pittsburgh, but her chosen home is Washington D.C./northern Virginia. She is the author of four poetry collections: Only the Raw Hands Are Heaven, In Yolo County, She Was a Cathedral, and Made of Air. Her poems, book reviews, and essays have been published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Grist, Sojourners, and other magazines. Former editor of the journal Phoebe, she works as an editor for Educational Leadership magazine and lives on the banks of Four Mile Run in Arlington, Virginia.

*****

Kapua Iao 8/20/24 Kapua Iao 8/20/24

Ordinary Oracle: A Conversation with Chrissy Stegman

By Melissa Nunez, written July 2024

They’ll let you learn
when they release you
how every pigeon feels
heading into an unknown sky:

You’ll be terrified and alone.

You’ll be Free.

“They’ll Let You Use Kool-Aid to Dye Your Hair When You’re 10 & In the Hospital for Setting Your Childhood on Fire,” Oddball Magazine

Chrissy Stegman is a wife, mother, and poet from Baltimore, Maryland. Her writing is inspired by her love of forests, family, and reviving myths in a modern world. She champions fellow artists on her website at chrissystegman.com where you can also find more information about her latest publications.

Melissa Nunez, Yellow Arrow interviewer, and Chrissy Stegman engaged in conversation through email where they discussed the creative motivations behind her poetic voice.

Who are some women writers who inspire you?

That's such a tough question. I admire so many women writers. It’s difficult to narrow down the list, but I think I’d start with Mary Jo Bang (her translation of Inferno!), Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Carson, Harryette Mullen, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Marie Howe, and Diane Seuss. Each of these women writers carries a torch for language and craft that I would follow into the dark any day of the week. (Side note: I’m rereading The Life of Poetry by Muriel Rukeyser. So good.)

I love the term “forest dork” included in your bio for some of your publications. Can you expand on the significance of the term for you and how it is reflected in your work?

I’ve always been a forest kid. I spent many summers on my grandparents’ land in Virginia. My grandfather taught me how to recognize flora and fauna. Climbing cherry trees, eating the green inchworm because it was in the cherry and you just didn’t care—it was summer, and the cherries were there, warm from the sun. I spent many summers catching crayfish in a bucket in the stream, too. (I always let them go.) I find a sense of voyeured reverence in the forest, and that’s something I can’t shake because I’m an observer. I’ve shared this love of the forest and natural world with my children. It’s not uncommon for me to make violet syrup, eat some chickweed, and text my kids photos of Dutchman’s breeches. They’re patient and kind people who put up with me. I’m happiest when outside. This comes through in many of my poems and works of fiction, especially my love of observation.

In some of your poetry you do an excellent job of integrating mythology into the modern world. Can you share why you feel these stories still carry such resonance for audiences today? Are there any specific myths you return to again and again?

I think myths provide meaning to inform our modern creation. I believe we look to archetypes to solve problems, to call forth our own hidden vitality, to tap a deep root. Mythology plays out again and again this way, but it is never overplayed. Myths of transformation, change, myths of loss. Oracles, heroes, Icarus, Persephone. I think we tell the stories again and again to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary or to test our strength. They’re universal. I’m particularly interested in creating new myths. The idea that we can create new myths fascinates me.

So, she looked for pomegranates and
Titans. She looked for foes to defeat Earth.
She felt the flowering of every meadow

In her blood. She tasted the sour
Pit of truth in her teeth.

“Persephone Decides to Catch Up on Emails During a Low Self-Esteem Day,” Poetry Breakfast

I admire the way you feature visual artists on your website. What inspired you to platform art and artists in this manner?

I’ve always loved art. Poetry and art are bedfellows. I wanted to create a space on my website that was about immersion into an experience, both poetic and artistic. The idea to feature an artist came to me when I realized I needed artwork for my website and thought, how cool would it be to have a featured artist provide the artwork? My website could be a living art gallery, where the viewing audience would find an experience of art and poetry that was ever-changing, but also offer a platform, for free, for that artist to gain recognition and potentially generate sales of their work or a following. (I'm currently open to a new featured artist and anyone interested should reach out!)

When did you know you were a writer?

I think I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was in 5th or 6th grade. I had those black and white marbled journals, filled with scribbles, stories, bits of (awful) poetry. I remember walking the neighborhood and creating a poem in my head, rushing home to write it down. I walked home from middle school reading Little Women, tripping over the sidewalk. I haunted our local library. I’ve never left the comfort and safety of literature. It feels easier for me to explain the world through stories and poetry, and easier for me to understand it when viewed this way as well.

Do you have a favorite place or set up for writing?

I do have a writing office, and it offers me a small desk, my books, a wall of artwork which I love, and at random times, the kids will run in and out of the space. I find that energy creatively compelling as well. A busy family life trampling through the sanctuary feels transgressive in all the right ways for poetry and storytelling.

My allegiance is to sound and not silence. Loudness is a feeling set free.

“Portrait of the Poet Viewed Through a Blind Spot,” Gargoyle Magazine

Do you have any advice for fellow women writers on creating new work and publishing?

My advice to fellow women writers would be to submit your work everywhere and often. Carve out time for creation no matter how difficult. So much of our lives can be filtered through shame and guilt for taking time for our work but women’s voices are essential. I think the other piece of advice is to write what scares you but also write what you're hiding from. Write the messy parts, write about the quiet parts, too. We sanitize our writing so often to gain access to the publishing world, but the more we press into the underbelly of the work, the more we insist on showing what’s under the skirt of the uninspiring day-to-day grit of living as a woman. We change the landscape of how we embody language and tell our story. This is one space where we need to leave a trace.

Melissa Nunez makes her home in the Rio Grande Valley region of South Texas, where she enjoys exploring and photographing the local wild with her homeschooling family. She writes an anime column at The Daily Drunk Mag and is a prose reader for Moss Puppy Mag. She is also a staff writer for Alebrijes Review and interviewer for Yellow Arrow Publishing. You can find her work on her website and follow her on Instagram @melissa.king.nunez or Twitter @MelissaKNunez.

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Kapua Iao 8/17/24 Kapua Iao 8/17/24

When to choose a small press to publish your writing

By Adhithi Anjali, written November 2023

You completed a manuscript in one step, but now you have to decide where to publish it. With consistent news about small-to-medium presses getting subsumed by another huge player and navigating through imprints and subsidiaries of the same giant press, it may appear like the world of publishing has become permanently smaller. But before you try to find an agent and try to break into the notorious “Big Five,” try researching a variety of smaller, local presses that are still determined to provide alternate publishing paths.

Why would you consider a small press over a large one? First, consider your own manuscript and its needs. Large presses often focus on publishing what is consistent with current readership trends. Remember when every dystopian novel suddenly got published right after The Hunger Games? As an author, you need to prove you and your work are marketable before the editing even starts. The first person you need to convince is an agent who can get you through the door, and they are also looking for something that can secure a payday.

But small presses can manage and publish more esoteric and nontraditional work. In fact, that is often the basis for their whole business model! Small presses want to find a niche and seek out the audience for it. These types of presses often begin as passion projects for their founder: they see something missing from current publishing trends and want to provide the resources for artists making what they want to read. Here at Yellow Arrow Publishing, we want to read work by women-identifying authors, so we made a space for them.

To get in the door at a small press does not require an agent and sometimes does not require a submission fee. It is up to you as the author to determine if your manuscript is too nontraditional for large publishers and if you want to handle your own submission queries. The underhand of not relying on agents does mean that small presses often have narrow submission windows during the year in which you can send us your manuscript, but once your manuscript gets picked up, most can start working immediately.

If you choose a small press, also consider how much you want to be involved in the process. You will receive edits back to review, be involved in marketing the book through local events and live readings, and you may have to handle much of the social media promotion yourself, as well. Small presses can upload interviews you have with them, but you won’t secure big papers like you would with a big publisher—if they put a lot of resources into your manuscript, which is not a guarantee, even at such large presses.

But you as an author have to do a lot of research if you go down this route. Small presses know their audience and their niche, and you will need to learn which press will get your manuscript out to the right readers. Also, you will need to consider the form of your manuscript. Here at Yellow Arrow, we publish a journal, an online vignette, and chapbooks, not full-length manuscripts . . . yet.

A small press may not have a myriad of resources, but they do try to put all that they do have into what they decide to publish. As an author, you will be a huge part of the process—before, during, and after. Overall, you should consider a small press if you want to write and publish something nontraditional in form and content, as well as if you want to avoid the bureaucracy and limits of agents and the submissions process.

Adhithi Anjali was the business development intern for Yellow Arrow Publishing for fall 2023. She is a third-year student at the University of California, Davis, majoring in English and comparative literature. She is inspired by nearly everything she reads to channel her own creativity through the pen. In the future, she hopes to continue working with literature and other writers to help them bring their creativity to light.

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Kapua Iao 8/13/24 Kapua Iao 8/13/24

Meet a Board Member: Emily Ross

Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to introduce Emily Ross, our Director of Grants. Emily is an arts and humanities professional with expertise in museum education, social work, and grantmaking. Working at the intersection of culture and human services she champions collaboration and community voices in her career. She holds a BA in art history from the University of Virginia and an MSW from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. She currently works as the Program Officer for Grants at Maryland Humanities. Based in Baltimore, she enjoys trips to the Renaissance Fair, New England beaches, and art museums.

Emily says, “I look forward to being a part of this incredible group of women bringing attention to women’s stories. I also look forward to being a part of Yellow Arrow’s continued fiscal vitality and connecting us to great resources.”

Tell us a little something about yourself:

I lived in Canada for six years as a child. Unfortunately, I don’t have dual citizenship, but I can brag that I’m one degree closer to Margaret Atwood than the average American!

What do you love most about Baltimore?

It’s the most affordable major East Coast city. I also love the character, charm, and local traditions.

How did you get involved with Yellow Arrow and what do you do for us? Why did you want to join the Yellow Arrow team?

I first learned about Yellow Arrow through my work at Maryland Humanities. Yellow Arrow received a grant from us, and I read the application and became interested in the organization. When I heard Yellow Arrow writers read their published work at a Yellow Arrow gathering, it sealed the deal for me to become involved in any way. I was really moved listening to them! I’m excited to bring my skills in grants to Yellow Arrow and to help secure funding for programs.

What are you working on currently?

I’m currently furnishing and designing a new apartment. I just signed a two-year lease which gives me more creative license in my living space. I enjoy interior design, collecting cool art, and making my home a reflection of myself.

What genre do you write or read?

I’m not a creative writer but I love to read. I love reading the romance genre the most because it’s one of the only popular fiction genres where female identifying characters are consistently treated like whole, complex human beings. I also just love love. A reliable happy ending and an escape from reality? Sign me up.

What book is on the top of your to-be-read pile?

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman.

Who is your favorite writer and why?

I don’t think I necessarily have a favorite, but I like to provide recommendations. A series that has stuck with me the last few years is The Women of Troy by Pat Barker.

Who has inspired and/or supported you most in your writing journey?

I’m more a technical and academic writer having never dabbled in my own creative writing practice. It’s difficult to gauge where you stand among your peers when you’re writing for school or work so my professors supported me the most with their feedback and encouragement.

What do you love most about writing?

When I find the best word to use during one of my numerous thesaurus searches.

What advice do you have for new writers?

The same I recommend to new artists—before you can break the rules you must first understand them. However, I think it’s better said the rules get broken in the best way when you have a deep understanding of why you want to break them.

What’s the most important thing you always keep near wherever you work)?

My phone to take TikTok breaks.

What’s your vision for Yellow Arrow in 2024?

More writers, more events, more awareness, more $$$!

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Kapua Iao 8/6/24 Kapua Iao 8/6/24

Shine your light bright: Baltimore creatives radiate in Yellow Arrow Vignette AMPLIFY

Welcome to the third annual release of Yellow Arrow Vignette, Yellow Arrow Publishing’s online creative nonfiction and poetry series. For this issue, we aligned with our 2024 yearly value and chose AMPLIFY, though we did not ask submitters to send in pieces on theme; rather, staff at Yellow Arrow used the idea in-house as a reminder to continue to share and amplify women-identifying voices. With that, here is the AMPLIFY issue of Yellow Arrow Vignette:

yellowarrowpublishing.com/vignette/amplify-2024

With Vignette AMPLIFY, we wanted to return to some of the earliest goals of Yellow Arrow: circulating and augmenting the creative work of voices and themes that aren’t heard loudly enough. And as part of the return to our roots, we wanted to showcase writers who live in or are otherwise connected to our home base of Baltimore. We want our readers to experience the spectrum of voices that Charm City offers.

Before diving into the pages of AMPLIFY, explore the cover art for the issue, “shine your light bright” by Kara Panowitz. Kara has lived in Baltimore City for 19 years. According to Kara, “A positive light needs to shine on Baltimore, amplifying all that’s good about the city. A city of neighborhoods, the sunset highlights the Baltimore classic rowhouse, with the iconic skyline standing strong in the background. I love the way the light makes Baltimore glow in this image.” Kara loves documentary photography, taking photos on hikes, and capturing Baltimore in different lights and seasons. Her photography has been chosen for local art exhibitions.

We hope you see the same light glimmering on the Baltimore rooftops shining on the poetry and creative nonfiction in AMPLIFY. Start with “IT WORKS, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH IT” by Tracy Dimond, who gracefully writes “I’ve never felt so womanly / Since having a hysterectomy // A hollowed-out Barbie / The aesthetic without the danger” and continue through to “Wish You Were Here” by Barbara Westwood Diehl. “Wish You Were Here” ends the series with an incredible vision: “In the city of Wish You Were Here, you will not see the castle washed away.” We don’t want to give too much away in this release. Rather, we ask that you read the words and AMPLIFY pages slowly and really take in and experience the different emotions found within.

Thank you to all the writers who followed the call for amplification and sent in their beautiful pieces. We were amazed by the breadth of our collection of submitters and hope that you have the opportunity to amplify your own voice along with any others that surround you. And to the incredible creatives who let us include their work in AMPLIFY: Trish Broome, Barbara Westwood Diehl, Tracy Dimond, Kay White Drew, Jennifer Martinelli Eyre, Katherine Fallon, Robin L. Flanigan, My-Azia Johnson, Diane Macklin, B. Morrison, Sierra Offutt, Christine Pennylegion, Anna Slesinski, Laura Taber, Brigitte Winter, and Cherrie Woods (aka Cherrie Amour). Thank you for trusting us with your words.

Also, thank you to the Yellow Arrow Vignette team, Dr. Tonee Mae Moll and Isabelle Anderson, for their work on the series. Our staff diligently reads through every submission, works on editing every sentence, and contributes amazing feedback to our authors and submitters! Given this, we would also like to thank our wonderful editorial associates, readers, and interns for this issue: Sydney Alexander, Jill Earl, Angela Firman, Marylou Fusco, Caroline Kunz, Alexa Laharty, Sophia Lama, Amaya Lambert, Siobhan McKenna, Sara Palmer, Samantha Pomerantz, Nicky Ruddell, Mel Silberger, Claire Taylor, and Ally Waldon.

The reading for Vignette AMPLIFY will be in-person at the Baltimore Book Festival on September 28. More information is forthcoming.

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Ann marie Houghtailing

coming April 2025

Emily Decker

coming July 2025

Vic Nogay

coming October 2025

Alexa Lesniak

Program Management Intern

Elizabeth Ottenritter

Publications Intern

Angela Acosta

“A Centennial for Herstory”

Tijanna O. Eaton

“And Her Eyes Fell from the Scale”

Marisa Victoria Gedgaudas

“Colygraphia”

Charlene Langfur

“The Way Back”

Laurel Maxwell

“A Full Life”

Katherine Shehadeh

“My son wants to know what happened before the universe &”

Ann van Wijgerden

“Dear Planet”

Veronica Wasson

“On Clothing (Five Pieces)”

“Intercession: ER Waiting Room” by Nancy Hugget from Ottawa, Canada

EXHIBITIONS

Four Poems by Laura Rockhold from Minneapolis, Minnesota

“The Calf” by Kay Smith-Blum from Seattle, Washington

PRIZES/AWARDS

Revelation by Nancy Hugget from Ottawa, Canada

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