Yellow Arrow Publishing Blog

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.

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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 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 6/25/24 Kapua Iao 6/25/24

Creative Connections: A conversation with Melissa Martini, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Moss Puppy Magazine

By Melissa Nunez, written January 2024

For Melissa Martini, publishing is more than just a job. It is a way to connect with and support creatives the world over. Melissa M. established Moss Puppy Magazine in 2021 and made it her mission to platform diverse perspectives and encourage artists of all experience levels. The pages of Moss Puppy Magazine are filled with visual art, poetry, and prose that is unconventional yet captivating. You can read past issues of Moss Puppy Magazine and find current calls for submission on their website mosspuppymag.com.

Melissa Nunez, Yellow Arrow interviewer, and Melissa Martini connected in conversation through Discord where they discussed the creative inspiration and passion that fuels this publication.

What inspired you to start Moss Puppy Magazine? What is the story behind the name?

I always felt destined for a career in publishing, specifically as the editor of a literary magazine. In high school, I discovered that we had a defunct lit mag and decided to take on the challenge of reviving it—and I succeeded. We managed to publish a couple of issues before I graduated high school.

Upon entering college, I missed working on a literary magazine so much that I ended up taking over Seton Hall’s lit mag, The Corner Pocket, as well! I began enrolling in publishing courses and delving deep into the intricacies of running a literary magazine—reviewing submissions and orchestrating the creation of a successful issue.

After completing grad school, I found myself without any lit mags to adopt. So, I took up a full-time office job. Initially fine, it soon became apparent that the whole “editor of a lit mag” aspect was missing from my life. Eventually, I quit my full-time job and founded Moss Puppy the very next day.

I named Moss Puppy Magazine after a creature I had created—the Moss Puppy. She originally started as a potential character for a Neopets-esque website I wanted to build. Although there were a few other characters planned for this Neopets-inspired world, Moss Puppy always remained my favorite creation! Some aspects of her lore are based on the original Moss Puppy concept’s backstory as well.

What is your mission as an indie publication?

At its core, Moss Puppy’s mission is to publish artwork and literature from creatives across the planet. Publishing has been so inaccessible to many of us for far too long, and there’s no reason to gatekeep the sharing of our creativity with the world. While prestigious publications have their time and place—and I never mean to discredit them—indie publications are equally, if not more, important for creatives like you and me to share our work and connect with others.

A piece doesn’t need to be by a household name or a famous person to be good, to impact someone, or to be exactly what someone else needs to read or view. Therefore, Moss Puppy’s mission is to encourage publishing to be more accessible to all of us, so that we can share our beautiful work with others.

What other female or BIPOC led publications do you admire? What female identified writers do you admire?

There are way too many to shout out! I’d recommend starting by checking out the Moss Puppy masthead (past and present), as a few of our female/BIPOC team members run their own indie publications. I also deeply admire their work!

What inspires your themed calls for submission? Do you have any advice on writing to a theme?

Our themed calls draw inspiration from both the ‘moss’ and ‘puppy’ elements of the magazine’s name. We typically alternate between themes that are more closely related to the ‘moss’ aspect and those aligned with the ‘puppy’ aspect. For instance, issue 1 featured the theme ‘swampland’ for the ‘moss,’ while issue 2 embraced ‘puppy love’ for the ‘puppy.’

When selecting themes, I draw from various aspects of Moss Puppy’s lore and story. As I develop the character’s narrative, the issues reflect her journey. For example, our [last] issue focused on the ‘whimsical woodland,’ representing the forest Moss Puppy traversed during her adventures.

While I love writing for themes, I recognize they’re not everyone’s cup of tea. To cater to diverse preferences, I provide mood boards and word pools for inspiration. Additionally, we always curate a Spotify playlist for writers and artists to listen to while working on submissions for the theme. Personally, when writing for a theme, I immerse myself in its atmosphere by listening to theme-matching Lofi, conducting related research, and more.

What do you look for in a submission?

I enjoy the lingering impact of a submission, where it stays with me throughout the day or even for a few days. I appreciate those submissions that prompt me to excitedly message the team, saying, “OMG, did you read that one yet?”

For prose I value fully developed characters that are complicated, complex, and memorable. I want to continue pondering about the characters long after I finish reading, becoming invested in their lives both on and off the page. I am drawn to sentences that are a pleasure to read, poetic with effortless flow. Specific details hold significance for me. Rather than generic descriptions, I believe that specific details bring stories to life.

For poetry I appreciate when lines feel natural, as if the words willingly found their place in the stanzas rather than forced rhymes. Regarding length, I don’t necessarily favor long or short poetry, but I seek a length that aligns with the subject matter. The poem should neither leave me wanting more nor risk losing my full investment. Format is flexible; whether traditional or non-traditional, I appreciate when it complements the subject matter.

What is your favorite part of running a magazine?

One of the most gratifying aspects of overseeing a magazine is the day of or the day after we release a new issue. Witnessing contributors eagerly share their work and seeing readers engage with and applaud each other’s pieces is truly magical. It’s a moment of collective appreciation, where we share an understanding of the value of artistic expression. This shared enthusiasm creates a unique bond among creatives, emphasizing the significance of each piece and its impact on an individual’s artistic journey and career. Expressing admiration for a particular work becomes more than just a compliment; it’s a celebration of creativity. I take immense pleasure in encouraging fellow creatives to recognize the worth of their work and witnessing the joy of sharing it with the world unfold right before my eyes on social media.

What is the hardest part of running a magazine?

The most challenging aspect of running a magazine, without a doubt, is the process of sending out rejections. While it’s an integral part of maintaining the quality and cohesion of the publication, delivering disappointing news to talented contributors is always a tough task.

How do you balance running a magazine with your own creative pursuits?

Achieving a balance between running Moss Puppy and nurturing my personal creative projects is an ongoing journey. Recently, I’ve started setting aside dedicated time for Moss Puppy-related tasks and a separate block for my own creative endeavors. This intentional separation helps me compartmentalize these two significant aspects of my life. It’s a strategy in progress, and I’m eager to see how it goes!

Are there any new projects that readers should look out for?

We have a Moss Puppy Encyclopedia in the works! This project aims to delve deep into the lore and intricacies of Moss Puppy’s universe, providing readers with a comprehensive guide to the characters, stories, and themes. Additionally, I’m planning to relaunch the journals at some point.

What advice would you share with other editors/artists?

Never stop creating. Take the breaks you need, but don’t let them become a permanent hiatus.

Print copies of Moss Puppy Magazine are available for purchase through lulu. You can also follow the latest info on issues, calls for submissions, and highlights of the Moss Puppy team and contributors on their twitter account @mosspuppymag.

Melissa Martini (she/her) is a short fiction writer and Capricorn from New Jersey. She studied creative writing in both undergrad and graduate school at Seton Hall University. Currently, she serves as founder and Editor-in-Chief of Moss Puppy Magazine.

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 Magazine and is a prose reader for Moss Puppy Magazine. She is also a staff writer for Alebrijes Review and interviewer for Yellow Arrow Publishing. You can find her work on her melissaknunez.com and follow her on Twitter @MelissaKNunez.

*****

Kapua Iao 2/13/24 Kapua Iao 2/13/24

Por La Sombrita: A Conversation with Barbara Perez Marquez

Take a bite out of the bread of life, without realizing that you are the bread itself.
Life is taking a bite of you, one minute at a time.

“It Rises”

Barbara Perez Marquez is a writer from the Dominican Republic who now resides in the United States. Her prose and comic creations are a much needed contribution to the growing literature on coming of age and queerness for younger audiences. She enjoys participating in the larger conversations surrounding identity and representation in the graphic lit world. You can find samples of her incredible work on her website mustachebabs.com.

Barbara is a former Yellow Arrow Publishing writer in resident and her creative nonfiction chapbook Por La Sombrita was recently published with Bottlecap Press in both English and Spanish. This collection deals with themes of identity and coming of age, family relationships, and brims with an intricate nostalgia for the sensory setting of a distinct childhood.

Barbara had a dynamic conversation over Zoom with Melissa Nunez, Yellow Arrow author and interviewer, where they discussed her entrance to the graphic lit scene and the inspirations behind her newest chapbook.

Who are some women identified writers and artists who inspire you?

I grew up in the Dominican Republic so a lot of my inspiration, especially in regards to this this chapbook, comes from thinking of who I was reading when I was growing up. Salomé Ureña, a poetess from the Dominican Republic, was one of those writers that I felt I did not read nearly enough. Her work still inspires me to this day. As for contemporary writers, Rita Indiana is another Dominican creator whose work is really inspiring. I also read a lot of Miranda July’s flash fiction around the time I was putting this chapbook together. Her work and that of Anne Carson were everything I was consuming and it made me realize the need for more of this genre of fiction.

How did you connect with Yellow Arrow Publishing?

I moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 2015, after I left the Dominican Republic and then spent six years in New York while I was in school. I was fresh out of graduate school and felt like I was still trying to discover what writing would look like in this new place and stage. For a while, I was trying to get my legs under me with the comics community. While I do write traditional prose, flash fiction, and poems, I also write comics for graphic novels and shorter issues. I found myself there, but around 2018 I just felt sort of aimless. I knew that I wanted to come back to prose and felt maybe a residency program could instigate that motivation to write. I think that programs often allow us do away with all the excuses because we have to write for a deadline. That’s when I found Yellow Arrow.

I believe Yellow Arrow was on the second cycle for residency and it was like right down the street from me, basically. It was really great to see this support for women-identifying writers on this side of town because a lot of the arts center of Baltimore is not really where Yellow Arrow started and where I am situated. It was really exciting to find living artists and writers here and that led to me applying and becoming one of the residents for that cycle. We were the pandemic residents, so it was really interesting for us to navigate what this new iteration of community looked like. We had to figure out online events and if there was a way for us to use the space in a safe environment. We were able to do this small, one-day retreat out on the patio at Yellow Arrow House because we had to be outside and all of that. From there it has grown into a community where we receive newsletters and stay updated on all of these awesome writers that I now know through Yellow Arrow. It was a fun experience that I still value today.

What drew you to graphic art? How did you get started?

I always knew I wanted to write for children. Drawing was not really in my wheelhouse, and so this brought me to graphic novels. I liked that you could have a collaboration aspect between artist and writer and I wanted to be that writer. I was consuming a lot of animation media at the time and have a lot of friends that are artists. That allowed me to see what that realm looked like. I think in discovering flash fiction, I also found this new world of breaking the page.

One of my mentors in graduate school, my advisor for the program, gave me a Linda Berry book. She told me, “I think you really need to read this.” She could tell that I had this like artistic side that isn’t always captured adequately through words alone. When I read that book, I could see the marriage between art and writing that I could explore. From there, another classmate gifted me this Batman comic she thought I would enjoy and then it sort of extrapolated. I saw that there are people that are creating these things. Publishing can have a lot of rules, written and unwritten, but I found out very quickly that comics writing has no limiting standards. Everybody just kind of does their own thing. Somehow, with this knowledge in hand and that sort of lack of rulebook, I got the push I needed to say, “I can do this.” I could experiment with giving guidance to an artist and collaborating together in a different way than just me sitting in front of a computer or notebook. I love creating and giving that part of me to the page and reader.

Is there an overlap in creation and planning for text only and visual work? Or are they very different for you?

I think that they certainly use different sides of my creative practice. When it comes to a comic script, I know that I have a freedom in format if that makes sense. You’re just telling the story and nobody is going to read these words in this way. The manuscript is sort of like a secret little thing that somehow eventually becomes art. Whereas with prose, I know I have this box in some way, shape, or form. With creative nonfiction, even with the chapbook, I would do a lot of page breaking. You format things and you play with the blank space and all of that stuff. When I am creating prose I want it to look attractive on the page and I have to consider the final product in print. This chapbook was the first printed piece of prose that I’ve had in a while. I haven’t had to worry about that so much because I’ve been creating for open mics and I’ll just read from my phone. I didn’t even own a printer for like five years. So there is that visual difference there. However, when it comes time to create they still remain very similar. I work to evoke and maintain the spirit of what I’m trying to say in both forms. I get it into words and then explore that in different ways.

What do you think draws you to the topics in your writing and comics? Things like female knight orders in the comic world and then the personal content in your prose?

I think the draw for most of the topics is that they’re fun. They are really great sandboxes to play in. I grew up really interested in animation superheroes and fantasy magic and all of these things are part of what I want to create. We talked of course about female inspiration, women creators and inspirations there, but I was also reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez and inhabiting this world of magical realism. I felt it was something I could and should create, as I feel there are not enough women writing magical realism. I also find myself creating queer topics because I grew up queer in the closet. Every writer wants to write what they needed when they were younger or the story they want to see on the shelf and that definitely motivates my queer content. I know I want to leave a legacy with the stories I write of the support and knowledge I wish I’d had, something that would have made my experience a little easier. I can do that for the readers to come.

When it comes to fantasy work, the order of Belfry was really close to my heart. In this case, the artist approached me with this conversation about lady nights. I was like, “What do you want to say about lady nights? I think they’re hot and that we can tell a really interesting story here.” It was this marriage of all of those elements that fuel and inspire me. We were creating this heavily queer cast and we had this fantasy aspect where we were playing with the medieval knights order. We were very intentional with this. We weren’t necessarily being Arthurian on purpose. We knew we could have easily skewed it that way, but we wanted to somehow have some semblance of “reality” in our fantasy where it still felt very grounded, which I think is so important. In classes and workshops you always hear about writing what you know and you have the own voices movements with writing, but I think we can do both. I think if people do their work, you can still create something different and present perspectives that are new and necessary. I didn’t grow up in a medieval pseudokingdom, but I can put a bit of myself in this idea I built upon research and collaboration.

La primera vez que mentí, las palabras hormigueaban en mis labios y desguste la libertad.

“Mentiras Blancas”

The first time I lied, the words tingled my lips and I tasted freedom.

“White Lies”

Do you regularly handle your own translation work and how do you approach this? Does anything inform which language you write in first? I am not fully fluent in Spanish but I did read through your chapbook in both languages and the way you handled “White Lies” really stood out to me. I love digging into decisions like this.
I’m glad you pointed that out and I appreciate you reading the collection in both languages. That’s great practice. I do translation as sort of a side gig just because I’m really interested in linguistics, and I think it allows us to explore writing on a different level. I think that the words that we use obviously are very specific in the sense of what you need in the moment for your writing. When I do any translation work, I’m more interested in salvaging the creative voice of a piece of work than just translating this word from the English to the Spanish. Google can do that, right?

For my chapbook specifically, I approached the editor of Bottlecap Press about how important it is to me that my writing is available in both languages. I grew up speaking Spanish because I’m from a Spanish country, and while this chapbook is in the American market, I’d love this opportunity to present it to people that are in the Dominican Republic. Especially for those in the audience who want to be a writer but are not sure how to do that. It is a great opportunity to present the chapbook I wrote and show a bit of what that looks like. So for that purpose, I offered my time and gladly took on the task. Then it became the matter of those individual choices, like the hormigueas choice versus tingling. It could have easily been like cosquilleo, but I was like, that’s not right. I looked at each piece and I considered what words I was trying to express along with the feeling that I was trying to inhabit in that specific moment. And that sort of allowed that sort of play on words.

Translation is so interesting because Spanish is so regional, like we’re all different. But there’s also beauty in finding where those things cross. I’ve translated things for other creatives in the past and sometimes they’re looking for something where the character is not necessarily Dominican. Then the translation is more about finding a sort of neutral translation. That’s fine and that’s something that I feel is important, too. But then you have creatives that are like in need of a specific character, for example, a Puerto Rican. I’m not Puerto Rican and I’m sure there are great Puerto Rican translators out there, but I had this opportunity to look at this particular piece of work. The creator knew my background but still wanted me to look at this Puerto Rican character. That’s where that research came in. I knew that I was unfamiliar with Puerto Rican jargon or slang, so I had to look it up. I can research that side and read from a translator’s point of view and offer that sort of perspective.

Coming back to the chapbook, it became an opportunity to also explore my own voice in Spanish which I don’t get to do very often. I do not write in Spanish as much as I should. I think that looking back I hadn’t really thought about that part of my life yet. The chapbook looks at like the first 15 years of my life and ends there. I think at some point there will probably be another chapbook to cover the ages between 15 and 25. This is when I explore the idea of becoming aware of my writing and that desire to be a writer. I was at that point of learning English and trying to teach myself how to be good at that. I think there was this unintentional effort to write in English because that’s where all the people write and that’s where the market is and all of these thoughts that tie into that. And so I do that a lot. I still write in Spanish. I had one story that I published in a magazine during college in Spanish because the editor was Dominican and she called me out on not writing in Spanish. She wanted to see what I could do. Fast forwarding to now, I have this impetus in me to make the market available to Spanish speakers and I know that some of the other works that I have don’t have that versatility. With the chapbook I had this special kind of control over it where I could put my money where my mouth is. I want to see my work in Spanish so I have to make it happen. It was fun. Ultimately, I think it was really cool to see how chapbooks are translated because it does slightly change the piece itself. I’m really excited to see, once I start doing readings for the pieces, the reception to the language I read them in. That will be an interesting journey ahead.

What do you think a writer gains from looking back and writing our child selves as an adult?

I think there’s obviously a lot of perspective. First and foremost, I think that there’s a lot of writers that look for a sense of catharsis when it comes to creating our nonfiction work, particularly for myself. It’s about coming to terms with the history that brought me here. I think it’s very important for me to present the things as I experience them. They are not perfect and I’m not really interested in presenting them in that manner. I’m not presenting this wonderful childhood. I want you to look at the imperfections and really recognize what a journey truly looks like. I think it is nice that my chapbook reflects that state of society as a queer person. I’m more interested in changing the mindsets in the present than changing that perception of the past. I want to change the current perspective of queerness in the Dominican Republic. I think showcasing that story and showcasing my experience as a writer that was gay growing up and has now come so far as to have a book about it presents a way that provides hope to a reader. It provides perspective and an opportunity for somebody to find the chapbook and find both the similarities and differences of that experience. I think those conversations are so important. It’s necessary to look back not necessarily to relive the past, but to examine it from where we’re standing now.

This collection is full of the power of sensory memory and metaphor. How did this develop in your writing?

As we write, we all develop our writer’s voice, and I think mine has always been about taking you on this journey with me as opposed to the more omnipresent narratives. I’m more interested in inviting the reader to go on this adventure together. This allows me to narrate in these camera angles which plays into the comic aspect as well. It’s like sometimes the camera is looking down on the story. I’m interested in like angling on the level of the story. Inherently, you will miss some of the parts of the story, but it allows you to be much closer to the particular moment.

I also preface the fact that it’s nonfiction with creative because I recognize that I’m not 11 anymore. I understand intrinsically that I am speaking for my 11-year-old self as an adult. I think that also changes the perspective as opposed to if somehow at 11 years old, I had the presence of mind to write this down. I think it melts into that part of the voice and allows it to be real and raw and sort of confusing at times, but with intention. We can teach ourselves so many skills as writers, but I think some parts of our voices are just intrinsically ours. And this is mine.

How do you balance cultural commentary with appreciation in your work?

I’m glad that aspect of the chapbook came through. That’s always nice to hear. When it comes to my creative writing practice, I just speak from the heart. I am not trying to romanticize the job, but there is definitely a part of you that when you truly just open yourself to the opportunity to present things how they need to be presented, things just sort of fall into place. The social commentary here comes in glimpses. You have the aspect of me taking public transportation, or my family getting robbed in the middle of the night. I don’t necessarily feel like we were losing sleep over it. We weren’t focusing on that one time we got robbed and making our house safer or something like that, but it was the indent it made on me to consider things. It was something that just like happened in a flash and it happened at one time, but it still felt like it was a story I could tell that gave context to that period of time. Especially because the chapbook takes a perspective of that younger age and I feel like that’s a nice way to sort of put the lens where it needs to be. I wouldn’t necessarily present it from the side of the robber. I’m not really interested in like, speaking for my parents and what they were going through. That is very different than the little like eight year old that woke up in the middle of night because there was a ruckus outside of her door. I think that is the way that I sort of balance things and feel the social commentary comes in, not necessarily easily, but it definitely comes fluidly when necessary. I think it comes in secondary to speaking to the experience directly.

Now that old darkness seems like paradise, a space where the world went silent and there was peace and quiet, if only as long as I kept repeating words like prayers.

“Studying in the Dark”

What is it like representing your work and perspective at public panels and events?

As a creator, it’s always been really important to me to be forward with my identities. I’m always very straightforward with my queer identity and I think I have seen a return to my Dominican identity in particular in the last few years. I can easily admit that when I came to the United States I felt the need to adapt to the American market, but that was swept over by the Own Voices movement that sort of changed the face of publishing. And I was like, “Ok. I think I can be Dominican.” I can be this thing and also queer and also a writer and it’ll work out. The communities I have found since then, like Yellow Arrow, have been part of that return to saying, “I’m a Dominican writer.” I’m not just a writer, not just a queer writer, I’m a queer Dominican writer. It’s really important to me to lead with that because it allows you to bring that back to where you came from.

I've been talking about being able to turn the mirror back to the island and say, “Hey guys, if anybody wants to be a writer, I’m here.” When it comes to the panels, book festivals, and conventions and all of this, talking about authentic stories is still pretty new because publishing is still largely white. The people that get the opportunities with the big best selling book deals and publishers are still white, while the queer and POC stories are still in the minority. So, me coming to these panels as a panelist and sharing what little experience I’ve had, the things that work for me, allows that opportunity to leave the door open and bring somebody else in. There might be somebody sitting in the audience that’s also queer, also POC, and doesn’t even know where to start. Maybe two things that I say in the panel might give them the spark to finish that story or find out how to submit to their local writing open mic or another publishing opportunity. I think it’s ultimately about visibility and continuing that work to pave the way for others. Yes, I’m writing. Yes, I’m creating. Yes, I’m doing all these cool, awesome things that I’m super excited about. How can I make space for more voices like mine?

What advice do you have for aspiring artists?

Publishing is really nebulous at the best of times. Writers, both new and established, can get really lost in the sauce of like, where do I publish my work? How do I get it to the people? How do people read it and receive it? My advice would be to find the other writers around you. Even if you don’t live in a big metropolitan area, we have access to online communities through discord, Instagrams, whatever social media is your preference. Ultimately, what really started me and kept me going was finding those other writers that were in that moment with me, even if we weren’t talking the same genres. When I was in school, I had a screenwriter friend, a poet, and one other fiction writer alongside me. What matters is those checkins, somebody asking about that manuscript you’re working on, asking if you figured out that plot point or if you were able to talk to whoever you need to talk to get that information you need. That would be my top advice: find those communities.

Are there any future projects you’d like to share?

I’m working on three graphic novels that are coming out in the next couple of years. Right now, immediately in August, I have a new kids graphic novel called Paulina and the Disaster at Pompeii. It’s about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. After that, the story I wrote for Epic, which is the Animal Rescue Friends Tales: A Hard Shell to Crack, is coming out in print in November. Also in November, the third book of The Cardboard Kingdom is coming out. This is like my start in graphic novels and is a project near and dear to my heart. It is about this group of kids that play with cardboard and create this fantasy world. I’m really excited to see what people think of the kids. I created Amanda, the mad scientist, in that cast. We’re introducing a lot of new characters in this new book and a lot of new dynamics that I’m excited to see how people receive them.

You can find updates on Barbara Perez Marquez and her writing at mustachebabs.com and can order your copy of Por la Sombrita (in English or Spanish!) from Bottlecap Press.

Barbara Perez Marquez was born and raised in the Dominican Republic, now she lives in the USA. She’s a queer latine writer with an MFA in Creative Writing and writes short stories and fiction. During her career, she has also been an editor, translator, and even a sensitivity reader for several publications and projects. Her work was first featured in a student collection in the 7th grade, which inspired her desire to become a writer. In her work, Barbara aims to present coming of age and LGBTQ+ themes in both approachable and heartbreaking ways. You can find more of her work at mustachebabs.com.

Melissa Nunez is a Latin@ writer and homeschooling mother of three from the Rio Grande Valley. Her essays have appeared in magazines like Hypertext and Honey Literary. She has work forthcoming in Lean and Loafe, Fahmidan Journal, and others. She writes an anime column for The Daily Drunk, interviews for Yellow Arrow Publishing, and is a staff writer for Alebrijes Review. You can follow her on Twitter @MelissaKNunez.

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Kapua Iao 10/17/23 Kapua Iao 10/17/23

Hysterical Inspiration: A Conversation with Hannah Baker Saltmarsh

Hannah Baker Saltmarsh is a poet, essayist, educator, and author of the following books: Male Poets and the Agon of the Mother: Contexts in Confessional and Post-Confessional Poetry (2019) and Hysterical Water (2021). An alumna of the University of Maryland, College Park, and the University of York in the United Kingdom, her poems have been featured in The Yale Review, The Times Literary Supplement, Feminist Studies, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, and many others.

Hysterical Water, Hannah’s debut book of poems, is a collection that focuses on the term “hysteria” and its connection and historical reference to women. Connecting through the common threads of hysteria and motherhood, Hannah bridges each work with themes of emotion, creativity, sexuality, and female thinking to highlight the dismissal of women being named as hysterical.

Recently, Yellow Arrow Publishing summer intern Vickie Tu interviewed Hannah about her experience as a female writer, her debut collection Hysterical Water, and her inspiration for literature and writing.

What was your inspiration for Hysterical Water?

The book is concerned with the notion that women have been stigmatized and silenced historically as hysterical, and yet being a complicated, sexual, and emotional person seems oddly quite fitting for a poet, so I tried to subvert the sexist idea of hysterical. I was moved and inspired to tell certain stories that were important to me and remain important to me. For instance, I tell stories about my birthing experiences, breastfeeding experiences, and alongside that, I reflect on my own mother’s stories and crucial family stories. Just as important as the confessional, personal threads of the book are also the stories of literary influences, archives, mother-writers, and even less literary forms like cookbooks or letters. Overall, I hope the feminist and maternal joys, rages, and grievances come across!

Why did you decide to write poetry/produce poems?

I began writing poems as a teenager, around age 14. I loved reading poems and had an anthology of “Outlaw Poetry” that I suppose I thought was very subversive and rebellious, with poems by [Allen] Ginsberg and others. Some of the mental health challenges in my family, as well as the typical teenage experiences of big feelings, led me to want to express myself in poems.

What do you love most about writing?

I love the way metaphors or imagery can create a sublime, elating feeling of deep understanding—even if the arrival of the reader is very different than the arrival of the writer. It’s really exciting as a reader to see yourself in the words of another person’s poem, and it’s validating as a writer if a reader can connect to your words. Since poems are windows and mirrors, showing us about very different experiences as well as leading us to better understand ourselves, I love reading widely.

What about your writing is the most unique?

That’s a humbling question, because I have a lot of literary influences, writers like Alicia Ostriker, Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, Allen Ginsberg, and many more who have all felt like extremely unique, idiosyncratic voices in my head! I’d like to think that I combine a kind of nerdy, scholarly interest with something very visceral emotionally.

Who is your favorite writer and why?

My favorite novelist is Toni Morrison, whose 11 novels I could reread over and over again, because I love the poetic language and imagery—the way she captivates an internal voice, and the way she explores mother-daughter relationships, family sagas, and women friendships. My favorite poet is too hard to say because I feel that sometimes certain poets feel louder or softer to me, depending on what I’m thinking about and working on or living through at the time—but right now, I’m really digging Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Danez Smith, and Solmaz Sharif.

What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a second manuscript of poems entitled cures for deep wounds. It’s broadly about the intersections of motherhood, climate change, and wellness. I draw from a woman’s literary tradition of cookbooks to look at domestic cures and also reflect on the challenges of those in nurturing roles to care for others and to care for themselves. Especially with the post-Roe era we are now living in, I reflect on the demise of reproductive health care and the way our culture praises mothers yet denies basic healthcare and support. Although there are elegies for people in my life who died during the pandemic and some reflections about how fracturing the pandemic was for mothers, the book also suggests the healing powers of friendship, poetry, and nature. I’m also working on a critical book that is focused on motherhood and second-wave feminisms and have been working on book chapters about writers such as Toni Morrison, Elizabeth Hardwick, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde—I will continue with this project and hope to add more chapters on Grace Paley.

Thank you Hannah for speaking to Vickie about your literary inspiration. You can find Male Poets and the Agon of the Mother at muse.jhu.edu/book/64957 and Hysterical Water at ugapress.org/book/9780820359007/hysterical-water.

Hannah Baker Saltmarsh is the author of the poetry collection Hysterical Water (2021) and a book of literary criticism, Male Poets and the Agon of the Mother: Contexts in Confessional and Post-Confessional Poetry (2019). She is currently working on a second manuscript of poems, cures for deep wounds, and a critical book about motherhood and second-wave feminisms in novels, letters, and poetry. She lives in Virginia with her partner Jay and their three children. She is an alum of the University of Maryland and the University of York in England. You can find her on Twitter @HannahSaltmarsh or Instagram @saltystudebaker.

Vickie Tu is a rising senior at University of Maryland, College Park, studying English with a minor in Classics. She was born and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, and plans to move to New York City after graduation to start her career in the publishing industry. When she is not reading or working in her campus’ bookstore, she enjoys attending hockey games for her favorite team the Washington Capitals. You can find her on Instagram @vickie.tuuu.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we SPARK and sparkle this year: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe 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 9/12/23 Kapua Iao 9/12/23

What Matters: A Conversation with Swimming in Gilead’s Cassie Premo Steele

Every sound from my mouth
is sacred, holy prayer.
I am the priest and the power.

“Declaration”

Cassie Premo Steele is a passionate ecofeminist writer and seasoned author who holds a PhD in comparative literature and women’s gender and sexuality studies. She currently resides in South Carolina but enjoys connecting with other writers and audiences by participating in events and readings across the country both virtually and online. You can find video clips from several events on her website cassiepremosteele.com.

Cassie’s poetry chapbook Swimming in Gilead will be released by Yellow Arrow Publishing on October 10, 2023, and is now available for preorder (click here for wholesale prices)! Follow Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram for Friday sneak peeks into Swimming in Gilead. This collection of poems deals with themes of identity and relationship, the creative witness to collective trauma and healing, and respect for the seasons of ourselves and our world. The incredible photograph used on the cover of Swimming in Gilead is by Sofia Tata (sofiatata.com). According to Cassie, “The combination of sea and land formation creates an image of a woman in silhouette and draws readers into an intimate dialogue with the poems.”

Cassie engaged in a dynamic conversation through email and over Zoom with Melissa Nunez, Yellow Arrow author and interviewer, where they bonded over a shared admiration for powerful feminist writers like Gloria Anzaldúa and the call for restoration and balance in the world.

Can you share some of your writing background and your journey to writing Swimming in Gilead?

I went to an all-female Catholic school called Immaculata for high school. I know many people hate high school, but I actually loved it. I would consider the nuns and the teachers there as feminists who were really empowering. They saw us as intellectual women who would make a difference in the world.

I was the president of the student council my senior year, which was the same year the bishop announced that he was going to close the school. His reasoning was to blame the girls for not becoming nuns after graduating, but that was a form of scapegoating, blaming the victim, gas lighting, all of that.

When the announcement was made, I called everyone to the auditorium, and we literally took over the school. I said, “This is not OK. We’re gonna fight back against this.” We created a plan for letting the media know what was happening. We lost in the end, but it was really an example in contrast for me showing that feminist community is possible. We felt that connection as had the generations of women who had gone there before. We also experienced how it can be destroyed with one flick of the pen. This experience, which generations of women, and immigrants, and people of color, are all too familiar with.

This experience stayed with me. I went on in my life. I got a PhD, I taught at the university level, I became a stepmom and a mom. I came out and married my wife. I went through a lot of changes. But always that idea of that Gilead-type community stayed with me, like a seed.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I had a sense that we needed to do the things that were really important to us. I enrolled in a class taught by Natalie Goldberg (who has also been a mentor to me in terms of reading her work). It was mostly recorded lessons, but there were some big group sessions that were live with her, which was wonderful. It had people from all around the world in it. They randomly put us into small groups of like six or seven people. Her method is that you get a prompt, you write for 10 minutes, you read your work, and your group listens but does not comment. So, it’s not really a writing workshop, but more a witnessing to each other. And there was a woman in that first small group who was sobbing while I was reading, and she individually messaged me and invited me to join a writing group. And I said, yes.

I ended up in a group with six women. Three were from Canada and three from the United States. If you remember that summer the killing of George Floyd had happened, then there were unmarked black vans rounding up people in Portland, Oregon, our COVID rates were through the roof. We started meeting weekly and as we were sharing, we realized those of us in the United States couldn’t really even feel what was happening to us. I realize as a trauma scholar that you can’t really know the trauma until it’s over, and as we were living through a collective trauma at that time, people from the outside could have the emotions for what was happening in a way that we couldn’t here in the U.S. Many of the poems in the collection were written during these group sessions with these women, the Sisters of Gilead, which is what we started calling ourselves as inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale.

Everything matters.
No matter how light or slight,
all matter weighs something.
You matter, too.

“Six Things the Feather Taught Me”

Which women-identifying writers inspire you?

I think of myself as having a poetry team made of women such as Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Anne Sexton, Louise de Salvo, Joy Harjo, and Marilou Awiakta. All these women, whether here on earth still or not, are very much alive and active in my mind and body and soul.

Audre teaches me the creative power of difference when we break the many silences that try to teach us to be afraid. Gloria tells me the spirit is an animating and healing force in both individual and collective trauma. Anne allows me to cherish my sexual power and the power of laughter. Louise reminds me to keep some things secret because they are too sacred to be shared. Joy sings of the joy of the land, in the land, and in our bodies, which are also land. And Awiakta, who goes by her chosen Eastern Cherokee name, reminds me of the Native, indigenous, and female roots of our national government, which we are still coming to terms with as a continent and as a world.

How did you connect with Yellow Arrow Publishing?

Poets & Writers Magazine did a feature on the press, and I looked it up immediately. There seemed to be something speaking to me about the mission, the vision, the ethos. I’d recently typed up all the writings I’d done with my writing group called the Gilead Sisters over the course of the pandemic, and I went back into that document and, like a block of marble, began to chisel out what felt like the right shape for this book. I sent the manuscript to several writer friends for feedback, listened to them, made changes, and kept shaping until I was sure this was the book I wanted to send, and then I sent it.

Yellow Arrow was the only place I sent the manuscript. And I got the email of acceptance a few months later, on October 15, which is my grandson’s birthday.

Do you have any writing rituals you routinely follow?

Most mornings after making tea, I light a candle on my altar, which holds an arrangement of stones and feathers and spiritual objects depending on the seasons and cycles in the natural world, and I meditate, and write in my journal, and watch the sun come up with that delicate blue light on my skin and on the fur of my dog, Lenny, sleeping next to me as I write. By the time my wife begins to stir in the kitchen, putting away dishes and making her coffee before work, I feel my most important work of the day is done. Everything else—emails, paperwork, scheduling, revision, submission—all the work of being a writer is just gravy, is easy, and flows smoothly because I’ve had this time with my pen in my hand moving on the page, making a sacred circle with my belly and my heart.

My hand with a pen.
Writing it down.
Rhythm.
Calm in heart and limb.

There is no end.
The story keeps going.
One word at a time.
Beyond mind.

“Writing”

Can you speak a bit on the ecofeminist perspective and how it informs your writer’s voice?

Ecofeminism is a word I use as a shorthand to describe what I do as a writer, but it’s beyond words, this sense I’ve always had, even as a child, that the world is alive and “alove,” a breathing, living, knowing, speaking being that loves us and created us and is connected to us and actually, deeply, is us.

We have, in the west, in the patriarchal and global capitalist, linear world, mostly forgotten this. And it’s why we’re dying. Our physical and mental and emotional and environmental illnesses—these are all warning lights flashing and beeping and sounding the signal for us: Remember! Remember! Remember!

My intention with all my writing is to help us do just that. This book is a reminder of the balm in Gilead, too.

I love nature imagery and am drawn to writers that include it. These images can be perceived as universal but utilized in ways that are very specific to each author. How is the natural world reflected in your work?

Because of my sense that the world is “alove,” I would say that the natural world is not just reflected in my work but speaks in and through it. I remember the morning after my wedding when I heard the flowers singing to me in the voices of goddesses like Juno and Hestia and Demeter, the ancient female figures who still carry the memory of what it means to be a woman and a wife and a mother.

It’s there in the flowers and in the beautiful petals of our own flowering female bodies.

It’s in the mother daughter tulip poplar trees in our backyard who told my wife and me, “You are home now. Unpack your pasts and stay. We will shelter you.”

We discovered later that the ancient names of these trees are connected to the names Susanne and Lily, which are the names of my wife and daughter. The names are still there. We need to remember to listen.

Can you elaborate on the moon as symbol in your poetry?

The moon is my witness and companion. As I said, I wake early most mornings, and I greet her in the dark. She teaches me about change and staying consistent through the changes. Sometimes she is increasing as I am working toward a goal or the completion of a writing project. Other times she is full and says, “Sit. Light a fire in the backyard with other women. Celebrate.” And then there are times when she decreases and I’m reminded that I need times of rest, too.

When my daughter was in elementary school, I enrolled her in an aftercare program, even though I had no clients to see or classes to teach in the late afternoons, so I could take a nap if I wanted to before picking her up. I once admitted this to an audience at a women’s and gender studies conference, and there were gasps. We’re not supposed to take care of ourselves like that as women, as mothers. And there’s something very wounding about that—not only for the women but for the children.

The sun bleeds peach tea,
and the mother tree lights
her leaves and drips yellow
sweet from cups as the day
goes belly up . . .

“Tuesday Night”

Many of the poems in this collection involve movement and growth. Are these important themes for you as a woman and as a writer?

Everything in nature is always moving and growing in the right seasons. If a tree stops putting out leaves, it’s either winter or something is wrong. But our economic system has taken this beautiful proficiency and abused it, so we feel we always have to be producing. This is injurious to our bodies, minds, and spirits, especially as creative people who must maintain our ability to be sensitive in order to do our most important work.

The metaphors of movement and growth in my poetry are reminders that we don’t really have to try and push and strive as much as we think we do. The wisdom of the woman’s body and the natural world teaches us that periods and seasons and cycles happen whether we try to control them or not. I’m talking about a kind of surrender that is not a loss, not measured in economic terms, but is a gathering and an embrace. A profit that profits every living being.

One theme that comes across very clearly in this collection is that of woman wisdom. What would you tell your younger self?

I would tell my younger self one thing:

Good job.
Good job.
Good job.
Good job.

No matter what you think you’re failing at, you’re doing a good job.

What woman wisdom are you hoping to dispense in these poems?

I would hope that one thing a person reading the poetry collection could do no matter what their identity markers would be is to ask themselves: Where is my power and how am I free?

I do think that there is an essential freedom of consciousness that we each have as human beings. I would even go so far as to say that a lot of nature also has this kind of consciousness, but in reference to humans in this context, I think sometimes we focus too much on the horizontal plane of existence.

And what I've learned from teaching writing with women over the years is that when we focus externally, we give away a lot of our power because the deep voice of creativity and wisdom comes from that vertical alignment with who we are that changes over the course of our life. It is separate from external circumstances. It must come from inside us. As much as we might ask the external world to grant it to us, it must exist within us first.

When readers encounter the poems in Gilead, I hope that they feel that very deep strength and faith in themselves and who they are.

We speak.
We listen.
We survive.
We survive.

“No Certainties”

What writing or publishing advice would you share with other women-identifying writers?

When my stepdaughter was seven years old, she came home from school and asked me, “Do you know how many elections Lincoln lost before he won one?” I stared at her because I knew she wasn’t asking me to show off her newfound knowledge or to engage in trivia with me.

She was saying, “Keep going. All the rejections you’re getting now are preparing you for what is to come.”

I loved that kid with all my heart then, and still do. She taught me so much about the love lessons we can learn as stepmothers—about loving those who are in our families that we did not choose—and the fact that she and her wife with their two children live near my wife and me means that, like Lincoln, I feel I’ve won the really big election of life.

What I’m trying to say is that you let the writing come and you work and love with all your heart and you send the writing out for publication and it’s a long game. You’re in it for life.

Did you want to share some of your experience in attendance of the Woody Guthrie Poetry Festival? Do you do a lot of speaking events? How important do you think they are for a writer?

I just returned from Oklahoma where they hold this music and poetry festival each year, and I have to say that just physically being with other writers is so powerful now that we know what it's like not to be together. I think it reminds us that we have bodies and that these bodies are important and connected to the environment. They’re probably more important than our minds really. If we start to really care for the body and see it as sacred, as something that needs to be healthy and in balance, then we can see our connections between what’s happening here and what’s happening in the earth.

I am really comfortable in front of a crowd. It’s actually easier for me to get up on a stage than to do small talk at a party. I tend not to know what to do besides talk about the weather. I want to go very deep right away and not everybody wants to do that. If I have a microphone, I can go there. I know they wanted to be here, to listen to me and my poetry. I think I have always been kind of bossy and a teacher and it’s easy for me to lead. I love giving readings. I love teaching workshops. I love feeling like I’m helping to create a safe space for people to listen, to think, to feel, to write. When I give a poetry reading and I see people in the audience crying, I feel like I hit a home run because that's really what I want. Not for them to be sad, but to feel so moved and so safe that they can feel whatever is coming up for them and express it freely.

Do you have any future projects you’d like to share?

In November, I have a novel called Beaver Girl coming out. I’m excited about this because it takes a lot of the themes from Swimming in Gilead and puts it into a narrative format. The main character is a 19-year-old girl who has been through a pandemic and climate collapse. She wakes in her house to wildfires that are encroaching upon her neighborhood, and she goes into a national forest to try to escape the wildfires. There she befriends a beaver family. The reader learns about beavers as a keystone species for our environment. For example, most of Texas and New Mexico, which we think of as desert areas now, were lush green forests before the Europeans got rid of all the beavers for the fur trade. Beavers create these wetland areas and even after an individual family has moved on those beaver ponds become part of the water table, which can help us during times of drought in later years. So, it’s a bit of a morality tale about what we have done to help bring about climate disaster. It is also set in the kind of postapocalyptic time and shows what beavers and humans could do together to restore faith and strength and a sense of family and community. That will be out on November 15th.

You can follow updates on Cassie and her writing on Twitter @premosteele and her website cassiepremosteele.com and can order your copy of Swimming in Gilead from Yellow Arrow Publishing.

Cassie Premo Steele, PhD, is a lesbian ecofeminist poet and novelist and the author of 18 books. Swimming in Gilead is her seventh book of poetry. Her poetry has won numerous awards, including the Archibald Rutledge Prize named after the first Poet Laureate of South Carolina, where she lives with her wife.

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Thank you, Cassie and Melissa, for sharing your conversation. Preorder your copy of Swimming in Gilead today.

Kapua Iao 9/5/23 Kapua Iao 9/5/23

An Interview with Corridors Editor-in-Chief Samantha Dickson

By Natasha Saar, written April 2023

I’ve been a member of my university’s (Loyola University Maryland) literary magazine, Corridors, for just about two years now. Corridors publishes original student work, including pieces of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, art, and photography. For years, Forum and Garland, two of Loyola’s student-run literary arts magazines, operated as two separate staffs. While the former solicited, reviewed, and published submissions of nonfiction and art, the latter did the same with fiction and photography. They were joined together as Corridors to even better share the talents and passions of Loyola University writers with the university at large. It’s been a great time sifting through submissions, selecting them, editing them, and just about everything you can think of when you hear the title of editor.

While Corridors Editor-in-Chief Samantha Dickson is not in charge of looking through submissions, she’s in charge of just about everything else. Normally, I can hardly see past her veil of managerial woes, but one interview later that has changed. Now, you, too, can see what a leadership position in a publishing house looks like, even if said publishing house is confined to the university level.

Can you give a quick introduction about you, Corridors, and your role with the literary magazine?

I am a graduating senior at Loyola University, [and] I am majoring in writing and philosophy, and I’m the Editor-in-Chief for Corridors . . . I joined my freshman year.

We actually have two Editors-in-Chief. Grace Perry works with the design, text, and actually puts the final product together—my role is that I take on a more managerial position. I develop a schedule and make sure that the Corridors team is following it, that everything is as punctual as possible, and that all communication channels are open. I also keep a pulse on any potential problems my staff might have to see how I can help out.

Me and Grace [are] also working on choosing staff members for next year, since we’re both going to be graduating.

How long have you been Editor-in-Chief?

I’ve been in my position for two years, but I’ve been with Corridors since I was a freshman. I spent my first two years as a nonfiction editor. At the end of my sophomore year, I applied to be the head of editing fiction/poetry. On our application to be a staff member, we have it set up that you number your preferred positions one to five. On a whim, I put Editor-in-Chief as my number two option. I ended up in that position!

What’s the most difficult part about being Editor-in-Chief?

When I first started, it was the managerial aspect because prior to Corridors I had no experience managing people on any sort of scale. Unfortunately, my predecessor didn’t give me much instruction. It was getting thrown in the deep end.

Since then, I’ve become a lot more confident with—for the lack of a better term—ordering people around. Experience and practice made me a lot more comfortable in my position! At this point, the worst part is the email anxiety.

Which issue of Corridors that you’ve worked on has been your favorite and in what way?

Well, last year [2022] was my first year as EiC, so it was already stressful and a huge learning curve. We had an issue with the printer where we didn’t have the paper type we usually use. We had a big discussion on what the book should look like. Normally we have an off-yellow, sort of white color to have a sort of older look to it. But the printer didn’t have that so we came up with a sort of cityscape for the cover (above), and just leaned into the modern, sleeker feel. It’s my favorite look of a piece I’ve worked on, so I’m happy for the trouble.

How is the current issue of Corridors coming along?

We have our mockup! It just arrived, our next move is to look it over and look out for some more glaring mistakes. Once it looks good, we give the okay to the printer. In two weeks, we’re going to have 300 copies.

Are you a writer yourself? If yes, what are you working on currently?

Like most graduating seniors, my goal is to get a job. Thankfully, Corridors has turned out to be a really great experience and I’m asked a lot of questions from my employers about it. How we set it up is surprisingly similar to indie publishing houses, so it’s been a big help in the process.

In terms of personal work, I am a writer. I’m on-and-off on a bunch of different projects but have been very busy. After graduation I hope that I’ll have some time to put my work out there on a more regular basis.

What do you love most about writing? Where do you find your inspiration?

I love fiction and fantasy especially—I grew up on dragons. So when I talk about fiction, I talk about how it’s a gateway to reality that can safely explore often very tense and difficult situations that we face every day. It lets us face things in a way that doesn't directly feel like we’re facing our problems. So, to me, it’s more than entertainment, even if I approach writing with that in mind.

Who is your favorite writer and why?

This is a hard one! With school, it’s been hard to read or write as much as I would like . . . I’m currently reading Stephen King’s The Stand, as well as Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher series. Though the first series that always comes to my mind is Christopher Paolini’s The Inheritance Cycle. It was an establishing force in my love for the fantasy genre.

What do you like about Baltimore?

I didn’t grow up in a big city, so I was really excited when I was coming to school that I was going to have access to one. There’s always something to do here and that’s probably something everyone says, but if I’m looking for something I can always find it. I’ve found park spots I love, natural spots that I like if I need a break . . . there are lots of great spots outside for inspiration.

What are your plans after graduation?

I really enjoyed publishing. I’m not very particular about the medium so I’ve been keeping my options open. I’ve also been dabbling in the news industry, editing and writing articles for a Los Angeles-based company, so I’d also be happy to work in that industry as well. It’s influenced me as a writer a lot.

Thank you, Samantha, for taking the time to talk to Natasha about running Loyola University’s literary magazine Corridors.

Samantha Dickson is a senior at Loyola University Maryland, majoring in philosophy and writing. She’s the Editor-in-Chief of her university’s literary magazine, Corridors, and is currently an intern at MXDWN Entertainment.

Natasha Saar is also a senior at Loyola Maryland University, majoring in English literature with minors in writing and classics. She’s Yellow Arrow Publishing’s spring 2023 publications intern, works on her campus as a resident assistant, and is a genre editor at Corridors.

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Kapua Iao 6/13/23 Kapua Iao 6/13/23

Hope Beyond Galaxies: A Conversation with shantell hinton hill about Black girl magic & other elixirs

i learned how to vanish
into thin air
when i was little.
a witch taught me—
made me do it
because she couldn’t stand
the sight of me.

“Black girl magic”

As a woman with vision, shantell hinton hill is a voice that conjures renovation and hope. She is a pastor, social justice advocate, and writer who makes her home in Arkansas. To speak with shantell is to encounter a professional yet powerful passion for positive change. She actively engages and encourages her community (and audiences beyond) through her social media platforms.

Black girl magic & other elixirs, shantell’s debut poetry chapbook, is and now available for preorder (click here for wholesale prices). The poetry chapbook delivers a dynamic message that uplifts and empowers Black girls, Black women, and all those in this world impeded by systems that still default to oppression. Within, shantell speaks to the strength garnered from her experiences and the faith she has in herself, her community, and those devoted to seeking a better way for this world.

Melissa Nunez, Yellow Arrow author and interviewer, met with shantell over Zoom to discuss the development of her poetic voice and the power of music and spirituality that spark the magic found in her collection.

Who are some women writers who have influenced you?

First and foremost, I need to name the writers who inspire me who have passed on. Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler are my absolute all-time favorites. They both have been so formative to who I am as a person and my literary tastes. I would add bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Zora Neale Hurston who have inspired and shaped me as well. Lucille Clifton is a powerful poet I admire who informs some of my own work as a poet. I also appreciate and enjoy the world-building found in N.K. Jemisin’s writing. I tend to lean toward Black women authors, Black feminist authors. They have spoken to my soul for a very long time, and I am excited to lean into the lineage of who they are as writers and as people.

Many of your poems touch on the invisibility of the power-less, be that a child, a female, a person of color. How did you step out and develop your own voice? What inspired you to start writing?

Once I started to understand that the White gaze was really just a figment of the imagination of people who do not want to see Black girls, Black women, Black people be in power, I started to release myself from really feeling like I was powerless. I realized that my truth and my experiences were powerful, and it was necessary to speak them out loud and have that agency. I could not allow anyone to try to speak for me. That is something that propelled me to put pen to paper and start this collection. I wanted other people, particularly other Black girls and women, to understand the power that happens when we just speak our truth and do so boldly.

Some people believe that religion and women’s rights are like oil and water, they do not mix. Can you speak to the intersection of faith and feminism in your work?

I love that you asked this question. For me faith and feminism are absolutely connected. I proclaim a Christian faith and have since I was about the age of five. When I think about Jesus and his ministry, women were the hallmarks of that ministry. Not just in the miracles he performed but at his resurrection. Who were the first people to proclaim that he had risen? It was women. There are so many ways that you can read biblical text that make you think that women should remain silent in the church, that they have no business being in a place of authority, and that women’s rights would not be important. However, if you allow yourself to approach the biblical text with a feminist lens, one that really asks how a Black woman would experience this in our present-day context, you can see that there are many ways that Jesus was always looking out for women. Whether it was the woman who was “caught in adultery,” or the woman with the issue of blood, or the woman who was trying to seek healing for her daughter, he absolutely surrounded himself with women and wanted to include their gifts in his ministry. I really feel like there is room for faith and feminism to coexist and that religion and women’s rights don’t have to be oil and water. You just have to have a willingness to be in community with people who are different than you.

God be
keeping us
like auntie ‘nem.
and God
stay freeing us
like that sistafriend.

so, as for me—
i’ma call God
what God is.

“God, our mother-auntie-sistafriend”

The power of song is prominent in your work, some of which creates its own kind of music on the page. Can you expand on why song has been important for you personally and in your writing journey?

I think songs and music are so powerful because they can be portals to different times and dimensions. I can remember the first time I heard Whitney Houston’s albums riding in my mother’s car, in her 1992 Honda Accord, and I can just envision the details so vividly—the sounds, the smells, everything about that time in my life—simply from hearing that Whitney song, “I’m Every Woman.” Songs have a unique ability to connect us to not just different times and space but to different people. Even people who don’t speak English as their native language can enjoy Whitney or Chaka Khan or Aretha Franklin because there is something about the way the music speaks to the soul. In the same way that the music I grew up listening to spoke to my soul and edified my soul, I was trying to capture that in some of my poetry and in my stories. Whether you grew up as a Black girl or not, there is something in this story, in what the poem is telling you that connects with your soul. Hopefully you can listen to the music, and it can enhance that message even more.

There are many strong themes covered in small packages in your collection including several pieces where opposing ideas meet or converse, one example being the intersection of oppression within one’s own community and the support found there. Can you speak to the importance of acknowledging this dichotomy and how it has played out in your experience?

We must speak to those dichotomies because I feel that a lot of times, we stay silent about the ugly parts that we are experiencing. We feel that somehow, we are betraying our people, our community, our family, ourselves when we speak to those realities. But I do feel like the beauty of intergenerational dialogue, which is something that I hope you can really get a sense for in [Black girl magic & other elixirs], is that there is nothing wrong with critiquing and constructively building upon ways to get better. I think that we in the younger generation don’t want to stay silent about the things that we were told were shameful or that we should never speak about publicly. We want to see those things changed and I believe that there is power, there is so much power, in pulling down the strongholds of silence and speaking to what has happened to us. This allows for room for healing. That is a big reason why the oppression continues to persist and exist, because we haven’t talked about it, and we have not healed from it. How can you heal from something until you start to name the harm? I believe that speaking about both the oppression we feel in our communities and the amazing opportunities for support really just gives us a way to experience the fullness of our humanity, to experience healing, and also look toward to what a better and brighter future can look like.

“starshine and clay” is a powerful poem. Why did this phrase speak to you, and can you expand on how “Won’t you celebrate with me” by Lucille Clifton inspired your own poem?

“Won’t you celebrate with me” is a poem I read almost daily. I feel like as a woman of color, as a Black woman who lives in the South, every day something is really trying to make me second guess myself. Something that wants to make me feel like I am not enough, or that I am too much, or too angry, or too something, while simultaneously making me feel like I am not enough something. It is very hard to live in this reality sometimes. This poem reminds me that there is nothing in this world that can stop me from having what belongs to me. There is nothing in this world that can keep me from what the creator has destined for me. Just reading her poem where it says “what did I see to be except myself” and she talks about “this bridge between starshine and clay.” That part, that bridge, inspired [my] poem, with that image I take a step further into my own personal experience. I have a daughter now who is 18 months. While I am fearful about some of the things that are happening right now in our world, like with reproductive rights and all sorts of things that are not going well, I still have so much hope that she is going to be among the leaders and the warriors and the voices of the next generation who will say, “No more.” The generation who will not allow for these kinds of things to keep happening. I may not get to see some of the freedoms that she will see in her lifetime for myself and so I really wanted to write that poem just as a head nod, as a thank you to Lucille, and also kind of like a future-casting for what I hope will be true for my daughter one day.

starshine is not afraid of darkness
and clay is not afraid of contortion
that’s why we know them well.

“starshine and clay”

I also wanted to talk about “get out the galaxy, Black girl.” I love its placement before “starshine and clay,” and I would love to hear more about its inspiration and its form.

I am a huge Afrofuturism and science fiction nerd. I love N.K. Jemisin, I love Black Panther, Wakanda, I love The Woman King (although it is not Afrofuturist but more like an alternate view of history). There is something about imagining new worlds and getting beyond what sometimes we get stuck in here on earth. I wrote this poem as a play on words, like a joke, but also an encouragement for us to think futuristically. It is a call to realize that what we experience here in the United States doesn’t have to be this way, honestly. It really doesn’t. If thinking about what an otherworldly experience would look like for you helps you imagine what changes need to be made here in this present time, then that is what I hope this poem can do for you.

What is Black girl magic? Can you define the concept for your reader and how it shaped the collection?

Black girl magic is so much more than words on a paper, and I don’t even know if I can do it justice by trying to articulate it with a definition. I will try to describe it in ways that readers in my audience may understand it better. Black girl magic is the way that you see young Black girls Double Dutching between two jump ropes as if they are just having a conversation. They make it look easy. Black girl magic is the ways that you see a young Black woman or teenager have a bit of sass; there’s an essence to her that you can’t describe that you know is absolutely a part of her Blackness. Black girl magic is the way we can look at somebody and that other person, particularly if it is another Black person or Black woman, knows exactly what we are saying. It is a way of being and a way of existing that invites others to be fully who they are. It also gives us space and agency to just be fabulous in every single way possible. I think Black girl magic defies stereotypes and defies subjugation and logic. A lot of times people like to make it seem like it is something that can be bottled up, but it cannot be coopted. It is cultivated within us and within this communal experience we are all having as Black people, particularly in America right now. I can see it already in my daughter and she is only 18 months. She has a little attitude, and I am like, “Yes, girl.” Even though I want her to do what I want her to do, she has her own ideas about how things should be already. It’s like, “Ok, alright, I’ll give you that.” It’s just this pureness of spirit that cannot be squashed. In its best form it gives people permission to be their best selves.

Has writing (this collection and in general) shaped your outlook as a parent, a mother, and vice versa?

Yes. It has been a mirror for me because that idea of being seen and not heard has been so ingrained in me that there are times where I have to catch myself from being so heavy-handed with my daughter. First of all, she is too young to fully understand. Secondly, I am super clear along with my husband that we do not want to break her spirit in the ways that, unfortunately, older generations did with us. Whether it was making us be silent, or giving whoopings all the time when we don’t know why we are getting whoopings, or just all the superstitions and the ways of being that we were brought up in, we are really careful to not do that with her. I do think that writing this collection allowed me to be way more conscious about how we are building her agency and how we are asking ourselves hard question about our willingness to say “I am sorry” for things. Or how early we want to share with her the truth about gender and racial oppression. What are the things we want her to know and what are the things that we want to keep her safe and protected from as long as we possibly can? The collection has absolutely been a mirror for me as a new mom and hopefully it is something we can have a conversation about when she is old enough to understand the contents.

What advice do you have for other women writers?

I recently watched a movie on Netflix called The Luckiest Girl Alive. It was such a good movie. Mila Kunis’ character is a writer and at the end of the film she is having a conversation with her editor. He tells her the least she can do in her writing is to be honest. Don’t think about how they want to read it. Don’t think about what they want to say. What you have to do is be completely honest with every single part of it and give the people that. It resonated with me so much and it actually is how I approached the collection. It was just bare, it was raw, it was vulnerable and uncomfortable in some of the poems, but it was honest. I give that advice to other women writers: just be honest. We have had enough people writing for us, creating characters that do not explore our fullness and the range of our identities, and we have had enough of men telling us who and how we should be. I want to encourage women to write and write honestly.

because we
know the sky
ain’t all there is
to see here.

so we’ll just
keep on walking
with our own secret
headed to another galaxy.

full
of worlds
where we are
already free.

“get out the galaxy, Black girl”

Tell us about your vision for the cover?

It was really important to me that the cover be representative of the nostalgia and nuances of Black girlhood in the ‘90s. The roller skates, cassette tape, and perfume all communicate a certain essence of “being” that one can feel, smell, and hear. Likewise, the pictures of my younger self and my present-day self represent much of my journey of becoming and self-possession—signifying the power in reclaiming the little girls that live inside of us while empowering the women we have fought tooth and nail to belong to ourselves.

How did you connect with Yellow Arrow and what did the process of submitting your work feel like to you?

My publishing journey has been long and filled with rejections. I’ve written so many manuscripts across varying genres and have not found a home nor an agent. I thought I’d take a break from the grind and try something new, so I began writing a few poems. When I realized how much I loved it and that there was a noticeable theme tracing girlhood to womanhood, I decided to research opportunities to publish the collection that would honor my voice and the fullness of the collection. I came across Yellow Arrow and was encouraged by the mission and vision of the organization. And I have not been disappointed by the publishing process with them at all . . . working with Yellow Arrow (after being selected) has been one of the most pleasant and supportive experiences I’ve ever had as it related to my writing. They truly do prioritize women’s voices and provide a care-filled approach to walking alongside writers. I am forever grateful for this experience.

We currently have open submissions for chapbooks we would like to publish in 2024. Do you have any advice for the women-identifying authors submitting their chapbooks?

Just be yourself, write your truth, and do it even if it’s scary. I found that vulnerability in my writing was both freeing and debilitating, but it became so beautiful to see the finished product. Trust your instincts. There is a still, small voice inside you that will guide your pen and give you power, if you let it.

Do you have any new projects or current projects you are working on that you would also like to share with Yellow Arrow readers?

I am in the middle of writing a proposal for a book called Love Auntie: Parables and Prayers for Abundant Whole Being. It is a nonfiction book for people of faith who want to explore decolonizing their spirituality and cultivate new disciplines for a faith that shifts and really wants to be more inclusive and open-minded to people. That is my next project, and I am hopeful a publisher will pick it up soon.

You can find more about shantell hinton hill and her work for radical good at shantelhhill.com and can preorder your copy of Black girl magic & other elixirs from Yellow Arrow Publishing. Thank you, shantell and Melissa, for sharing your conversation.

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Kapua Iao 5/23/23 Kapua Iao 5/23/23

Art as Lifeline/Embracing Art: A Conversation with L.M. Cole

By Melissa Nunez, written March 2023

I am as polished as silver,

which is to say, only with great effort.

I am as folded as paper planes,

which is to say, carefully, carelessly creased. – “Which is to say”

Have you ever wondered what people from the Renaissance or Reformation era would look like with pastry for heads? Or decided red-winged butterflies are best suited bursting forth from anatomical hearts? What about creating a cento poem out of lines from a movie like Balto? These are just a few of the innovative works of artist, author, and editor L.M. Cole. Her work covers topics like self-discovery, the nature of relationships, and the defining moments of life. She balances weighty themes with a lighthearted flare in her hybrid works. Cole’s first chapbook SALT MOUTH MOSS QUEEN debuted in September 2022. We were also pleased to publish her work in Yellow Arrow Vignette AWAKEN, a Yellow Arrow online series. L.M. and I were able to connect over Zoom in March for an inspiring video chat where we bonded over a love of nature and the way writing helps us through the chaotic tides life can sling our way.

Who are some women-identified writers who inspire you?

I am really drawn to other nature writers. I didn’t intend to become one, but apparently, I am one. Mary Oliver and Edna St. Vincent Millay really inspire me. I love the work of Lucille Clifton. Ada Limón speaks to me as well. These are some powerful voices that have a lot of important things to tell us.

What would you pinpoint as the moment you knew you were a writer/artist?

I have had a nontraditional tumble into writing. I didn’t consider myself a writer at all until high school when I took a creative writing class. There was a poetry section at the end where we made a chapbook collection of different forms and my teacher wrote on the back page of it, “You should never stop writing.” That really touched me, but I was not in a place when I was younger to believe in myself at all. Like a lot of women, with my upbringing and sense of self, I didn’t have the confidence to really channel that into anything useful. I didn’t pursue writing until around 2021. My whole world exploded personally. My family was very low income and writing was a thing that my husband at the time felt wasn’t going to make money and so wasn’t worth doing. I had gotten older and wanted to get back into writing, but he felt it would not lead anywhere productive. After eight years of that, everything changed. He was out of the picture, and I had to learn to be the best me I could be for myself and my kids. It has been a rocky journey this past year. Learning and relearning how best to handle everything. Poetry during this time really was a lifesaver, a buoy in life’s storm. Poetry and writing kept me from drowning. Somewhere in that last year and a half is when I decided I needed this, writing, creating, for myself. That makes me better in all aspects of my life. I really embraced poetry, exploring it, and developing my craft from there.

I was bottled green and seasick

salted in the waves and you

have pulled me to shore

to say oh lovely thing – “Post-Vitrification”

What drives your visual art?

Visual art is new for me. I feel I have developed a recognizable style over the past year. I was playing with it for a few months before the start of my magazine, Bulb Culture Collective. When my coeditor Jared [Povanda] and I started this project, I decided I wanted to make custom art for promotion on Twitter. I make all those images myself and I feel that has really homed in on what I’m trying to do. For me, the aesthetic is bringing classic Old World into modern thinking. All my images are found from public access books. I don’t take images from things later than 1950. I will spend hours every week going through these sources. I clip whatever speaks to me and go back in later and start putting things together. The aesthetic is full of warm tones: oranges, reds, yellows. I like warm tones and classic 1950 style.

When do you feel a concept necessitates the hybrid form, both visual and textual?

Many times, if I am going to make a hybrid, I have a micro piece, a very short poem, or some page of text that I feel is going to make a good erasure. I think it can be compared to people who title their poems in a way to give you more insight into the text. That is what you are doing for those hybrid pieces. You are pulling images to give more context to the poem and the words, even if it is unexpected. I have some pieces that are from a physical textbook called Meat Through the Microscope. I have a bunch of erasure sourced from there. I found one phrase I really liked but it was very short so I started looking around to see what I could do with it. The phrase itself was something about time immemorial and this universal truth: absence. This made me think of things leaving and fading away. I ended up with images of leaves in the process of dying and drying out. It became a very autumnal poem. Without that, there are a lot of ways to read into it and it could be very heavy. Tying back into nature gives it more of a universal feeling and less of a mourning feeling. You can do that a lot with images when adding to small poems and snippets. You can take it in different directions and experiment. Sometimes it does not turn out how you imagined. I might not like these leaves and will instead find something like an empty doorway. There are a lot of things to explore with that. It opens more avenues for furthering poetry as well. You might start and find an image and in the process of tying it together you might become inspired to expand on it and then it is not a micro anymore. Art and poetry speak very well to each other. I love to experiment with it.

What advice do you have for those interested in creating hybrid works?

There are no hard and fast rules for it. The way it works for me is starting with an image or poem/phrase that I love. I think you need to have clear idea of one or the other before you can get going. I have a lot of drafts and messes in folders that aren’t quite right because I did not have that clear direction and it got all jumbled. What works for me is to have that direction from the start with at least one of the components.

What is it like to work at different magazines? How did you get involved? And how do you balance the work of editor/reader/creator?

I started with reading for Moss Puppy Magazine. That was my first foray into working with magazines. They were looking for readers during their last issue, Blades, and I had already submitted poems that were accepted into the issue. I worried that might be a problem, but it was not at all. It was a very natural transition into the team. They are all so welcoming and kind. The editor is great to work with and they have multiple readers to help balance things out. Life happens sometimes and things do slip through the cracks. I have three kids and five pets, and everyone has appointments and activities and sometimes I can’t get everything done. Everyone being so understanding is the amazing thing in this writing community we have. I think the same would be true of most places. We are all writers with our own lives, and we respect that.

I also read briefly for Tree and Stone which was a cool experience. I was reading fiction, which I don’t have a lot of experience writing. I made it clear that I was interested in the position and came with more of a lyrical poetry slant but would like to learn more. I think that is the key to getting into many of these opportunities. You must be open and willing to learn because things evolve, and you see so many different perspectives and work from so many writers. It is important to stay open to that.

I started Bulb Culture with Jared because we both had work that had lost their publication, were in magazines that had disappeared. What do people do then? What do we do because things like this do happen and keep happening? We saw this need for people losing the publication of their works, now technically previously published but the original magazine is gone so it’s in a weird limbo. We started [it] because we needed a place in the community to send previously published work that is no longer available to an audience, a place where writers know their work is going to have a good home. That is what we’ve been striving to do. At first, we were only taking work from places that had closed, gone dark, or appeared in print only. Recently we opened to any previously published work, regardless, as long as it is over two years old. We’ve had a good response, steady submissions, not huge by any means, but it has been nice. It can be hard with decision-making because Jared and I are both so accommodating of each other and can go back and forth at times, but we are also very encouraging, and we manage to get it all done.

It can be difficult to balance all of that and right now, but I’ve surrounded myself with very understanding people whom I consider my friends as well. Everyone is generous about giving me some slack when I’m scrambling to meet deadlines. We make it work.

I am what I am making myself

green brown gold in the wilderness

salt mouth moss queen

I am forest path

I am refracted shine

I am made

I am in the making. – “I Am”

Let’s talk about your debut chapbook. What inspired the title and order of collection?

Salt Mouth Moss Queen came from a poem in the chapbook that I had written for Messy Misfits Club. It was a way of writing about my transition and growth as a person and also my connection in nature. The poem itself travels along the same lines my life has. I grew up in the Midwest where everything is flat and gray, but I still consider it beautiful. Wheat fields and gravel roads are still very much a part of me. Then it transitions into now. I live in North Carolina, which is a recent change. I haven’t even lived here a year, but things are so different. It felt like a new beginning and a new me and I was learning these new things about myself.

“Salt mouth” is an idea that resonates and comes back and echoes in a few poems I’ve written. I have always been very drawn to the ocean, but I never lived close enough to it to see it. I had never visited the ocean until after my move last year. On my first visit, after climbing over the sand dunes, the first time I saw the water, heard it, and smelled it, I just started crying. My partner and kids were asking me if I was OK. I was like, “It’s everything.” It was such a transformational thing for me. I was always drawn to it even though I had never seen it and to have that affirming experience with it was huge.

“Moss queen” just encapsulates my desire to lay out in the grass all day, that connection to the earth. It came from trying to describe myself as a person in poem form and give people a glimpse into my identity. The pieces in this collection follow a trajectory of my move and the ups and downs of my life over the last year or two. There is loss and pain and a rediscovering of love and hope. It shows that even through all that very human experience the link with nature is still there. I wanted that connection very prominent throughout.

I love the way you laid out the significance of salt and the ocean. Can you expand a little on the meaning of moss for you?

I think moss for me is a symbol of resilience because it is always there. I was recently out at Sundress Farm for my residency, and everything is gray out there. It is still cold in Knoxville, but there is just moss everywhere. It is vibrant, green, constant. I feel like the last year I’ve really had to embrace resilience where I can find it, so I think moss really became a symbol for me for persisting.

Nature imagery in general is rich in your work. Why does it speak to you?

The reason nature always crops up in my poetry is because I am disabled. I suffer with chronic pain and mental illness so a lot of times nature, experiencing it, writing about it, works as kind of a grounding exercise for me to get out of my own pain. I can think about cardinals instead of how much my back hurts right now. It is very much distracting and also healing to interact with nature and converse so deeply with it.

I’ve been letting things slip

from behind my teeth, through

my clenched jaw, like ants

through crack in the concrete

trying to get to the flower bed

I’m holding onto for dear life. – “Ants in the Begonias”

In a piece like “Ants in the Begonias,” the metaphor is everything. How do you go about finding the metaphor? Is it something that just happens to do have to work at it at times?

Usually if there is going to be a strong metaphor in a poem that is the thing that comes to me first before I even start writing. I will think, “oh, that one is good,” and I’ll write around it. This poem holds a lot of my experience with healing and going to therapy after everything went down in my personal life in 2021. It has that connection with nature for grounding. I think you can see that here very prominently. This connection with nature is really the driving force of the healing and is intertwined with the emotion. It just happened, which is not always the case, but when I have a good metaphor, I start there.

How much of yourself do you think you can encapsulate in any one poem or collection?

That’s a good question. I think that there are a lot of parts of me that haven’t made it into poetry yet. I don’t know if it is because I am afraid of being that vulnerable or I feel it is not going to be relatable to anybody. I think that poetry is a very unique vehicle for putting yourself onto the page. There are so many ways that you can capture yourself through a thought, a word, an image, a memory. Looking at “Ants in the Begonias” again, it only happened because the house I grew up in when I was little had a stone deck and two begonias on each side of the stairs. I always thought they were so pretty but there were ants everywhere. That is why that became such a central image for that poem. There are so many ways you can put yourself into a poem that I feel are unique. I know you can do it with CNF and memoir, but poetry lets you kind of wink and nod at the part of yourself you are putting out there. There is always that mystery of the identity of the speaker. Is it the poet or just a persona? Are you the I? You can be a little more vulnerable. In September, I was flying back to North Dakota to see my dad for his birthday, and I was sitting next to someone on the plane who asked me what I do. We had some sort of sixth-degree connection to someone in my hometown, and then you have to make idle chitchat in this tiny tin can in the sky. She asked me what I do, and I told her I am a poet. She said, “That is so cool.” And my response was, “You just have to be really willing to embarrass yourself in public.” Which made her kind of back track on that. To put your writing out there is a very vulnerable act. People are so nuanced and complex it is hard to fit everything of yourself in one poem unless you are writing an epic. However, if you are in a certain headspace, you can definitely put 100% of that self in that moment into that piece. It is a matter of unlocking that space and staying open to the resulting vulnerability.

What is the best writing advice you can share with our readers?

Don’t be so demanding of yourself. For many women-identified creatives, we really want to be amazing at something or not do it at all. If it is not perfect, if it is not living up to a perceived standard that we have, we can get disheartened and be afraid to put ourselves out there. But we just have to. Writing and art are so important, and everyone has a different perspective. Don’t be so hard on yourself! Make your art and put it out there. You put yourself in it, your love in it, and it is going to resonate with somebody. I don’t think I will ever be poet laureate or anything, but I put my little poems out there. If three people read them, then I am good! Somebody read it. That’s great. Just don’t have such rigid expectations for yourself. I fall into that same trap of thinking I need to be X amount successful or else, but it is not true. Embrace the art for art’s sake.

What makes writing worth it? For L.M. Cole it is knowing she is being true to herself, her best self, and following the inner call to create. Connecting with people through art, however big or small the amount, is powerful. You can follow L.M. Cole as she continues her writing journey by connect with her on Twitter @_scoops_ or her website at poetlmcole.com. You can purchase a copy of her chapbook SALT MOUTH MOSS QUEEN on Amazon.

Melissa Nunez is a Latin@ writer and homeschooling mother of three from the Rio Grande Valley. Her essays have appeared in magazines like Hypertext and Scrawl Place. She has work forthcoming in Musing Publications, The Hooghly Review, and others. She writes an anime column for The Daily Drunk, interviews for Yellow Arrow Publishing, and is a staff writer for Alebrijes Review. You can follow her on Twitter @MelissaKNunez.

*****

Kapua Iao 3/21/23 Kapua Iao 3/21/23

All My Languages: A Conversation with Elizabeth M. Castillo

By Melissa Nunez, written January 2023

In all my languages I have found there is no word for you. Although most vowels are the
same, no matter where they sit on your tongue, and life goes on, I’ve noticed, and tries to
drag one along with it. But my bags are not packed. – “New start”

Elizabeth M. Castillo is a British-Mauritian poet who writes in a variety of different languages under a variety of pen names. Her work has been featured in publications and anthologies across the globe such as FERAL: A Journal of Poetry and Art and Poetry Wales. In her writing Elizabeth explores the different countries and cultures she grew up with, as well as themes of race and ethnicity, motherhood, womanhood, language, love, and loss. She self-published her bilingual, debut collection Cajoncito: Poems on Love, Loss, y Otras Locuras in 2021. And we are excited that Elizabeth had poetry accepted to Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 1, KINDLING, coming out in May! Thank you for thinking of us in February when journal submissions were open.

Elizabeth engages the writing community with a confidence and open-minded grace that is admirable, and she energetically supports and promotes other indie authors. I was delighted we were able to coordinate a video conference despite a 12-hour time difference while she was spending some time in Mauritius. We had a conversation about the versatility and power of poetry, the lure of languages, and even connected over the homeschooling experience.

When did you first fall in love with poetry?

When I was a child, I loved Edward Lear. My parents would buy Victorian (and Edwardian) poetry, limericks, and silliness—I can still recite many of them now. That is where my love for the musicality and playfulness of words comes from. When I am writing poetry, I find that the syncopated rhythm from those early (think Rudyard Kipling) poems sometimes comes back to me. I also feel that I discovered poetry a second time, for myself, when I was a teenager. I was quite a depressed teenager even though I didn’t realize it at the time, we didn’t have that kind of vocabulary back then. I would write all my heartbreak and misunderstandings into poetry and that is when poetry became therapeutic for me. Now, as an adult, it is a mix of both. I can play with poetry, or it can be a help to me. I think poetry should be whatever you need it to be as a writer and as a reader.

Who are your favorite women writers?

Warsan Shire is the kind of poet I would love to emulate. Ada Limón is absolutely fantastic as well. There are several other inspiring poets I have discovered through social media, like Nikki Dudley, Melissa Hernandez, and Mary Ford Neal. I actually have a fangirl story here: I boosted Mary’s first book so much, out of pure love for it, that she acknowledged me in her second book!

As for nonfiction, Ariel Saramandi is an excellent Mauritian essayist. My relationship with Mauritius is a complicated one because I had a difficult time living here, but it is the biggest part of my heritage. I also grew up all over the place so there is that diasporic feeling of belonging/unbelonging present. Reading Saramandi’s work has given me an extra push into exploring that side of my reality and discovering more of what it means to be Mauritian, from the southern hemisphere, a woman of color, a writer of color, a linguistic minority, and all these things. Her writing is so impactful. You read her essays and you need to pause after each section and breathe before coming back to it.

How can I show them

what it is to talk;

how to cut the thoughts down to

word-shapes,

and coax the heart, and tongue, into

speaking?

Conditionals, perhaps?

The language of what could never be,

or what might have been. – “Paris, mi-octobre”

Writing on identity and heritage, especially in relation to the diaspora, is becoming more prevalent. I have been exploring my own connection to heritage, history, and language (trying to develop my Spanish and dig even deeper by researching Nahuatl) fueled by that feeling of unbelonging that you mention. Why do you think these stories are so resonant?

I follow some people on social media that post about Indigenous languages like Nahuatl and discuss the origins of words and what has been misused or appropriated. I feel like these resources are so important because otherwise we are shooting in the dark and there is this massive gap in identities. I am not someone who feels we need to just erase all of the literary canon so far and everything, but there is such space and such a rich diversity of stories that I believe people want to read. We are tired of reading the same perspective in poetry, at least in my case. I’ve picked up some of the acclaimed poets, especially North American poets, and there are one or two that I’m like, “Yeah, this is a banger.” But then there’s another poem about sitting in the woods looking at birds, and another on the same, and then at the country house looking at birds. First of all, who lives that life? Second, that is not what I want to read. It is not what makes me excited and inspires me to read and write. It is not what makes me feel seen and heard, what gives words to my experience. I believe a lot of that representation is found in these cultures and in these emerging voices like the ones platformed by publications like Yellow Arrow [Publishing]. So, it is exciting to see, whether it is an educational YouTube account, or a writer, or an essayist, these voices getting the attention not just that they deserve but that the world needs. It is what readers need.

Although I am not fully fluent in many languages, I am drawn to the musicality of different accents and sounds in different tongues. Do you ever switch languages in your poems after they’ve been drafted for the sound?

When I have worked in a language, when I work in Portuguese, or Spanish, or French, or Kreol, it is because the poem has come to me in that language. I don’t touch that because in some cases it’s not my first language or the language I am most comfortable working in. If they appear to me like that then I am not going to scare them away. I have, however, switched some poems into English. I have been working on a chapbook on motherhood and daughterhood (experiencing motherhood with mental illness, parentified children, and all that kind of thing) and I felt like I needed to focus more on French, but for some reason my muse isn’t a fan of La Francophonie. I would put things in French, and it would just feel so unnatural. Even though they were beautiful, they were just not working and so I would have to put them back into English.

Ya no soy aquella florecita- / I’m no longer that tiny little flower

En muchedumbre me converti, / I’ve become an entire horde,

En selva entera, ¡ten cuidado! / a whole jungle, but watch your step! – “Aquella florecita”

Do you have any favorite words that you often use, or have felt drawn to including in a piece?

I’ve spent some time in Chile (in fact my Spanish is Chilean more than anything else) and I love the sound of words in Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche which are the indigenous tribes of mostly the south of Chile. Pichintún, which means “a little bit,” is in one of my poems. I say “pichintún of miel on my lengua,” which is a little bit of honey on my tongue. I love the word muchedumbre. I just think that it sounds like what it is. Even cajoncito is a word that I absolutely adore, the way it just rolls off the tongue and the way it just almost looks like what it is. Or maybe I’m just being a bit of a linguist about it. . . .

In a language workshop you led (through Crow Collective) you talked about writers being able to respectfully incorporate languages in their writing even if they are not native or fluent speakers. What advice do you have for those learning new languages and navigating the full context of usage without that experience?

There is such a fear nowadays of getting things wrong, of being seen as culturally appropriating or disrespecting something. It is a good consciousness to have but it mustn’t become a fear because then we don’t do anything. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging a mistake and apologizing for missing the mark on the meaning or context of a word. We are all learning and without this mindset we are promoting the opposite of diversity. We would all just be gatekeeping experiences until everybody is fluent or everybody has lived every experience and that is not possible. On the contrary, language and culture are fluid. They mix and they change as they encounter one another and that is the beauty of it. Just look at English and how it has evolved because so many people are speaking it all over the world. If you approach a new language with that humility and awareness, that it is something separate from you or related to you in whatever limited context, then I think that you can’t go too far wrong. There must be a respect, an admiration, and an understanding for it. The attitude should not be one of taking things and using them for personal gain, especially if you are operating from a place of privilege yourself, but rather handling them with respect and honor. That is what makes the difference. It might seem like a vague answer but that is my approach. The ability to acknowledge mistakes and say, “Hey, I messed this one up,” or “I didn’t understand it,” is underrated and gets you very far in life.

Do you have any tips for learning new languages or favorite resources to share?

Move to the country that speaks it and don’t speak your own language to anyone. Put yourself in the middle of the village . . . but no, that’s not always possible. As a language teacher I would say you find the medium that you enjoy. If you are very musical, plunge yourself into music and look up music interviews in the language. That is how I came to Spanish. I used to listen to Gloria Estefan and Shakira and look up the lyrics. I would use my knowledge of French to understand what I could and then translate the rest. That was literally my first start with Spanish when I was a teenager. If you are literary, look up short stories. Find something that you love and enter the language from there. Then, you will keep loving it when it gets tricky. Some languages, for example if you are a native Arabic speaker and you are coming to a Latin-based language, might require a couple of language classes (whether it is through an app or one-on-one) so you can get your head around the different language system. But many of us, I think, have some knowledge of most of the languages we want to speak and coming into it from a point of pleasure, of interest, of engagement will get you very far.

Come, fresh tears spilled into the clean laundry, come,

those few, thrilling seconds I hold myself underwater in the bath.

Come, sweet, bewitching intensity, step this way,

total disregard for consequence. – “Gathering my children to me”

Do you have a favorite poem that you have written or one you find the most fun to read?

I do. Well, favorite is difficult. It depends on the time of day really. I love the final poem in Cajoncito, “I thought of you today.” That poem just fell out of me. There is such catharsis in it and there was such catharsis from writing it. It is a happy-place poem. When I read it, I am very relaxed. I love “Gathering my children to me,” which actually doesn’t get much rep, like no one has ever said they love it. That is a personal favorite because I thought it was very clever when the idea came to me. It is very fun to perform because it is basically me telling all my faults to get in line because they have made a mess of where we are, and we have to leave. A poem that was written as a joke that everyone seems to adore and so I’ve come to love as well is the opening poem, “Can I send you my poems?” It was meant to be an absolute tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating piece because I am so dramatic and feel all-the-things-all-the-time. It was meant to be that, and then I read it to my husband. He was like, “That’s excellent.” He is not in any way literary so for him to enjoy it was something. And when I shared it with other people, they also said it was good. There are a handful of shorter poems as well that are very personal and very precious to me, but I never read them. They still carry a bit of a sting, so I actually avoid them, but they mean a lot to me.

What advice would you give to those writing through grief/loss?

Keep writing. Until the pen and your heart are empty, just keep doing it. Let it all out. If you are in any way task-minded or outcome-minded, try your hardest to put that aside and just write. Don’t edit, don’t think of where it is going or what you can make of it. This can be hard because we don’t have that much time in the day and we want to be productive, to earn something, to publish something. But just keep writing and don’t think. Write and write and write and write. At some points it might feel like a hose that has a hole in it. You know there is water there and it is building up, but it is just coming out in drops. Or if there’s some big tangle, a good way of untangling it is just to shift your perspective. In a lot of my poetry, in many of my pieces from my new chapbooks I am working on, I have shifted the perspective and the speaker. I have written as myself outside of myself where I put my story from someone else or I have made my narrator male instead of female. I have also shifted the time frame and rather than after the loss I’ve written from before the loss. So, if ever it feels like a tangle, shift where you are standing and see if that helps. Sometimes that little shift suddenly brings the whole thing out. It is amazingly cathartic to the point where, for me, if you can read the poem, a personal poem that is a piece of your heart, and you feel nothing except enjoyment of your work, then you’ve got it. You’ve done it. You have achieved the goal. It is very satisfying to see something written literally laced in tears that is now just a great piece of writing.

I am running out of languages to grieve in. – “Saudades”

As a fellow homeschooling mom, I was excited to see that mentioned in your author bio. How do you feel homeschooling has affected your writing perspective or voice?

It affects my writing—full stop—because who has the time? A lot of homeschool moms tend to get the reputation of wanting everyone else to jump on the wagon with them, but I’m like, “No. Please don’t. You will fall off and hurt yourself. I’m barely hanging on to the wheel!” The choice to homeschool is a very personal one that every family must decide for themselves. If you do not have 1000% conviction to do it, do not do it. Writing and poetry take a lot from me. It is not just five or ten minutes; it takes time to sit down and work. One of my convictions in this life choice is that everything that comes outside of it is always something extra. Time spent on one thing is automatically time taken from something else. My only sort of barometer was that if my writing was in any way affecting my children, if they felt they were being deprived of me, then I would have to rethink what I was doing. At no point has that been the case. On the contrary, my daughters have blossomed seeing me write. They love to come and sit next to me when I’m writing with a pen and paper and write their own stories. Other times they will say, “Oh, mummy, can we write this as a poem? I want to write a poem about my little sister because I love her so much.” If anything, it is somehow joined into the homeschooling life of being creative and taking time to contemplate things. My creative time benefits them and I’m a better mother for it because it keeps me sane. I think homeschooling obviously adds to your workload as a mother. As a mother who suffers from anxiety and depression, I have times when I struggle with my mental health. I’m also fairly convinced that I have ADHD along with being severely dyslexic. It is already a lot to deal with, and I talk about it a lot in all those poems that come out as “What am I doing? Why did anyone trust me with kids?” If I had all my ducks in a row, then maybe I wouldn’t be able to write or feel the need to write about motherhood and daughterhood.

Writing also gives me such an intimate relationship with my children. It is incredibly inspiring to see the world from their perspective. I have a poem that is going into my new chapbook called “What My Four-Year-Old Tantrumed.” It is literally what my four-year-old shouted when she was having a tantrum and brushing her teeth. It was so poetic. It started with, “I just want to be in the dark and brush my teeth.” And I thought, “Yes, don’t we all.” It just went on and it sounded like a poem, and I mean terrible mother of the year award, but I was outside the door furiously typing what she was saying while she was having a tantrum. It made a great poem! I think these experiences definitely influence voice because you write about real things, which cycles back to what I said about wanting to read about reality. I know that is what I want as a reader. If I’m not going to read about reality, I want to read fantasy or science fiction. When I read poetry, I want to read something I can relate to, something that feels like “Yeah. Totally. That chick gets it.” All off these things can only happen when they are informed by reality, which is kids who are stroppy and tired and pushing your boundaries and have far more energy than should be legal. That definitely influences my poetry.

And finally, to bring this wonderful conversation to a close, what would you pick as your personal mascot?

I think I would probably be some kind of frog or other creature that stays very still and then moves around a lot and then stays very still again. That is literally me. I’d love to say something graceful and wondrous like a dolphin but that doesn’t fit. You know what? It would probably be an Octopus. It comes out, turns all these brilliant colors, and is odd and amazing but probably prefers to be in a hole somewhere pretending to be a piece of coral. An octopus, definitely.

Elizabeth M. Castillo’s bilingual, debut collection Cajoncito: Poems on Love, Loss, y Otras Locuras is for sale on Amazon, and her debut chapbook Not Quite an Ocean will be published by Nine Pens Press in 2023. You can connect with her on Twitter and Instagram as @EMCWritesPoetry or on her website elizabethmcastillo.net.

Melissa Nunez is a Latin@ writer and homeschooling mother of three from the Rio Grande Valley. Her essays have appeared in magazines like HerStory and Honey Literary. She has work forthcoming in Hypertext, Scrawl Place, and others. She is a columnist at The Daily Drunk and a staff writer for Alebrijes Review. You can follow her on Twitter @MelissaKNunez.

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Kapua Iao 3/14/23 Kapua Iao 3/14/23

Finding Grace and Humor in Womanhood: A Conversation with Ann Weil about Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman

Ann Weil glances out the window of her Key West home. “There’s a person who wears a full-on Spiderman outfit and rides a skateboard on their way to and from wherever Spider-people go, and then the next minute, there will be chickens in my yard and the love is in the air—it’s just a crazy place,” she says. Ann is explaining the reasons why she and her husband decided to spend their winters in Key West and “having a poem walk by [her] window every day” is at the top of her list: “I saw a guy yesterday in a full-on pirate outfit walking down the street probably going to work and that is the norm and that’s where I fit in.” Ann adds that as a poet, Key West is an ideal place to draw inspiration because of its strong literary history. Elizabeth Bishop, Ernest Hemingway, and Shel Silverstein all lived and wrote there, and currently, “Judy Blume owns the bookstore, and I get to see her when I shop there.”

Ann was fueled by the Key West literary community of past and present while working on Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman, the newest Yellow Arrow Publishing chapbook, set to release next month. In her upcoming collection, Ann explores the oscillation of emotions that accompany aging as a woman in our society. “I think all women have a part of their lives where they feel at their most beautiful . . . and a sense of power that comes along with . . . that external beauty. Then, you get older, and it fades and . . . its deflating.” She continues, “Sometimes, I look in a mirror and I don’t recognize the person. And the thing is, I don’t feel as old as I look, I still feel like I’m 27, but I’m almost 62 so it’s a really interesting journey.” This balance between coming to terms with internal and external perceptions of oneself is at the heart of Ann’s chapbook. In each of Ann’s poems, she boldly embraces the messiness and heaviness that life brings while also weaving in humor. The vulnerability that she brings to her writing as she explores relationships with lovers, friends, and her body allows us all to remember that to be human is to make mistakes, learn from them, and still move forward with our heads held high.

Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman is now available for PRESALE (click here for wholesale prices) and will be released April 2023. Follow Yellow Arrow @yellowarrowpublishing on Facebook and Instagram for more information. Recently, Yellow Arrow Vignette Manager, Siobhan McKenna took some time to speak with Ann about her inspiration behind Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman. Ann was published in Yellow Arrow Vignette AWAKEN in 2022, so it seemed like a great opportunity for Siobhan to reconnect.

Understanding that

this body will carry me to the next, each radiant rendition

fading, falling away until the only beauty left is bone.

“Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman”

What does your writing process look like?

In terms of the actual writing process, I try to raise my awareness of everything. My environmental surroundings, the people. I keep notes on my phone, notes in a journal of things that strike me as interesting images or characters or lines. I eavesdrop in the drugstore. I just am constantly trying to be a pack rat. Then, [the words] sit and percolate in my mind and then something speaks to me.

I’ve also always felt like I am what you call “a one-night-stand poet.” When I’m in the moment, whether I’m writing about yesterday or 10 years ago, I write, and I’m in that zone. I have the flow thing going on and I am so in love with what I’m writing. And I think—this is it. This is the poem that is going to be great. And I love it, love it, love it. And then usually the next day—I’ll look at that poem and I hate it. OMG. I can’t believe it. I say, “This is terrible, and it makes no sense, and I don’t have time for it anymore.” But then, as part of the revision process (if I let it sit long enough), I can go back to those poems and say to myself, “this is pretty good actually.” I don’t know what that is—that one-night-stand thing—that search for something perfect. But then, if you just let it all settle . . . either I can recognize it is a good poem or there are elements of the poem that are good, and I’ll pluck those out and put them in [a poem] going forward.

Where do you find your inspiration for your work?

I read a ton of poetry. I just wrote a poem, and I pulled the epigraph from one of Mary Oliver’s. . . . The line was: “how the little stones even if you can’t hear them are singing.” Then I went from [that quote] and did a persona poem as the stone. So that was my inspiration. I do a lot of “after” poems. Sayeed Jones has this amazing poem called “The Blue Dress,” and it’s a marvelous play in metaphor—rolling metaphors just one after the other to explore the dress. And it made me think, “I gotta write a dress poem,” because for years I had a size eight rainbow-colored dress in my closet . . . so I wrote a poem called “Sequin Dress Size Eight Never Worn.” I also get a lot of inspiration from fellow poets, and I take a lot of classes. I’ve done all of Ellen Bass’s craft talk series, and I’ve taken a class with Kim Addonizio and Rick Barot I’m a serious lifelong learner—that’s how I feel most alive.

You mentioned Mary Oliver, what other poets or writers have inspired you?

So many! Mary Oliver totally saved my life at different times with lines from her poetry. Also: Ellen Bass, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ruth Stone, Ada Limon, Ocean Vuong. It’s amazing that someone’s words can have such a profound effect on another human being that they don’t know.

To open your chapbook you use the poem, “What were you thinking, Pandora?” about how you have opened doors in your life without thinking about all the consequences that could follow. I’m wondering if you think most humans are intrinsically like Pandora and yourself. Are we all inclined “to peek” with a “boxcutter in hand”?

Oh yeah—I worry about people who aren’t. I know that there are more people who are more self-controlled than I am and get into fewer messes in life—and more power to them. But I’m just open. I want to be out there and experience everything I can in the short time that I have on this planet. So, you gotta open the boxes. Sometimes, it’s a mistake to open the boxes, but it definitely leads to living a fuller life—I’ll tell you that.

Clearly a lesson here, but . . .
temptation rings the doorbell
and there I am, boxcutter in hand.
Yes, I peek. Often.

“What Were You Thinking, Pandora?”

In “She Takes a Second Mistress,” you choose the word “mistress” to talk about your love of painting. When I think of the word, I conjure the words “immoral” or “forbidden.” Why did use the word mistress when it comes to your writing and painting?

Obsession. Obsession. Theoretically, when you have a mistress or lover, initially you’re obsessed. For a while, I dabbled in painting, so it was a second mistress, but my first mistress is writing. I’m obsessed with writing. It’s my favorite thing to do and I’m thinking about it all the time. It was easy to write about [painting] when you think about all the rich language painting evokes. It was an obsession and also wanting to be good at something—a new relationship, in this case, painting.

Wow. I love that. I thought you were going to go a different route with your answer because when I read the poem, I thought about the devaluing of art in our society, and seeing painting as a “mistress” would imply it’s an illegitimate hobby or career in some way.

Yeah, that’s interesting. That never entered my mind. If you just look at [an affair] from the view of the lover, it’s a really good and exciting and wonderful thing because somehow you have a hole in you that needs to be filled . . . [and] there’s a euphoria of being loved and wanted and desired. And I had that for a little while with painting—not that it loved me, but I loved it so much. And I am still head over heels with writing and I can’t see that will ever stop. So, I guess I never want to be married to my writing—I just want to have an affair with it *laughs*—this interview is going off the rails!

she thinks about the places that hurt, and knows

the truth—if you leave first you can’t be left.

“In the Pastel Hour”

Many of your poems reflect on difficult relationships: lovers, fathers, the one with yourself. Do you find writing as a way to process these experiences in the moment or is it only after you’ve processed, and time has passed, that you can write about them?

I’m totally doing both. I’m processing everything in my life right now. Whether it happened five minutes ago or 40 years ago. As a teacher, one of the most valuable lessons I learned in college [when I was] preparing to teach was [how to be] a reflective teacher. As a teacher, after every lesson, I was taught that you should think about: what do you need to change, keep, toss? [I’ve carried this practice] with me through my whole life. I am still trying to put tools in my toolbox to grow my skillset [in order] to handle whatever life throws at me. You can’t do that without reflection. So, yes, [I continue to reflect] whether it’s an interaction I had five minutes ago with somebody or a long, long time ago. And sometimes you have to leave things in the past in order to deal with them at a later date and there can still be value [on reflecting] at a later point.

Why do you feel it’s important to release these poems into the world—with whom would you like them to resonate?

First and foremost: other women. . . . Other women have become so important to me as I’ve evolved. Their friendship, their openness and willingness to exchange and explore things that are really hard. Falling apart bodies, falling apart relationships. I’m getting to that stage in life when bad shit is happening. I’ve always loved men—obviously. But other women are just the heart and soul of everything. And the women in my mainstay writer’s group are so interesting, we got together at the beginning of the pandemic and they’re now my closest friends. My closest friends are in a box in a computer screen!

[My] poetry is all about my feelings and connecting with other people’s feelings and trying to [write] something that is true to myself and universal. And even if you’re a truck driver from New Jersey you might be able to read my poem and feel something. I really try to be accessible in my writing and that is one of my struggles: I’m probably too accessible for today’s modern poetry world. But it’s important to me . . . to connect with the wider community.

What do you think that others can take away from your writing?

Life is amazing and wonderful, but life is really, really hard. Both sides of that coin deserve attention and reflection when you get toward the end (although . . . there’s this lady who just died at 120 . . . maybe I’m only halfway through, but I really don’t want to live that long). . . . I’ve had a lot of tragedy and hard times in my life. I’ve had three marriages—third time lucky. I’ve had death—my children’s father died in a car crash. So, there’s a lot of tough stuff that’s all there.

And one of my all-time favorite words is grace. [I hope others read my chapbook and take away] grace—to give yourself grace and others grace. And to not hold onto failures and grudges and the bad stuff. But not being afraid either to take it out and explore it when you need to. And to keep looking forward: with three husbands—don’t write marriage off your list because I feel so lucky that I kept trying to find my partner and it’s not that I didn’t love the other two men that I was married to. I loved them deeply, but they weren’t the right person for me for the long haul. And humor. When in doubt, throw some humor in.

How long must I wait for this difficult truth

To roost in my addled birdbrain?

That it’s not my job to paint the sky

a painless shade of blue

“At the Al-Anon Tables I Learn to Shut My Beak”

I love that for Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman’s cover art, your daughter, a photographer, visited you in Key West and photographed you in a pool. What was your inspiration behind the cover art?

I wanted it to reflect the content of the book, which is definitely about womanhood, about beauty, about life, loss, love. But I also [wanted the cover to] be very indicative of the style of poetry that I tend to gravitate towards which is quirky. I like to have fun—I don’t like to take life too seriously.

[For the front cover], I got in my mother’s pool wearing pink high heels and the shot is of just my legs floating in the beautiful blue waters and then, on the back cover we have this shot where I’m trying to do a handstand in the water so my legs with the pink, high-heeled shoes are just splayed all over the place.

With the covers, I’m trying to [convey] to people that yes, this is about womanhood and beauty, but it’s also fun which sums up who I strive to be. [I’m] someone who can look at the serious parts of life and lives the serious parts of life, but damn, if I’m not gonna have some fun along the way.

Final question, how did you learn about Yellow Arrow and why did you decide to publish with us?

I learned about [Yellow Arrow] through Duotrope. . . . I pay attention to their weekly calls for submission and heard about [Yellow Arrow] there. I always go to the publisher’s site to see if my work might be a good fit. [After I went to Yellow Arrow’s site], I thought these folks are doing what I’m doing: writing about womanhood, exploring it, and celebrating it. I felt a strong affinity with your website and reading the work of other women. After that, deciding to publish was easy.

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Thank you, Ann and Siobhan, for sharing your conversation. Preorder your copy of Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman today. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we SPARK and sparkle this year: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe 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 9/13/22 Kapua Iao 9/13/22

Let Intimacy Bloom: A Conversation with Amanda Baker

I want transformation,

But not transformed.

Blooming

But not bloomed.

[ . . . ]

Because done is an ending

And I’m never finished.

“Let Me Bloom”

Imagine a young girl about seven years of age, locks hanging loose over her keyboard, as she creates lyrics for the electronic beats pulsing from her palms to her pen to the page. This is the start, the heart, of Yellow Arrow Publishing’s final chapbook author, Amanda Baker’s, poetry. This proclivity towards melodic expression gave breath to her writing from an early age and ultimately resulted in the formation of her forthcoming chapbook What is Another Word for Intimacy?

Amanda is a mental health therapist, 200-hour yoga instructor, and poet from Baltimore, Maryland. She attended the University of Maryland School of Social Work and James Madison University. She is a mother of her four-year-old son, Dylan, and enjoys time in nature. Amanda has self-published a poetry collection that includes written work from her early teens into her 30s. You may find her book ASK: A Collection of Poetry, Lyrics, and Words on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

What is Another Word for Intimacy? is now available for PRERELEASE (click here for wholesale prices) and will be released October 11, 2022. Follow Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram for Friday sneak peeks into What is Another Word for Intimacy? The incredible cover was created in-house by Creative Director Alexa Laharty after a few conversations with Amanda. “Intimacy does not need to be defined in words,” Amanda conveyed in a recent chat, “though it is helpful. Connection does not need to be explained in metaphors, though it is helpful. An emotion does not need to be seen or read on a page, though it is helpful. This cover represents all that we are not able to fully say, understand, or see. It still creates a shared authentic experience. It creates a resonance, a vitality, a life force. Touching palm lines, interlaced fingers, a hug of hands is my favorite! The way energy can be felt from miles and miles away and in a touch, in hand holding.”

After a day of work as a mental health therapist and time spent with her son before his bedtime, Amanda met with Melissa Nunez, Yellow Arrow author and interviewer extraordinaire, over Zoom to discuss the evolution of her poetic voice and the intimacy of writing and personal connection that ties her newest collection together.

A question that is commonly asked of writers is when they started writing. I find it very compelling that you were very open to and about your poetry from a young age (Amanda’s first collection ASK: A Collection of Poetry, Lyrics, and Words spans more than a decade of writing beginning from age 14). What did you gain from the experience of publishing work from when you were young?

It was so fascinating to go back and read through my old journals. I have always recalled that kind of writing coming naturally to me. I never learned to play the piano or read music as a child, but I would pretend with the programmed beats on my keyboard, and words started to come naturally with the melody. I used to say I write lyrics, not necessarily poetry, because there tends to be that cadence or melody in my head accompanying the words. I don’t always do that now as it has kind of transformed into other ways of writing my poetry. Going back through my journals as an adult and reading what I had written and saved (mostly from ages 13 and on) allowed me to see that core self that never really changed and still exists within me. It also revealed ways that I had changed and maybe had gotten a little disconnected from myself. It is so valuable to go back and see things that are still so true to me—values I’m so passionate about, that vision and creativity still flowing. It inspired and motivated me to get back into writing more regularly.

What would you say is the biggest difference between the creation of your two collections, ASK and Intimacy?

Maturity and growth. I have come into my own regarding relationships, whether that is partnership, a marriage, or friendship, and navigating things that block that desired level of intimacy. From a young age I thought intimacy was or meant only one thing, and this new collection is about finding the truth of intimacy. These poems, for me, are that desire to understand it, know it, feel it, and be in it, and have others really be open to that same curiosity. My first collection was more about seeing changes over time, not necessarily with a specific theme, but what I think links them together is asking questions. The deeper we go, the more that we ask, the more we can expand our minds and hold other perspectives.

What is your personal definition of intimacy?

The vulnerability that comes with being open and honest within a connection with someone. I teach yoga, and within yoga comes union of the mind, the body, and the spirit. I feel like taking that union and alignment and having that with another person is the goal of intimacy. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are an exact match within those three elements within each other, but there needs to be that same openness and acceptance. When you really get to know someone on a close level and let go of the defenses that can come out naturally in a relationship, an openness and consciousness can be built between two people when you truly see each other for who you are.

Why do you think intimacy is so important in writing?

Writing can essentially be the vessel for intimacy. I recently watched a TED Talk by Ethan Hawke called Give Yourself Permission to be Creative and he shared something that really resonated with me. He said that in order to express yourself you need to know yourself, and in order to know yourself you need to know what you love. Love and intimacy are interconnected in so many ways. If we really want to express our truth through writing, then we need to be curious and go inwards to know ourselves and to love ourselves as well. Intimacy exists in writing and reading someone’s work. You develop a relationship through the words that are shared, through that connection.

I would love you in all ways / in all languages / in glances

[ . . . ]

L O V E in a shared space / does not need language at all.

“My Love Language Must Be.”

There are many creative expressions and descriptions of love in your work. What would you want your audience to learn about love?

Two things come to mind. The first is that love is universal. I love that about love. Wherever you are, whatever country you come from, at our core—we all want love. We want to feel love and to be loved. It doesn’t need a language because it exists in all languages, it is shared everywhere if you are willing to be open to it and feel it. The second is that love exists inside you. In order to be intimate with someone else, you have to first be intimate with yourself. That opens up that level of intimacy or the multiple forms of love that can manifest in different ways with different people.

There is a strong message of healing in your poetry. How is writing healing for you?

It is so healing. I write almost every day now and it is energizing. When I’m writing, I am learning something about myself. Sometimes I start writing and don’t even know where it is going to end up. I’ll have an idea and it flows into something different, something unexpected. I think that can be a signal of healing and growth. Self-expression also helps us release things that can be debilitating or defeating, feelings that when held inside create more stress and tension. Those doubts or insecurities that naturally exist in all of us. I hope that people can see that healing over time through my writing. In my first collection, and even these poems that might not be chronologically ordered, you can see how my beliefs about things have changed, how I am now more flexible (as opposed to rigid), more open to other opinions (as opposed to being opinionated). Writing is such a big part of my coming to that place.

I love the message that writing can be healing for anyone at any age or stage. What advice would you have for those who have never tried or have felt intimidated by writing?

I think the biggest takeaway is to not stop even when there is perceived criticism. There may be those who think their way is the only way, others who categorize good writers and better writers, but it is important to realize that if you choose to share your writing it will find the people it resonates with. Your voice matters and taking the time to experiment with how you want your voice to come out is vital. Someone may start writing and find that it is not for them, and then they may start singing. [That’s] beautiful. [I encourage anyone to] continue to pursue some level of expression that aligns with you. If you find that it is writing, keep writing. One word can be a poem. Who is to say that it’s not? That’s the magic and the beauty of it. There is no right or wrong way.

How did you connect with Yellow Arrow Publishing?

I have felt a divine timing in my writing journey with so many things lining up in just the right way to get me where I am. In opening my old journals and feeling that inspired impulse to share them. Connecting with Yellow Arrow was another one. I am a therapist full time, and a colleague of mind has a friend who led me to Yellow Arrow. She mentioned I should chat with them as an opportunity to find new information for my writing. I met up with her friend and she directed me to [Yellow Arrow’s] Instagram. Literally two days later they posted their open call for submissions. It felt like a sign that I had to do this. Baltimore is my home city and their mission to empower female writers and poets drew me in. I have since attended some of their writing workshops and connected with some of the other writers within their community, and it has all seemed to just fall into place.

Do you think your profession as therapist plays into the development of your writer voice?

Absolutely. I bring a lot of mental health themes into my writing (a third collection inspired by these themes is in the works). The more that I write, the more I have embraced using that as a tool or intervention with my clients. I encourage them to express themselves in various ways, one of them being writing. I am very open about my own struggles with anxiety, depressive symptoms, and the impact of trauma (a professional label for this is a therapist with lived experiences). I include this in my writing because it is authentic to me and a way to heal, but it is also a model for other people who may be coming to see someone like myself. It shows them they are not alone, and that this is not a fix-all. This is a process I am guiding you through to be closer to and better know yourself. Writing is one path that has worked for me. Let’s find what works for you.

Now everywhere I go . . . I leave a little bit of your residue.

It fades as a broken record memory

where I can’t remember if the flavor was peppermint or sugar sweet.

“The Fruit Mint Gum Variety Pack.”

Do you have a favorite poem from the collection, one that encapsulates the core of your work?

“The Fruit Mint Gum Variety Pack” stands out for me. It is so metaphorical and relatable to other people. That thinking that something—whether a person or some connection or event—is going to dissolve and you’re not going to remember it, but the taste is just there. I also think of, “I say you can love more than one person.” Those two are my favorites.

I was intrigued by the dialogue about our memory selves or perceived selves that plays out in some of your poems. How do you approach the writing of memory while embracing the inherent perspective bias and inconsistencies?

What we remember is based on our beliefs, our history, and our views of the world. I write what is true to my memory while remaining aware others may not remember or recall things in the same way. It’s about bringing that awareness to other people while recognizing our recollections of events are not static. When it comes to intimacy, our way of seeing self tends to be more negative. That can interfere with the connections we make. When somebody sees us in a way we don’t, it can be hard to believe. That creates potential for repelling or pulling away from the intimacy as opposed to opening up to it. We [may] accept that there are other—at times more positive—ways of seeing ourselves and be open to those outside points of view. We [may] be open to integrating them with our own perspectives.

The hunger

The craving

The style

The smile. Always a smile.

I’d be always a

S M I L E.

“If they see the way they say they see me . . . then I’d be . . .”

You can read more of Amanda’s words on love and connection in her second poetry collection What is Another Word for Intimacy? Please show your support of Amanda by preordering your copy today.

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Thank you, Amanda and Melissa, for sharing your conversation. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Yellow Arrow recently revamped and restructured its Yellow Arrow Journal subscription plan to include two levels. Do you think you are an Avid Reader or a Literary Lover? Find out more about the discounts and goodies involved at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/yellow-arrow-journal-subscription.

You can support us as we AWAKEN in a variety of ways: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 102, Glen Arm, MD 21057). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Kapua Iao 8/2/22 Kapua Iao 8/2/22

Courtney LeBlanc: A Riot on the Poetry Scene

By Melissa Nunez, written May 2022

I think of everything I’ve put/ into my mouth, all I’ve swallowed/…my voice, grew smaller, shrank/…I keep swallowing/ till there’s nothing left, till I disappear into the dirt,/ the earth finally swallowing me. – “A Girl Becomes a Woman”

Courtney LeBlanc is the author of two poetry chapbooks and four full-length collections, the most recent of which, Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart, is a must-read for fans of powerful poetic voices that deftly encompass a wide range of female experience: rage, resilience, romance, regret. She is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Riot in Your Throat (RIYT), a press with a promise to deliver “poetry that punches you in the gut and refuses to be quiet.” While conversing with Courtney, the resemblance between this independent press editor and the design of the RIYT logo is striking. She embodies the essence of the image and its message through her fierce writing, her commitment to elevating the voices of feminist writers, and her overall verve evident even through the computer screen. I was eager to hear her thoughts on writing and publishing.

Who are some women writers who have inspired you?

I’m so glad you asked this question and love that you specified women writers. Almost all my favorite writers are women because I identify with them and the issues they write about. Some poets I love are Megan Falley, Jeanann Verlee, Shaindel Beers, Melissa Fite Johnson, Laura Passin, and Kelly Grace Thomas.

Some of your poetry touches on body image and the negative effects of trying to fit a societal or patriarchal standard. Do you find writing your experiences helpful for processing these events and the emotions involved?

Yes. Writing provides an outlet, a way to talk about the things that I (or women in general) still deal with in a way that feels cathartic. It is a place to put the emotions, so they don’t stay inside. I also hope it is helpful for other women who identify with the experiences, that it gives them an outlet as well. I feel like writing saves me sometimes in that sense.

There is a powerful feminist thread woven through your poetry collection and an encouraging rebelliousness in your body of work. What message do you hope to convey to your readers through your words?

Don’t stop fighting. Unfortunately, right now in the United States, we are in this situation where women’s rights are being threatened. To be honest, I’m tired of being scared and I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of fighting the same fight. It has been 50 years and yet here we are again. But I hope that other women who feel like me use these feelings to keep fighting. I hope that’s the message that comes through in the collection.

There is a vulnerability present on the pages (even in those poems most powerful) that was very compelling and impactful for me as a reader. Do you ever have any qualms about personal visibility and subject matter in your poems?

Absolutely. There have been poems that I’ve written and then decided I’m never going to do anything with them. They are just going to stay in my journal, or maybe I’ll share them with a couple of friends. It is scary and hard to be vulnerable. But then, being vulnerable is very human. It is another way that we connect with other people and other writers. If I can be brave and put those words out there, it might give someone else the courage to do the same. To see themselves in that vulnerability. It is scary, but I also think it’s empowering. It’s a fine line sometimes.

Do you have any words of wisdom for writers who experience reservation as a barrier to sharing their writing?

Writers shouldn’t feel that they must share their work. If they are writing from a place of raw emotion and deep vulnerability, then it is OK to not share that. If you have someone you trust, someone you feel safe with, you can just share with that one person. Sometimes it can be helpful to wait until there is some distance between those emotions, but it might remain something that you don’t ever share with anyone. Ultimately, it comes down to that decision on each piece of writing (whether poem or story or essay). If you are uncomfortable, then don’t share. I believe it is more important to write some things than it is to share them. We want everyone to read our words, but you also have to protect yourself and your heart.

We carry the crystals/ to ward off evil, to bring luck, to add heft and make our bag/ a weapon…We carry our hearts/ when they got too muddied on our sleeves…We/ carry it all, the heavy world digging into our shoulders/ and slumping our backs. – “We Carry”

Do you have a method for deciding on the form your work will take? I love coming across new or unexpected forms and there are many in your body of work (i.e., Self-Portrait as a Form Rejection Letter, Postcards Never Written, Pantoum for Amy Winehouse).

The forms tend to develop organically. Some specific forms, like the pantoums, I will set out to write but might not know the topic. I actually wrote a series of poems about Amy Winehouse. It started with the first as a form poem and then I ended up writing close to 20 poems about her because she is so wonderful and tragic. With the other poems, they just sort of come to me. Sometimes the first draft will be in almost a paragraph format on the page and then I will play with the form after I transfer it into a word document on my computer. Do I want to use slashes in this poem or do I want to have more standard line breaks? I kind of just figure out what works for the topic. Some poems lend themselves to certain forms, like a love poem being in couplets because that is traditional. But sometimes you want to subvert that in different ways.

Was there a form you found most exciting or challenging for you?

I’ve written a couple of abecedarian poems, and I find them very hard to write well. I have written several and there’s only one or two I really like. It seems like it would be easy because there is no other restriction (at least not any I follow), but even finding the right word to start the line on was a lot harder than I expected. It is such a fun form to play with and is one I will turn to if I am stuck. Even if you are just rambling, you get those creative juices flowing. I have found form poems to be good for writing about topics that are hard or scary because it gives you parameters to stay in which makes it feel less overwhelming. Pantoums can be fun, but also difficult. A lot of poems that have repetition are so impressive when done well because repetition can become so obvious. It feels successful in its form when that isn’t the case.

I enjoyed reading the history of Riot in Your Throat and was curious if you could pinpoint one event, emotion, or moment that was the final push to move forward with the press?

I think it was a couple of things. When I started formulating the idea, I sat down and talked with a couple of friends who happen to work for other local presses. I picked their brains a little bit and realized that the idea was becoming more and more appealing. It was something I really wanted to do. I wanted to be able to publish these voices that I like to read and feel others need and want to read, too. My friend and I have a tradition of hitting the trails with our dogs every Sunday. I had been talking to her about it, and after a couple of weeks of discussions and sketching out plans she asked me, “So, are you going to do it?” And I said yes. I’m going to do it. I want to do it. Then it came down to figuring out exactly how I was going to do it. And it’s been fantastic.

What inspired the name?

There were four or five ideas I was playing with in a list on my phone, but I just kept coming back to Riot in Your Throat. I felt it fit with what I wanted to do and the poems I wanted to see—how as women we are forced in so many situations to not say what we are thinking or feeling or desire. At some point, it is just going to come out like a riot, an explosion. I also had a vision for what I wanted the logo to look like. I am not an artist by any means, so I literally just sketched out a human head with some hair and then wrote across the throat. Then, I found this amazing artist from Canada who worked with me and got it to be perfect. It reflects everything I wanted it to be. I love the name and I think it fits so well with what we’ve published so far.

Is there a specific achievement or progress made with the press you’d want to share?

We’ve had three open submission calls so far, and having people mention poets we’ve published that they love in their cover letter or comment that a poet recommended our press is really such a high level of praise and flattery. It is a huge win that the poets I’m publishing are saying good things about me and about the press. It lets me know I’m doing something right. I want to keep growing, see what keeps coming, and hopefully it keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Now that sticky juice/ of knowledge ran freely down my chin/ I wanted to hold her hand and discover/ all I didn’t yet know. – “Autobiography of Eve”

What advice do you have for potential submitters and women writers in general?

1. Keep writing and keep submitting! Rejection is part of the process. Stephen King, a famous author outspoken about rejection, is known to have said, “Until you have 100 rejections, you haven’t started submitting.” I think it is so important to just keep submitting.

2. When I read manuscripts for the press, I have found work that is close but not quite there, that maybe needs another round of editing. In my response I will tell that writer that I’d love to see another version of their work. So many women don’t submit again because they question whether that is real or authentic, and it is 100% real. When an editor says that to you, they mean it. When they say these poems don’t quite fit this theme or this month, but we’d like to see more of your work, they mean it. They mean submit again. When I send these responses, I truly hope to see an updated version of that manuscript, because it is so close. I want it out in the world. I want women to keep writing and keep submitting because our voices are especially valuable right now.

3. Keep reading and request books from your local library. I think some people feel like if they can’t buy the book, they can’t be helpful or supportive of the writing community. But requesting books or leaving a review for them on Amazon or Goodreads are some helpful and cost-free ways to support poets and presses, particularly small independent presses. We get lost in the noise sometimes.

Earlier this year, Courtney was awarded the Jack McCarthy Book Prize. Her third full length poetry collection will be available through Write Bloody next March. She is hopeful for a book tour next spring to celebrate this forthcoming collection along with the previous two that debuted during the pandemic. You can follow her on Twitter @wordperv or at courtneyleblanc.com for updates on her writing. You can keep up with new collections, reading events, and submission calls from her press at riotinyourthroat.com and on Twitter @riotthroat.

Melissa Nunez is a Latin@ writer and homeschooling mother of three from the Rio Grande Valley. Her essays have appeared in magazines like Variant Lit and the winnow. She has work forthcoming in The Nasiona, Scrawl Place, and Honey Literary. She is also a staff writer for Alebrijes Review. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook @MelissaKNunez.

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Yellow Arrow recently revamped and restructured its Yellow Arrow Journal subscription plan to include two levels. Do you think you are an Avid Reader or a Literary Lover? Find out more about the discounts and goodies involved at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/yellow-arrow-journal-subscription. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 6/14/22 Kapua Iao 6/14/22

Challenging Truths: A Conversation with Darah Schillinger

“I realize that what we tell ourselves, and what we tell women and children, influences how we think and how we perform,” says Darah Schillinger from her room at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. “And when we keep telling women that they can’t do something, then we are perpetuating the cycle.”

Darah Schillinger, the author of Yellow Arrow Publishing’s next chapbook, when the daffodils die, is passionately explaining the results of a study that she learned about in her “Feminism and Philosophy” class. The study itself is impressive as is Darah’s animated presence as she expresses her desire to support women, putting what she learned into practice. In fact, this study became the inspiration for Darah to write “When Mars and Venus Collide,” included within when the daffodils die. The poem highlights numerous influential women throughout history to now, including Tu Youyou, a chemist who helped find a treatment for malaria, and Susan La Flesche Picotte, the first Native American woman to earn a medical degree. But “When Mars and Venus Collide” is only one example of how Darah uses when the daffodils die to challenge long-standing truths within our society and change perspectives so that her readers can examine the scene from a new angle.

when the daffodils die is now available for PRERELEASE (click here for wholesale prices) and will be released July 12, 2022. Follow Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram for Friday sneak peeks into when the daffodils die. The beautiful yet simplistic cover was created in-house by Creative Director Alexa Laharty after a few conversations with Darah about her vision. Darah notes, “My original design for the cover was simple because my poems tend to focus on finding beauty in the overlooked, and I wanted a simple, yet beautiful cover to reflect that. I also opted to keep the handwritten font (at the editor’s insistence!) because I think it reflects the humanness of poetry. It’s personal, and I wanted it to feel personal the second you see it. I’m thrilled with how the cover turned out. Alexa did a wonderful job bringing my original design to life.”

At the time of this interview with Vignette Managing Editor Siobhan McKenna, Darah was preparing for final exams and her college graduation, but graciously took the time to speak about her path to writing and her forthcoming publication. Within their conversation, they explored the themes that permeate when the daffodils die: humans and their relationships with nature, spirituality, and love.

Growing up in Baltimore County, in Maryland, Darah always loved writing but didn’t see herself becoming a poet. In middle school, she wrote fiction novels because she thought she was going “to do the big book think,” and it wasn’t until high school that she started writing poetry. From there, poetry became a hobby that she quickly realized she loved. Darah was able to expand on her passion by enrolling in collegiate-level creative writing courses and interning for several literary magazines, including with Yellow Arrow in 2021. Over the years, poetry has become a “safe space” for Darah; a place where she can explore her thoughts and ponder the state of the world. When not working, studying, or figuring out her next steps in life, Darah says that she enjoys filling the notes app in her iPhone with short lines or thoughts that she can later develop into complete poems.

Your collection revolves around natural imagery and a relationship with nature: have you always been attuned to nature and was there someone in your life who inspired this?

I’ve always been fascinated with nature. I can’t pinpoint when it started, but I’ve always incorporated natural imagery into my writing. College has also shaped me way more than I thought it would. [St. Mary’s College of Maryland] is a very nature-based campus. We have a pond and a riverside and in spring everything is in bloom. And going for a walk is the highlight of my day on this campus. So, it’s hard not to be inspired by nature here.

[Growing up, I lived in] Baltimore County, which is very crowded and is called a suburb but as close as you can get to the “city” without being a city. Which is why I also think I am so drawn to places like St. Mary’s and rural Pennsylvania because when I do visit those places it is such a stark contrast to where I grew up. There’s so much nature to see that I’m kind of awed by it, and it’s really nice to see places that haven’t been touched as much by humans.

When I was really young, I remember that it would be a big deal when my grandmother would take me to the state park nearby: Gunpowder State Park. We would go on a hike and sometimes go fishing . . . or we would swim in the river and play on the rocks. And my cousins and I would go rock climbing—very small-scale rock climbing, never anything big and those were treats for us! That was something that I looked forward to every summer, every spring. [Those trips] have stuck with me, and I find . . . being outside something special. And I definitely think my grandmother—my Mommom—has been a big influence on that because she adores nature. She loves going on her drives. She’ll go driving and one day, she texted me and said, “I’m out and I just saw 10 deer” and [the time] was 2:00 am! She’ll stay up all night just to see a deer—it’s a really special relationship she has, and I think she gave me a little bit of that.

The past few years, some of my friends and I have gotten more into herbalism and pagan traditions, and these small practices have helped me appreciate nature in ways I didn’t before.

I took a class on the literature of paganism and witchcraft where we also delved into herbal medicine. I even wrote my final paper on the significance of daffodils in herbalism. I think that [class] has influenced my relationship with nature as well and how healing it can be and how intimate people should be with [nature].

What would happen if I kept the windows down as I drove,

the gray air woven in my hair, the smell of a Pennsylvania winter

clinging heavy in my pores

“winter in Pennsylvania”

In your poem “herbal medicine,” you speak of nature as being able to heal. How have you used nature in your own life to heal?

I’m going to keep returning to it because I feel like it’s true: I think that sitting outside when it’s nice or [listening to rainstorms and thunder can be] healing. If I have the window cracked and I get to hear [the storm] then I can take a break from all the stress. And getting to sit outside and listen to the birds or look at the flowers . . . is healing. . . . I do that a lot [by myself] and I do that a lot with my friends. We sit on our patio and listen to a little music and enjoy the day. And I really hope that more people get to do that. We get so caught up in the stresses of everyday life that we don’t pay attention. And I know this is the stop-and-smell-the-roses [cliché], but it’s so true—if I didn’t take those 30 minutes a day to sit and relax, I don’t know what I would do.

In the last several years, especially among college students and recent college graduates, I’ve seen a resurgence of herbalism and a focus on nature as a belief system on social media. Why do you think that your generation is beginning to take inspiration from pagan ideals and herbal medicine?

I think it is a combination of things. On social media, it has become trendy to be into paganism, witchcraft, and herbal medicine. But I also think that—and this is speculation—a lot of people my age and younger that I know aren’t religious. But I think that for [other older generations] religion always seemed to be something that people found solace in, and it was comforting to believe in something. [Now,] people my age, myself included, don’t necessarily adhere to one [religion], so I think it’s comforting to believe in nature. And I know that sounds very hippie-dippie, but it feels very grounding to trust in nature, to enjoy nature, and to find comfort in it. And while it’s not necessarily an established religion, I think that a lot of people my age enjoy it for those reasons.

Here, let the drops of peppermint oil and patience drip-drip

from your palms like

VapoRub for the rattled soul

“herbal medicine”

In your poem “Eden,” you reference the often-unmentioned biblical figure of Lilith, what was your spiritual upbringing like and how did you learn of Lilith?

I don’t know when I first heard about Lilith. [The story of Lilith] was always kind of something that my mom and I thought was interesting. I grew up Episcopalian . . . and when I fell out of a strict Christian religion, I looked more into other [beliefs] and I brought it to my mom, and I was like “Hey . . . why haven’t we talked about Lilith?” And she was all on board to talk about it because she didn’t know that much about [her and her story] either. So, we looked into the story of the first woman, [Lilith,] who wasn’t made from Adam—and I’m not that familiar with it but based on the research that I have done [my understanding is that] because she didn’t want to obey [Adam] she was cast out [of Eden]. And then another woman, [Eve,] was made from Adam to serve Adam. And [after learning more about her] my question was: why was this myth created if no one wants to talk about it? And I was so fascinated by the story because it is everything that I talk about with my friends and in college and with my mom: women aren’t made to obey people. That’s something I’ve never believed in. My mother always told me that I am my own person. . . . And I think that the basis of the story is that an independent woman is demonized, and I want more women to know about [the story of] Lilith.

Lilith, do you think of Eve, when you run with your night creatures?

When you fly into the dark air, hated but free?

“Eden”

Young love and being in the eye of one’s lover are themes that repeat throughout your poems and is also a timeless theme in poetry. Why do you think that poetry has been a vessel for love for so long?

I think that love is poetic. I know that’s not a great answer, but [love] is something that no one is able to come up with a good definition for and I think that keeps us writing about it. Because, if [you ask someone] to describe love, every single person is going to give a different answer. And [their answers] might be related to each other, but everyone’s interpretation of love and how they love is unique. And I think that keeps [the theme of] love going in poems and in stories and songs because it is something that we can never officially pin down.

A lot of my poems are about my relationship with my partner and some of them are fictionalized because I’ve been with my partner for a very long time, and we are very committed to one another. But I also identify as a bisexual woman and I’m in a straight passing relationship. . . . I think there are a lot of ways to love and types of love, and I fictionalize it because I am so obsessed with it. Love is something that I have experienced, and I am experiencing, but there are different types of love that I may never experience, but I am able to explore those types through my writing.

What do you hope your readers gain from reading when the daffodils die or how do you think the poems will sit with your readers?

I hope that they enjoy them, but I also hope that someone, somewhere relates to something I’ve written. It doesn’t have to be that everybody likes it or hates it; I want someone to walk away from it [thinking] I enjoyed myself while I was reading and maybe thought of something in a way that I hadn’t before. Maybe, “I’m gonna look at nature differently,” or maybe, “I saw myself in one of the relationship poems and it made me happy.” I want people to open it and relate [to the poems] in some way.

On cloudy days I’d lay at the very edge of the bed on my back

[. . .]

and wait to see if I could feel the

world stop turning

if I held my breath. it was a good use of the day when the sky was full

to watch the trees sway

and think about abortion rights

or privilege

or poverty

“cloudy days”

You first worked with Yellow Arrow as a 2021 summer intern, helping with publications and writing several blogs, even now. How did you originally find out about Yellow Arrow?

I actually reached out to Yellow Arrow because I was looking up places [near my home in Maryland] that I could intern for . . . I saw Yellow Arrow while I was researching, and they were my top choice because I loved the message. I loved that it’s women-owned, women-run, women supporting women, and it’s not just that, there’s also diversity. It’s not just white women who are having their voices heard and who are getting the chance to be published and talk about how awesome writing is, but all types of women.

From whom or what do you seek inspiration?

Everywhere. All the time. I write very much in the present, so I tend to write about whatever I’m seeing or feeling or reading about in the moment. That’s why I love the notes app on my phone. I’ll be walking back from work, and I’ll see an especially big tuft of onion grass . . . and I just write down a quick note about onion grass, and then it shows up [in a poem] later on. [My writing is] very in the moment and it is usually just snippets of something and later I’ll make it into a broader poem.

I fall in love daily

with the sky and the sea and

the pollen watering my eyes

“marriage”

Do you have a favorite poet?

I had a big Sylvia Plath tapestry for a long time, so definitely Sylvia. I’ve gotten very into Bell Hooks recently, and I was kind of devastated when she passed [a short time ago]. I actually wrote a poem about Bell Hooks’ passing. And over quarantine, I got very into Sappho. So I ordered myself a big collection of Sappho poetry in order to pass the time.

Daffodil imagery is a large presence throughout your chapbook: it’s the name of the book as well as your final piece. Why did you end your collection with the eponymous poem, “the daffodils die”?

As soon as I wrote the short daffodil poem, when I was putting together the collection, I was like this has to be the last one. And I think it’s because I thought daffodils symbolize death, but they also symbolize rebirth and the beginning of spring. But I think that when things end, other things begin so it is very much a cycle; just as the book is ending, the daffodils die, but there is still a continuation.

I have to ask—even though I think I know the answer—what is your favorite flower?

Definitely daffodils. I know—very on the nose. We have the gulch here [at St Mary’s College in Maryland], which is what the last poem is written about, and every March the entire [hillside] blooms and everything is yellow and green and it’s beautiful. [There’s a path on the hillside] that winds down to a hidden beach and it’s just my favorite place to go in March. I just like the idea of daffodils—they don’t even get to see spring, but they announce spring is here.

****

Since this interview, Darah graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland with a BA in English and a minor in creative writing. This summer she will work part-time before starting her MS in professional writing at Towson University in the fall. Please show your support of Darah by preordering your copy of when the daffodils die today.

Thank you, Darah and Siobhan, for sharing your conversation. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Yellow Arrow recently revamped and restructured its Yellow Arrow Journal subscription plan to include two levels. Do you think you are an Avid Reader or a Literary Lover? Find out more about the discounts and goodies involved at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/yellow-arrow-journal-subscription.

Kapua Iao 5/31/22 Kapua Iao 5/31/22

An Interview with a Publisher and English Professor, Sufiya Abdur-Rahman

By Piper Sartison

Sufiya Abdur-Rahman is an author, English professor at Washington College, and publisher. Her recent novel is titled Heir to the Crescent Moon (2021; University of Iowa Press), where she writes about her personal experiences growing up in a black Muslim family in America. Sufiya has won the Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction and continues to focus on other future writing projects while she pursues her career in teaching.

Sufiya has taught me in two different writing classes at Washington College, and she has provided excellent insight on writing to her students. When I asked to interview her, she kindly agreed, and we set up a zoom call. Over the call, we discussed her book and her impact on the writing community as well as her passion for teaching.

What motivated you to become a writer?

I think I grew up around a lot of storytellers in my family. My grandfather, in particular, was one who would often tell stories about when he grew up in the [Jim Crow South]. He had an interesting way of telling stories about that; they were really engaging, and everyone would gather around to hear what he had to say. And later on, he started to write these stories down and turn them into creative nonfiction pieces. . . . He knew that I liked writing as well so sometimes, he would show me stories and ask [about my opinion]. Over the years, I would work with him on things and help him out with [endings] on pieces that he put together. . . . My mother also is a storyteller. . . . Listening to her tell stories also influenced me to [become] a storyteller [but more in the nonfiction realm].

What inspired you to write about your personal life in Heir to the Crescent Moon?

Initially, I just wanted to tell a story about second generation black Muslims. I felt like there was a story out there that hadn’t been told before and I was interested in finding out enough information about it to be able to write a book. My book idea was more journalistic. [I wanted] to [interview] other people and find out what it was like to grow up as a second-generation black Muslim, find out about their parents’ stories and kind of compile them into this book. I went to grad school with this idea in mind to try to get some direction on how I can turn something that started off small into something bigger. . . . I found a way to incorporate what I was hearing from the folks that I was interviewing into what I was writing about my own family.

What do you love about writing or teaching? Do they go hand in hand? Or would you like to focus on writing more in the future?

I really just enjoy trying to figure out new, different, and interesting ways to express ideas. There [are] so many pieces out there [such as books, articles, and essays], and a lot of what people have in mind to say has already been said. I feel like my challenge as a writer is [to] find some other way to say something that someone hasn’t said before. It’s not always possible, which makes it really hard. . . . When I’m sitting down to write, I feel like the process of trying to discover something new or different or unique within myself and how I express something is what keeps me engaged in it. I really enjoy teaching because I enjoy trying to spark the love of writing in other people, too. In particular young people because [I feel like there are] so many stories out there that need to be told. Everyone has one. Even if you’re not writing about yourself and you’re reporting on other people, you can do the work to try to figure out what their story is and bring that to the floor. The more stories that are out there, the more people get to know about other people and that’s just [what life is all about], getting to know other people, [and] trying to understand this whole human experience more concretely.

How has the writing community influenced your creativity as a writer, English professor, and publisher?

I just went to the associated writing programs conference in Philadelphia where I got the chance to be around a lot of writers, and it was the first time I had been to one of those in a really long time. I was amazed by how huge this conference was. There were panels about so many different topics, all happening at the same time. You really got a chance to see poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and all of these little nuances within each genre; all of these little pockets of different writing communities together. It just made me think about how wide and vast our community is, and how many different ways there are to tell a story, how many different focuses on a story there are, which I found really inspiring.

I think the writing community in an event like that [or on twitter for example] is a very vibrant writing community. You’re always hearing about new projects that are out there; books, essays that you should read. It just keeps people engaged, probably in a way that wasn’t possible without the internet. It’s really just inspiring for me to try to be a part of this community with writers.”

Do you have any advice to aspiring women writers in the community?

My advice to all aspiring writers is to read as much as possible. Read what’s out there, read writers you want to try to be like. [The] best teacher that you can have [is] the work that’s already been published. There’s so much of it, there’s almost no way to really read everything that’s out there, and so the work [that] a young aspiring writer has is to read as much as possible. There’s just a wealth of really great stuff.

You can find Heir to the Crescent Moon at the University of Iowa Press: uipress.uiowa.edu/books/9781609387822/heir-to-the-crescent-moon.

Sufiya Abdur-Rahman’s writing investigates questions of family, identity, race, and religion and, often, how they intersect. Her essays, articles, and criticism have appeared in publications including Catapult, The Common Online, Gay Mag, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and NPR. She has earned Notable distinction in Best American Essays, received fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and is a two-time alumnus of VONA writing workshops. She is Creative Nonfiction Editor for Cherry Tree, a national literary journal, at Washington College, where she teaches nonfiction. She lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with her family.

Piper Sartison was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. Her favorite subject in school was English, and she followed her passion for writing into college. Piper attends Washington College in Maryland and is a sophomore, majoring in English and minoring in Journalism. She is a competing member of the women’s tennis team and writes for The Elm, a local community newspaper. When she is not working or playing tennis, she spends her time with friends, watches movies, or enjoys journaling in her notebook.

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Kapua Iao 5/9/22 Kapua Iao 5/9/22

A Spiritual Journey: Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. VII, No. 1, UpSpring

By Annie Marhefka

I met April Graff, the cover artist of Yellow Arrow Journal, UpSpring (Vol. VII, No. 1) decades ago, but it’s been almost 20 years since I’ve spoken with her. Her husband, Monnie, and my older brother were dear friends and worked together as machinists for many years. My brother passed away in 2003 in a car accident on his way home from a shift working with Monnie; they were also greatly impacted by his death. I have this memory of April after my brother’s memorial service that has stuck with me all this time. I think of it whenever I think of her.

After the service, we had gone back to my parents’ house and everyone was standing in the kitchen sharing memories of my brother, and we were just talking about what you talk about at those things—how sudden it was, how shocked we were, how we couldn’t comprehend it just yet. My father in particular was really struggling and I remember watching him grip the kitchen counter and thinking it was the only thing holding him up.

It was right between Thanksgiving and Christmas and there was constant holiday music playing in the background. April started singing along quietly to “O Holy Night” and her voice was just incredible. She wasn’t showing off or looking for attention; it actually seemed like she couldn’t help herself but sing along, like maybe she didn’t even realize she was singing out loud. She was sitting on a barstool across the kitchen counter from my father and when my father heard her voice, he stood upright and asked everyone in the room to quiet down a little. Everyone went silent, including April. My father nodded in her direction and asked her to sing again. When you’re at an event like that, you never really know what you can say or do to help, and I could tell that April was shy or insecure about singing because she hesitated, but I think she also felt like, if this was what he needed, if this was what she could offer, she would do it for him. So despite her hesitation, she sang for him.

I think my father asked her to sing that song five or six times that night and every time, she obliged. Every time, the room went silent, and we just got wrapped up in her voice, the artistic flair she started weaving into the lyrics and the melody. It felt a little like we were watching her grow in her confidence and expand her creativity as the night went on. I don’t remember much about that night, the speeches people gave, or the condolences offered. But I’ll never forget April singing.

And now, almost 20 years later, April’s artwork, "Spiritual Journey," is featured on the cover of Yellow Arrow Journal Vol. VII, No. 1, UpSpring. Guest edited by Rebecca Pelky, a member of the Brothertown Indian Nation of Wisconsin and a native of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Some of the pieces in this issue focus on that thrilling moment of fruitfulness in which an upspring occurs while others remind us that some upsprings happen only after or because of desperately difficult times. “Spiritual Journey” fits into the latter.

I had the honor of interviewing April about her painting and where she is now after her own spiritual journey. She probably didn’t realize at the time how much she helped my family that night, and so to see April finding her voice in this new way, through painting, gives me so much hope that she can continue to use her story and her creativity to inspire and lift others. Here is my conversation with April.

Annie: Tell our Yellow Arrow community a little about yourself and your artwork.

April: I live with my two kids and my husband, Monnie, and our two fur babies in Westminster, Maryland. I have always been into the arts of all sorts—dancing, singing, drawing, painting. I found my love for painting while watching Bob Ross when I was a kid. To this day, he’s still soothing to me. That was where my love for painting started; I loved how it calmed me. I could even fall asleep watching his show!

I am seven years sober—will be eight years in November. When I went into my recovery, I was looking for things to help me cope other than the normal things people run to. My husband got me an art set and an easel because he knew I used to love painting. He got me the basics: little canvases, some oil paints, and an acrylic set. I had never worked with acrylic but started experimenting. I shared some pictures of what I made, and people started asking me for pieces. I wasn’t charging anything initially; I just loved the idea of having my art in people’s homes. Once the supplies started getting more expensive, I decided to start charging and that’s helped me try out different styles and techniques. The painting I did for UpSpring started out as an experiment, but I was feeling all the things that day and it all comes out on the canvas. It’s how I cope with everyday life. I was told to journal, but I can’t organize my thoughts enough. Painting is how I journal. Many people can’t interpret what I was feeling at the time, but I can look at a painting I made, and I can see exactly what I was feeling at that time. I love that no painting ever turns out the same.

Annie: Our theme for this issue of Yellow Arrow Journal is UpSpring. We received so many amazing pieces of writing from readers who connected with this theme. What does the theme mean to you?

April: Every dark place I was in, I’ve always reached out to the light, and you see that through the elements of darkness and light in the painting. I remember being at the rock bottom of my addiction and crying and wondering, why can’t I get out of this, why am I like this. [But], I want[ed] to see my kids grow, I want[ed] to get out of this dark place. Where the painting passes and connects and intertwines, I know that [that] is where I reached my rock bottom. I had lost all of me. Where it passes through is my spirit reaching back through to the person that I used to be, to become even better than the person I was once before. Through my journey of recovery, I found a peace I never knew before. I was always trying to overcome my environment; I was battling every day to not be a product of my environment. I fought hard to get out of that. I think you can see that when you look at the painting.

Annie: Our guest editor for this issue, Rebecca Pelky, also shared how she connected the theme to the idea of raising up: raising children, raising ourselves, raising awareness. What causes do you hope to raise awareness about?

April: There is a purpose for every one of us. I feel like my art is reaching out to other people to pull them in. Through sharing my experience, it’s so tough to see others struggling with addiction and suffering, I feel so helpless sometimes. But to know that I have helped other people is worth how tough it is—I’ve led others to recovery, helped people understand why their loved ones are addicted or that they have no control, that it has nothing to do with not loving them enough. In a way, my paintings are an extended hand, trying to pull other people up with me.

Annie: What does it mean to you to be able to share your art with others in this way? Who are you most excited to share your art with?

April: It’s always gut wrenching to share my work because I’m afraid somebody’s going to say that’s not art or wonder if the [price] I’m charging is worth it. My art is an expression of what I’m feeling and how do you come up with a price for that? When I found out my painting was going to be on the cover, I immediately wanted to share that with my brother. My brother is also an artist, and these days, it’s how we communicate. I’ve always respected him as an artist; he has a talent I’ve always envied. Even growing up, as a little girl, I would try to copy something he made, and he would get mad and say I plagiarized him. I was just looking up to him. I just wanted to be like him. As we got older, he started teaching me techniques, and I started teaching him. I wasn’t the tag along anymore; I was more accepted as a peer in his eyes, and I’ve always respected that side of him.

Annie: What would you say to others who maybe are going through their own difficult journey right now?

April: There’s a reason why you're here; there’s a purpose. Share your experience, share your journey with the world; inspire others to be more, be whatever they want to be. Strive for that every day.

Annie: What gives you inspiration?

April: There’s days where I can’t do it for myself and so I do it for the people that love me. There are days when I do it for the sun, the air, the people that can’t be here. I’m just trying to be here to live the life they couldn't. I remind myself that I’m a survivor, not a victim. I survived. I want other people to survive, to become warriors.

UpSpring is currently available for PREORDER from the Yellow Arrow bookstore. Wholesale copies (discounted copies in lots of 5) can also be purchased. The issue will be released on May 24. And join us for the virtual reading of UpSpring, “Moments in Time: An UpSpring Reading,” on June 28.

Yellow Arrow recently revamped and restructured it’s Yellow Arrow Journal subscription plan to include two levels. Do you think you are an Avid Reader or a Literary Lover? Find out more about the discounts and goodies involved at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/yellow-arrow-journal-subscription.

Thank you, April, for letting us in on your spiritual journey.

April Graff is from Baltimore, Maryland. She now lives in Westminster with her two amazing children, husband, and two family pets. “Spiritual Journey” is her very first published piece of art.

Annie Marhefka is a writer, HR consultant, and mama residing in Baltimore, Maryland, with her husband John, their daughter Elena, and son Joseph. When she’s not reading or writing, she loves traveling, boating, and hiking with her family. Her work has been published by Coffee + Crumbs, Versification, Capsule Stories, Remington Review, and more. Annie is working on a memoir about mother/daughter relationships; you can find her writing on Instagram, Twitter, and at anniemarhefka.com.

*****

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 5/3/22 Kapua Iao 5/3/22

A Conversation Across Two Time Zones

By Melissa Nunez, written in March 2022

Victoria Buitron is an Ecuadorian writer and translator who resides in Connecticut. She is a graduate of the Fairfield University MFA program and writes in a range of styles from flash fiction pieces that can be found in Litro Magazine and Latinx Lit Audio Mag, to her debut book A Body Across Two Hemispheres: A Memoir in Essays, which came out in March 2022.

In this memoir, Victoria comes of age between Ecuador and the United States as she explores her ancestry, learns two languages, and searches for a place she can call home. It portrays not only the immigrant experience, but the often-overlooked repatriate experience while interweaving facets of depression, family history, and self-love.

On a Sunday of fresh fallen snow in Connecticut and uncomfortable cold in South Texas, Victoria and I met through Zoom to talk about writing life.

Melissa: I love learning what texts and authors other writers find inspiring. What are some of your favorite books? Who are some women writers who have inspired you?

Victoria: One of the people that has most inspired me is Colombian author Adriana Páramo. She was a professor in my MFA program and the first person who told me I should submit my work. I think that I really needed her presence throughout the MFA program to find confidence in myself. She writes about family, immigration, culture shock, and being a Latina—not just in the United States, but throughout the world. I strongly connect to all of that. I also think about Jaquira Díaz, who wrote the book Ordinary Girls. For a long time, I felt like my life was ordinary, and she helped me see that within everyone’s ordinary lives extraordinary things happen. That motivated me to continue writing about my life. I also want to mention Morgan Jerkins. Her memoir is composed of different styles of essay and goes back and forth in time. That inspired me to focus on location over chronological order in my own book. In reading these contemporary works by contemporary writers, I realized that I was capable of achieving my writing goals.

Melissa: I love that ordinary/extraordinary dichotomy and admire writing that can take something a general audience might find boring and make it just the opposite. Writers who, through voice and style, make so much more of a topic than what is on the surface.

What is your favorite part about being a writer?

Victoria: My favorite part is writing that first draft. I have so much fun with it. There’s a little phrase I use when I start writing. Sometimes, I even write it on a sticky note and put it next to me. It says: You are writing on paper, not on rock. It reminds me that on this paper I can do so many things. I can take that route; I can take this other path. Who knows where it is going to lead me today? The process of creation is so much fun. It’s always a surprise. The draft might not become anything substantial by the end of the day, but maybe I’ll go back to it in the future and find a little spark I can use to continue working. The possibilities are infinite.

Melissa: That is a great mindset to have. I’m trying to lean into that methodology. I’ve always been a first draft editor, constantly reviewing and revising, which makes it difficult to get very far. I like this focus of just getting it out on the page first. Definitely more productive.

Victoria: I think a lot of times when we first start writing we might already be thinking about submitting and achieving perfection from the get-go. But it’s so hard. Nothing is perfect in general, but it’s so hard to have something that you consider perfect in the first draft. So, I just let go of that. For me, the first draft equals fun. That’s it. I will worry about the rest later. Sometimes you don’t even know the purpose of the piece until after writing it. You start off writing about X and end up with D. Sometimes your subconscious has other ideas.

Melissa: Finding fun in the process is an excellent approach. I can see how you would get so much more out of the writing experience that way. I’m working on putting that positivity into practice, but still find it difficult at times. What do you find is the most difficult part of the writing process?

Victoria: The most difficult part is knowing when a piece is ready. I think that is what I struggle with the most. There are times when I finish something and feel it is ready, and then a few days later change my mind. I think that now, with a little more experience, with more writing, it’s become easier. But it still happens sometimes. I feel like there’s a fine line, but I have very good writer and nonwriter friends that review my work. They are very honest with me. And it’s not about what is good or bad. It’s about meeting your focus for the piece. If somebody I trust reads my work and my vision for the piece isn’t coming through, then I need to go back to the drawing board. Getting to that point can be difficult.

Melissa: It is so helpful when you have friends or a writing group to be those sounding boards for you. A very beneficial resource. Is there anything else you find especially helpful, specifics you need to have a productive writing session?

Victoria: In the beginning I would say that I could not write unless it was with pen and paper, and I think that really limited me. I work a 9–5 job, so I mostly write evenings or on the weekends. If I was on my break and had an idea, I’d tell myself to remember that starting point for my evening writing session, but by then it would be gone. Now when the muse strikes, I can write something on my phone really quick. I would not have thought this was possible a few years ago. I had to train myself to write anywhere. If I limited myself to a specific environment, I wouldn’t be able to write as much. There are writers who have specific rituals, and I understand that need to help the transition into a writing atmosphere. But you should try to save that closed-off environment for editing. I believe this has allowed me to be more creative.

Melissa: I have had to learn that as well. To take notes on my phone and sometimes even actual drafting, because if not the writing won’t happen. I’ve found this flexibility has helped me get more writing done.

Victoria: I think it has been a process to learn that. You don’t learn that from the get-go. It’s tough.

Melissa: Have you experimented with literary translation, or is it mostly business/professional?

Victoria: Mostly professional, business translation. That’s what I do with my 9–5. I have done some literary translations for fun in the past, but never something that has been published. I do want to venture into that, though. The last four years I have been focused on finishing my memoir and working to get exposure for the book. But I want to dabble with literary translation in the future.

Melissa: Is there a genre you prefer? A writer you feel you’d really want to translate yourself?

Victoria: I would love to focus on Ecuadorian writers because I feel like that is missing, especially the poetry. There is so much beautiful Spanish poetry from my country.

Melissa: That would be wonderful. I have always been intrigued by the craft of translation, especially in poetry, because there is such an art to preserving the rhythm and sound of the language. Not that those qualities are not present in prose, but they can be more amplified in poetry, especially the shorter pieces.

I loved the concept of memoir in essays and found myself really taken by the titles in your book. How do you decide on titles for your works? Is it something you find difficult, or does it fall naturally into place for you?

Victoria: I love that question because I feel that one of my weaknesses is titles. The first piece that I ever published was accepted on the condition that I change the title. It’s a skill I’ve had to work on. What I learned from one of my MFA professors was to work on the title last. Don’t let a title mold the essay. Write the essay first. Even my book went through many different titles. I always feel like my pieces are prone to changing as I’m writing, and a title I started out with might not make it to the end. It is hard for me. I don’t think about it as I’m writing. Or editing. I still think titles are so much fun because you have to be creative. The title is the first thing that people read, and you want to grab a potential reader’s attention.

Melissa: Yes. And it’s also a balance between grabbing that attention and then living up to the promise. I think you do that very well in your memoir. Is there an essay title that is your favorite from the collection?

Victoria: I really like “Let It Burn.” It doesn’t give too much away, but it is powerful. The essay is about something very cultural. When I was growing up, I thought that on all South American countries celebrated New Year’s Eve with a monigote, placing it in the middle of the street and burning it to ash at midnight. With a flash piece like this, where the content can be 300 words or 100 words, the title has to be very strong.

Melissa: There is a theme of otherness in your writing. Not only in your book, but in pieces like “Thin Ice.” How has it felt to reflect upon this in your writing?

Victoria: Otherness was one of the driving factors for writing this book. When I was growing up, it was very hard for me to find books about Ecuadorian American writers, specifically memoirs. I felt othered in general because I came to the U.S. when I was five and had to learn English. Then I moved back to Ecuador when I was 15 and had to learn Spanish, formal Spanish. I never felt like I fit in. In this world where people can move around a lot, at least within borders, it happens a lot. You feel othered because of the language, or the culture, because of the people around you. I wanted to write a book about how I felt othered throughout the entirety of my life. It was one of the core themes. Beyond that, it is also a focus on family. How you deal with your family and construct an identity when you feel othered. That is also why the book is focused on the southern and northern hemispheres.

Melissa: What would you like those who this experience resonates with to draw from your words?

Victoria: I want people to read this book and understand that immigrants are not monoliths. Some people view immigrants as a category where everything these individuals have gone through is the same. That’s not true. I want people to read this book and understand that everyone has an extraordinary life within their ordinary life. There are all these little things or major things that happen to us, which can include moving from one place to another, and they affect our identity individually. I hope that when people read immigrant stories, they understand that there are so many layers to a person, what they have gone through, and that these past experiences mold them.

Melissa: Do you have any upcoming projects, big or small, you’d like to share?

Victoria: I have so many projects in mind, but the one that is most advanced is a poetry collection with a feminist focus on missing and murdered women. Over the last few years, I started following stories of missing and murdered Indigenous women. It was such a shock to me how there is continued bias in the coverage of these events today. I started thinking about the type of woman that the media would consider the perfect missing/murdered woman. And I think that if you’re not that perfect woman, then it’s very hard for the world or the United States to find out that you are missing. This has stayed with me, subconsciously, and I started writing these poems about women, murdered women, missing women. I know it’s a very heavy topic, one that I’m still working on that includes many intersections of feminism. It’s still very much in the early stages, but I have had a few poems published. It’s a project that I want to continue because it is very important to me.

Melissa: I read one of your published pieces on this topic, “Mainstream Outlets.” It was very powerful. It is a heavy topic, but one that deserves the attention.

What advice would you give to someone working on their first book or just starting out with writing in general?

Victoria: When we first start out, we tend to focus on an outside audience, on whether other people will like and want to publish our work. Getting published is the goal. I don’t think we should start out focused on the publishing or marketing aspect. I always ask myself why my writing is this important to me, because first and foremost, I write for myself. Why do I need to write this? Why does past me need this? Why do I need this today? Why does future me need to read about this? The person we must respect the most as writers is ourselves. Once you have a draft, focus on your craft. Try to make it the best possible. After that you can think about how to get it out there. I didn’t publish my first piece until 2018, when I was 28. A lot of people might say that’s late, but I think that everything continued at the pace it needed to. All those years of translation and reading books and not publishing allowed me to get the foundation for craft I needed in order to get my work out there.

Victoria’s debut memoir A Body Across Two Hemispheres is now available from Woodhall Press at woodhallpress.com/product-page/a-body-across-two-hemispheres-a-memoir-in-essays. You can find more of her writing at victoriabuitron.com and stay informed on her upcoming events on Twitter @vic_toriawrites.

Melissa Nunez is a Latin@ writer and homeschooling mother of three from the Rio Grande Valley. Her essays have appeared in magazines like Sledgehammer Lit and Latinx Lit Audio Mag. She has work forthcoming in Acropolis Journal, Minerva Rising, and Re-Side. She is also a staff writer for Alebrijes Review. You can follow her on Twitter @MelissaKNunez.

*****

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Thank you for supporting independent publishing.

Kapua Iao 3/15/22 Kapua Iao 3/15/22

Believing in the Power of Love Too Much: A Conversation with Nikita Rimal Sharma

A mere matchstick

I thought myself to be,

feeble in structure.

Needing several strikes for a single second of flame.

(not) just a matchstick

“I believe in the power of love too much,” says Nikita Rimal Sharma, the author of Yellow Arrow Publishing’s next chapbook, The most beautiful garden. This stunning sentiment about the inspiration behind her latest work summarizes the message of her chapbook beautifully: the world is not perfect and yet, we must keep loving it. Nikita’s unconditional love for our world in spite of all the tragedy, frustration, and nonsense is the underlying thread that runs through her collection. Throughout The most beautiful garden, which we cannot wait for you to read, Nikita’s poems touch on the struggles of depression, immigration, and identity and yet are grounded in the understanding that even during bouts of despair there is still hope to be found. Nikita emphasizes that “believing in the power of love too much” allows us to be aware of the brutal realities of the world while still unearthing strength and beauty in ourselves, others, and nature.

And that beautiful sentiment is definitely something visible in the incredible cover of The most beautiful garden, drawn by Yellow Arrow Creative Director Alexa Laharty. After seeing the cover, Nikita exclaimed, “Alexa put my imagination into a lovely form of art for the cover page. It summarizes the title poem perfectly and also the way I would like to approach life: making the best out of what you have, noticing beauty and the vividness of colors in yourself and the things around you. Thank you so much, Alexa, for all that you and the Yellow Arrow team have done for me during this process.”

The most beautiful garden is now available for PRERELEASE (click here for wholesale prices) and will be released April 12, 2022. Follow Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram for Friday sneak peeks into The most beautiful garden, starting this Friday and continuing through April 8. Recently, Editorial Associate Siobhan McKenna took some time to get to know Nikita and the inspiration behind The most beautiful garden.

Kathmandu is the root to my being

[. . .]

Wichita was the blank canvas for the rest of my life

[. . .]

Baltimore is the city that helped me fly

The places that made me

Originally born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, Nikita moved with her husband to Wichita, Kansas at the age of 25. There, she completed her master’s degree and eventually moved to Baltimore, Maryland, her current home. In Baltimore, she stumbled upon Yellow Arrow House while walking through the Highlandtown neighborhood; she decided to go inside. “It was almost like serendipity. I got a business card and looked on the website and saw that there was an upcoming class.” The class was “A Year in Poetry” with Ann Quinn and many of the poems that she started in that class are part of her forthcoming collection.

Although “A Year in Poetry” class honed her poetry skills, Nikita has always loved writing as a method to process her emotions. Throughout her life, she has written journal entries, poems, and letters to herself as a way of honoring the ending of one chapter and the beginning of another. In many ways, Nikita’s The most beautiful garden is a work of reflection and synthesis as she braids together her Nepali roots with the life and identity that she has established and continues to create in the United States.

Throughout The most beautiful garden, it sounds like not all Nepali culture resonated with you. How did you navigate this? Are there any Nepali customs that you hold onto?

I had a happy childhood. Here [in the U.S.], I am [a brown minority], but there [in Nepal] I had the privileges of a white person: so [many] good opportunities, but with that came a lot of pressure. But for me, [the pressure] didn’t really benefit me, because every action that I did was judged very badly. I was [in a generation with] access to technology and some things I did were modern, but some members of my extended family were really traditional. So, no matter what I did I was always judged and as a patriarchal society, it was all very toxic for me.

Here, I feel like I live for myself now, but when in Nepal, you live for others. “What are people gonna say?” is at the forefront of every decision-making, and I don’t do well with that. I also saw how my mom as a daughter-in-law or just as a woman was treated because she was from one generation above me and she had less opportunities than me. And all of that really bothered me and never fostered my growth and those are the pains that [I still hold in my heart]. But now that I’m here, I’m able to work through that and create a life that feels more like myself. And that does not mean I am going to give up everything. Obviously, there are cultural things, [family] and friends I will never be able to let go of.

Overall, being from a different culture lends me a different eye when solving problems or in viewing the world. Also, just the food that I eat. I’ve come to realize how the food that I grew up eating was actually a really healthy diet—and I hated that food as a child. It was lentils, rice— the daal bhaat is what we call it, and every meal was that. Now, I can’t wait to have it. So, any time I can have homemade food like that, I feel like I’m home again. And there are so many smaller and bigger things that I take [from my culture] and I treasure them.

You talk about how your culture growing up wasn’t as beneficial for who you are as a person. Can you talk more about the expectations of South Asian women?

[Those sentiments] are specific to my mom’s or mother-in-law’s generation. They have never been taught to know themselves or to explore themselves, and I feel very lucky to be able to do that. If you ask anyone from my mom’s generation: what do you like or what are things you enjoy doing? They don’t usually have an answer. Instead, they will say: “Oh, whatever you like” or “The happiness of others.” And of course, service and making others happy is very essential. But I feel that [they] have been taught to only find purpose in the well-being of others so that they forget to think about themselves and about what is good for them, and you just reach a point in your life where all of that keeps getting piled up and it was never sorted out or healed or worked through and I feel like that continues the vicious cycle of intergenerational trauma.

Obviously, the U.S. has its own problems in regard to the ways we treat women, but do you see similar parallels between your experience in Nepal and the United States?

Kind of, in different ways. I do think that with a lot of things [in the U.S.] we are way ahead although I don’t think [our journey for equality] will ever end. But in Nepal, there are some very basic constructs for women. [For example] when I was on my period, I wasn’t able to go in the kitchen. Of course, those things changed as I grew older and times changed, but those are things that you don’t have to think about in the United States.

In a later email, Nikita added, “There are communities in Nepal that still follow the practice of isolation during a woman’s period and some women have even lost their life due to negligence during the isolation.

Have you found yourself at peace in your merging of Nepalese and U.S. cultures?

Well, I have merged into a lot of things, but I think there are parts of me that will never fully merge no matter how much I try and that’s OK and that’s the beauty of it. Like I said, food is a big example or when talking about pop culture there are so many things! You can mention a song and I’ve never heard of it and that is a barrier. So, there are gentle reminders in my everyday life that make it harder for me to merge fully. At the same time, in recent years, I have been able to understand both cultures to be able to take some of my learnings from this culture and be able to communicate that with my mom and help her navigate her own life [in Nepal].

It is up to us,

to remain a sapling,

give ourselves the permission

to dig deeper

Growth

How has poetry helped your mental health?

A lot. I think writing this whole chapbook has helped with my mental health. I [wrote The most beautiful garden] during the pandemic and that’s when time was slower, and I was also going through a lot of emotional changes. There were things happening in my personal life, and I had a lot of very strong emotions, and I was trying to work on all of that. And writing [about my emotions] and sharing it was hard, but it also helped me sort through feelings. I also sought help from a psychiatrist and therapist, and that helped, but poetry was definitely one of the tools that I used for healing.

Why do we—mainly people who identify as women—still allow ourselves to be shamed by numbers and images even when understanding all the good our bodies do?

I wish I knew the answer because this is an ongoing struggle. In my 30s, I’ve been the strongest that I’ve ever been. I work out more consistently. I run. I eat better. I eat whatever I want. I’ve never been diagnosed with an eating disorder, but there was a point in my life when I was very restrictive with my diet. Now, I eat whatever I want, but that came from a reflection of how all the women I’ve talked to or anyone who identifies as a woman have at least one body part that they are insecure about. It does not matter how much you weigh or your body shape.

I think that . . . I don’t know the answer.

We have made progress as a society to accept our bodies as they are, but I still find it very hard to think of myself that way and I’m sure I’ll learn, and I’ll reframe. But even at this point no matter how much progress I make, I’ll always struggle with body image. If you find the answer, let me know.

Try to love people when it’s hard for you to love:

[ . . . ]

Let the wings of your heart fly to places it doesn’t want to go.

Maybe, this is how we can make the world a better place?

You write about loving people even when they are dissimilar to yourself. This sentiment seems especially relevant right now. How do you see that in action in our society today?

I think a lot about this. Right now, politically the world seems so polariz[ed]. No matter what: my opinion is right, no matter what side you’re on. And it does matter [to an extent] in politics and law and decision-making, but we make it matter more than it should sometimes. And our whole media and the entire world and social media are geared toward making us see all the differences, but then we don’t give enough time and attention to see the things that we have in common.

I believe in the power of love too much. Differences exist. And I don’t like certain opinions, I feel like they’re wrong, but they are opinions in the end. They are not your identity, and they are not the struggles that humans go through. So, it’s important to have opinions based on fact and science, but if we are not willing to find a common ground and to approach things with love and understanding—approach other humans who are different and try to think from their perspective—then I feel like no matter how much progress we make it still won’t be complete or whole for me.

Later, Nikita added, “Opinions do matter especially in a country like the United States where we have people from all over the world and varied cultures.”

You also mention using your voice to spread peace through nonviolence. How do you envision change being made through nonviolent communication?

I think nonviolent communication leads to more understanding. It helps us slow down and think and reflect a bit more. So that the change may be slower, but more sustainable. But I do hope with my language I want to get more involved with mental health advocacy and write more in those areas in a way that is more understanding and relatable.

I also want to use my writing as a way to find more things in common with people rather than attacking [them]. I don’t appreciate on social media when humans say, “Hey, what you’re doing is wrong.” And in coming from [a nonviolent] place, I think we’d bring about more change.

Finally, you mentioned that you’ve fallen in love with Baltimore. At Yellow Arrow, the city of Baltimore is very close to our hearts, but for most people outside of Baltimore, it’s a very underrated city. What has kept you in Baltimore?

I think people are very authentic here and that’s what has kept me in Baltimore. Everyone I have interacted with [seems to “keep it real”]. I have an example. I live in South Baltimore now, but I used to live downtown and the UPS guy in our apartment was the best human that I’ve ever met. Whenever he came in with a package, he always had the most genuine smile. It wasn’t just a customer service smile. It was a hey, I’m-here-I’m-happy smile. In December 2016, I was going through a pretty bad bout of depression, and I think seeing him would always make my day and he has no idea the difference that he made in my life. But just things like that when you’re walking around the city: people do greet you and not in an I-have-to-be-friendly kind of way. They really mean it. When people help here, it comes from the heart, and I think that’s what has me glued to the city—I really love that. For the size of the city, it really is community-oriented.

*****

Thank you, Nikita and Siobhan, for sharing your conversation. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 3/8/22 Kapua Iao 3/8/22

An Interview with Sofía Aguilar

By Melissa Nunez, written January 2022

Sofía Aguilar is a Chicana writer and editor based in Los Angeles, California. She is an alum of WriteGirl, an LA-based creative writing and mentoring organization that empowers girls and nonbinary teens through mentoring and monthly creative writing workshops, and is still active within that collaborative community. She has published an impressive body of online work ranging from poetry and essays celebrating her heritage to commentary on female and Latin@ representation in pop culture and the media for publications like LatinaMediaCo and HipLatina. Her passion for uplifting the voices of marginalized writers and contributing to a conversation of positive change was evident from the start.

Sofía is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Mag 20/20. This past December, she self-published her first poetry chapbook titled STREAMING SERVICE: golden shovels made for tv. I found Sofía’s work resonant and relatable, especially her thoughts and themes surrounding Latin@ culture. Her published essays like “Decolonizing My Latina Hair: How I Learned to Love the Locks White America Wanted Me to Tame” (Offcultured, 2021) and “motherland” (Jupiter Review, 2021) voice issues relevant to many descendants of the Latin@ diaspora. As a writer with a wide range of talents, I was very interested in hearing more about where she finds her motivation and inspiration.

I was able to chat with Sofía during her time in residency with the Sandra Cisneros Fellowship in Tepoztlán, Mexico—one of the many honors she has received in her writing career. The bright room and window mountain scene served as a backdrop to our conversation and were matched by her vibrant energy.

As an organization with a similar mission, Yellow Arrow Publishing was very excited to hear about the WriteGirl organization. Can you tell me about your experience with WriteGirl and what makes it so successful?

I was referred to WriteGirl by a high school guidance counselor because of my interest in writing. My peers were more STEM-oriented, and he saw the need for a creative community of writers I could relate to.

I met so many amazing people through WriteGirl. The mentees and staff, the women mentors, are so incredible. I cannot say enough good things about it. The workshops are designed to introduce you to all these different genres of writing, not just poetry, and [they] opened my whole world. From an early age, I was exposed to these things I wouldn’t have been otherwise. That’s why I write in so many genres. I write hybrid works and love pushing the boundaries of genre. Aside from writing, it also helped me with professional skills (public speaking and networking) that I still use to this day. And I’m still learning so much. I’m still involved with the program as a volunteer and staff member.

I think it is successful because it is led by so many incredible people. They are passionate about their work, and it shows in everything that they do. There is so much deliberate care taken in the building of relationships. I consider myself so lucky to work with them and help foster the next generation. Giving back to a community that gave me so much. They told me my words mattered and that my voice could resonate with people at a time when I most needed to hear it. The whole structure invites people to come back so the work continues.

What do you love most about writing?

I’ve always wanted to tell stories. I’ve always loved words and language. From an early age, I knew I loved creating new worlds and fantastical things. But when I was younger, I wasn’t exposed to people who resonated with me or reflected my own experience. Not until reading The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. She captures the Mexican American experience so beautifully. It was so impactful, and I wanted to do that. To give representation to someone else who needed it. I wanted to see a world where you shouldn’t have to wait to read a book that represents you. I love that I get to celebrate my heritage, my journey, and uplift women, shed light on social justice issues when I write.

You mentioned the amazing author, Sandra Cisneros. Who else has served as inspiration in your writing journey?

Everything Sandra Cisneros has ever written has become biblical to me. Her work is the kind that you can keep coming back to and learn new things, which is rare for me. I read her at a point where I needed her, and she has become such a relevant figure in my life. Other writers that have really inspired me are Jane Austen, who has impacted the way I look at character and dialogue. Maggie Nelson, in her telling of stories through vignettes. It can be really intimidating to see people writing these huge sagas, and I thought I couldn’t be a writer without writing this huge book. She showed me another way to do it. Salvadoran poet Yesika Salgado has greatly inspired my poetry. Janel Pineda (friend and WriteGirl alum) is another Salvadoran poet I admire. I enjoy reading writers across the Latin@ diaspora.

When you write about culture, how do you balance the honoring of family and people with the critical aspect that comes with acknowledging things (customs/values/mores) that need to change?

One example of this is the way I use the Spanish language in my writing. I don’t italicize Spanish words because it is a language equal to English. But I also talk about (in “motherland”) how Spanish is a colonizer language. Spanish is beautiful and romantic and the language of our people, but we have to acknowledge that it is so widespread across Latin America because of colonization. On the other hand, in the United States, Spanish is seen as an enemy language, not to be spoken in certain areas. It is such a complicated dichotomy. There are some contexts in which speaking Spanish feels like something that brings shame or needs to be hidden away, and in this aspect, we should empower it. But also, it is used to silence Indigenous languages. So, there is a need to both celebrate and question the history of the language.

What work in progress are you most excited about?

I have so many ideas for so many things. I have so much to say, and so many ways to say them. Right now, I’m most excited about the novel in verse I am writing. There are so many possibilities for the characters and story. It is challenging but rewarding.

What advice would you give other women writers?

Write the story you haven’t read yet but want to read. That’s what is motivating my novel in verse. Nobody has written this story and it made me ask, why? This is my biggest motivator for writing. When I haven’t seen something done or done well, I want to be the answer to that question. Write the stories you want other people to read. What the world is missing. That urgency is so helpful to the writing process. Write what we need.

And also, rest. This is something I have learned during this residency. I have come to see writing as a service. We are storytellers. Someone here said something like, “Writers think they are not serving if they are not writing. But part of the writing process is to rest. Sit in silence with yourself.” So, you don’t have to be productive all the time. You are allowed to rest.

You can follow Sofía on Twitter @sofiaxaguilar and find more information about her writing career on her website. I am looking forward to reading more of her words. To see her writing what the world needs.

Melissa Nunez is a homeschooling mother of three from the Rio Grande Valley. Her essays and poetry have appeared in Sledgehammer Lit, Yellow Arrow Journal, and others. She is also a staff writer for Alebrijes Review. Her writing is inspired by observation of the natural world, the dynamics of relationships, and the question of belonging. You can follow her on Twitter @MelissaKNunez.

*****

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 10/5/21 Kapua Iao 10/5/21

Lunchbox Moments: A Zine to Emphasize the Importance of Community

By Rachel Vinyard

We aim to provide a platform for AAPI voices to express:
1.     anger and shame roused by racist microaggressions we may have experienced in relation to our cultural foods,
2.     pride, joy, and other emotions relating to our cultural foods, and
3.     how we have integrated deeper practices emerging from these experiences to honor those emotions.

When I was first introduced to the Lunchbox Moments zine and its mission, I was ecstatic to learn more. I was excited to know that there was a zine that gave the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islanders) community a platform to speak their truths and talk about very real issues that haven’t been widely discussed until recently. When I sat down to read Lunchbox Moments, it felt as though I were experiencing a world that was unique from mine. A world of fear, shame, and hurt brought on by ignorant, unapologetic people. Diversity is important for storytelling because every story is worth being heard.

Food is an especially important thing to immigrants because it keeps them connected to their culture. Lunchbox Moments is a zine that eloquently and beautifully portrays real stories about the struggles and xenophobia in the AAPI community regarding their food culture. Created by Anthony Shu, Diann Leo-Omine, and Shirley Huey, this zine showcases 26 AAPI writers, including Christine Hsu whose creative nonfiction piece “Mother Tongues of Confusion, Shame, and Love” appeared in Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. IV, No. 1, Renascence. The zine is a compilation of a variety of different experiences regarding food in the AAPI community. Lunchbox Moments also supports Chinatown’s Community Development Center (CCDC) in San Francisco.

Anthony, Diann, and Shirley recently took the time to answer some questions for us.

Please introduce yourselves and tell us how you decided to work together to create Lunchbox Moments. Why Lunchbox Moments?

Anthony: We met at the San Francisco Cooking School’s Food Media Lab in 2019 and had always wanted to work on a project together. Lunchbox Moments was born out of the pandemic and discussions of race and inequality that dominated 2020. As we went through various ideas on how we could collaborate, we witnessed increased attention on Anti-Asian hate crimes in early 2021. For me, this time period reinstated the importance of uplifting Asian American voices because our stories often go untold. How can we address discrimination against AAPI communities when our country lacks a shared discourse or knowledge of who this group encompasses/our history/our struggles? The theme of lunchbox moments was a way for us to combine our interests in food/food media with sharing Asian American experiences.

Diann: Lunchbox Moments came about because of the perfect storm, really. Food media is still overwhelmingly nondiverse, even as discussions on cultural appropriation and who can make whose culture’s food have begun to take shape. Asian Americans have also long been silenced or perceived as apolitical, so creating this platform was our “lane” in the activist sense.

Shirley: From our first moment of connecting in 2019, Diann, Anthony, and I have been talking about our respective and mutual interests and experiences in food and cooking—personal and professional (we each have worked in some capacity in restaurants/food), writing, and the political and cultural intersections of those subjects. We each love food deeply and find personal meaning and joy in cooking. Everything starts there. It’s a bit of a cliché to say this, but I do believe that important conversations often begin at the kitchen or dinner table. Our story is no different: we started talking about our experiences with/in food and our respective interests in food and writing over several lunches (a memorable one at Sai Jai Thai in San Francisco).

On Lunchbox Moments, I wanted to work on something that would, hopefully, be meaningful to readers, relevant to the moment, and also doable. We had real-life constraints of various kinds, but we also wanted to make this work. Speaking for myself, I wasn’t thinking about a platform; I’ve never been particularly quiet about where I stand on political issues. What I did want, though, was to do good work in line with my values, help create a platform for others to tell good stories, and raise money for communities affected deeply by the Covid-19 pandemic.

What was the most challenging part about putting the zine together? How did you address the challenge?

Diann: From a logistics angle, we conceptualized and executed the project entirely remotely. In fact, the first time we were all able to gather in person since meeting in 2019 was only recently. We staked ourselves to an ambitious publication date (about seven months from concept to execution). From an emotional angle, the increase of violence against Asian Americans came to a heartbreaking crescendo with the Atlanta and Indianapolis shootings, not to mention the media’s sudden reportage of violence against Asian elders and especially in the San Francisco Bay Area. We were editing the selected pieces during that time period, and the editorial process was both a cathartic way to process the communal grief but also simultaneously traumatizing. The challenge was keeping ourselves motivated, remotely, when sometimes I think all we wanted was to fall apart or hide underground when our communities were under attack, but we pressed on because we knew the work had to be done.

Shirley: We came together to work on this project because of what we observed during (and before) the pandemic—the negative rhetoric and physical violence directed at Asian Americans. As the pandemic went on, the relentless news coverage of what was happening affected each of us deeply. We were editors, yes, but we were also people observing and experiencing what was happening in the world around us and to our communities, processing the collective grief and also our own individual personal griefs, which were real and deep.

How did we deal with the challenge? I think the most critical thing was that we really trusted each other and held each other through it as colleagues/collaborators. We had weekly meetings to keep us on track, and at certain points, one of us would say, “Hey guys, I just can’t manage this right now.” And the others of us would say, and we meant it, “No problem, you take a little time away from the project. We’ll hold it and keep it going.”

How was Lunchbox Moments conceptualized? What inspired you most to create the zine?

Anthony: When we first thought about this theme, we learned from articles in NPR and Eater that challenged the value of stories about lunchbox moments. These articles argued that the traditional lunchbox moment narrative excluded many AAPI individuals who never have these moments and overemphasized feelings of shame. In response, we broadened our language in our call for submissions. It was inspiring to see the various pieces that came in and how people interpreted the lunchbox moments theme. We heard from writers and artists who had always been proud of their lunch, who felt their lunch hadn’t been Asian enough, and who shared about lunchbox moments in fields beyond food like language and familial relationships.

Diann: Yes, we wanted to shift focus from the stinky food narratives that have been so pervasive that lunchbox moments have become a trope. We sought out narratives that we found most interesting was how many people had lunchbox moments within the community or within themselves. On a personal note, I lost my grandmother and gave birth to my first child in the midst of our short, but ambitious publication process. For me, the zine became a sort of driving force tribute to both my grandmother and my child—of memories past and future.

Shirley: What inspired me the most at the very beginning was the opportunity to showcase stories featuring Asian American writers, to have some creative control over the project, and to do so in a way that was in service to the larger Asian American community. This was a remarkable opportunity to work with my really talented coeditors and friends, to work on compelling subject matter, and to uplift the work of our wonderful writers and artists. It was also an opportunity to learn about what it takes to bring something like this into being.

What do you hope that your readers take away from Lunchbox Moments?

Anthony: I hope people recognize the diversity in the stories told, especially in the range of emotions shared. These aren’t just stories about lunchbox moments focused on shame that elicit rage, guilt, or sadness. To me, this isn’t a collection of stories about Asian Americans being victims of discrimination. Instead, each piece complicates our definitions of being Asian American.

Diann: I hope readers come away with more questions than answers regarding Asian American identity. The Asian American identity has long been boxed in by the “model minority” myth and is not a monolith, and disparities abound between ethnicity, class, color, and generation. Even rereading the stories again today, there are different meanings I pick up every time.

Shirley: What Diann and Anthony said. And also, for some readers, I hope that they come away with a sense of recognition and connection to the stories told. I’ve just been asked to speak to a college-level class on Asian American women writers about Lunchbox Moments and feel so gratified to know that students are reading this work. I hope that readers can see the power of sharing their personal experiences—whatever they are and however they fit into or don’t fit into a particular trope around what it means to be Asian American. And honestly, I really hope that readers come away with a hunger for new food experiences as well as a recognition that meaningful stories about our lives can come in many forms, including about something as seemingly mundane as our everyday interactions with food.

How did you know that storytelling through and about food has power?

Anthony: Food is an important way for immigrants and their descendants to connect to their cultures. In the collection, I witness the different ways this connection is interpreted, lost, or reinforced, often across generations. I feel that many people can connect to this idea of food traditions changing over time. Also, since announcing the zine, I’ve spoken to many people, not just AAPI individuals, who have strong memories about school lunch and the cafeteria. A common theme has been being bullied for receiving free or reduced-price lunch. It seems like there is something formative in those childhood meals.

Diann: With the popularity of platforms like Instagram and Yelp, foodie culture relegates food for its consumptive value. There’s an adrenaline rush in waiting in line for three hours for the next hottest food trend, of taking so many photos the meal gets cold, and then getting your followers to obsess over the geotag location. In our stories, however, food is a character. Food is symbolic, food is catharsis. Food inspires all types of emotions.

Shirley: There are moments in our lives that we never forget—the big moments—the weddings, the births, the deaths, the loves, the trials and tribulations. And then there is the smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. The sweetness of ripe summer strawberries encased in soft whipped cream. The pungent smell of savory salted fish and chicken fried rice. But the two—the big moments and the smaller moments—are not unique and separate. As Diann says so beautifully, food is a character, yes. Food and our interactions with it reveal things about ourselves as characters that are meaningful. This is especially true for some who grow up in families that are not particularly verbal or direct in communicating about emotions and feelings—except about food. When this is so, I think showcasing food in the storytelling can be particularly powerful.

Why did you choose to partner with San Francisco’s CCDC?

Anthony: To clarify, we are not partners with the organization. We just named them as our beneficiary. They operated two iterations of Feed + Fuel Chinatown over the last year and a half, which was a program that combined supporting Chinatown’s residents and its businesses, especially its restaurants. We wanted to respond to the xenophobia that has hurt Chinatown businesses since the start of Covid-19 (and before shutdowns in the U.S.).

Diann: People may not be aware of the racist, segregated history that allowed for the creation of Chinatown and laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Chinese were thereby limited in what occupations they could take, and cooking was one of them. Chinatown and Chinese people have long been synonymous for immigrant communities and Asians, so when [then-President Donald] Trump spouted vitriol like “Kung Flu” and “Chinese virus,” it undoubtedly felt like an invisible history was repeating itself. Yet that time period is not that long ago, as my parents were both born in Chinatown and would have benefitted from an organization like the CCDC if it existed back then. So our decision to donate funds to CCDC was a way of giving back to those historical immigrant roots.

Shirley: We actually put a lot of thought and research into it, knowing that whatever organization we chose needed to be one that the three of us each connected with and supported. Diann and I both grew up in San Francisco, with ties to Chinatown. Anthony grew up in the South Bay, with less of a personal connection to San Francisco Chinatown. We also conceived of the project as having a national focus; we were looking for diverse contributors, not just in terms of cultural identities, but also regional location. So we initially set out to find a beneficiary that contributed to the needs of immigrant restaurant workers, supported Asian American communities, and had a national focus. We looked at entities doing direct service and doing other kinds of more capacity building work. We didn’t want to default to a San Francisco Bay Area based organization just because we happened to be located here. We ended up choosing CCDC because of its long-standing work in San Francisco Chinatown and its tremendous work on the Feed + Fuel program, feeding low-income folks living in Chinatown single room occupancy hotels. We recognize that San Francisco Chinatown-based organizations have been at the forefront of advocacy on behalf of Chinese Americans and Asian Americans nationwide since the beginning of Asian immigration to America.

In what ways can readers support the Asian American community during the pandemic? After the pandemic?

Anthony: Over the last year, I was shocked to have discussions with individuals who never or rarely thought about discrimination against Asian Americans. I hope we can learn more about both the history/legacy of discrimination against AAPI communities and also the parts of these cultures that inspire pride and celebration.

Diann: During and after the pandemic, readers can support the community by patronizing Asian American businesses and following Asian American creators on social media. Of course, the issues are systemic and deeper than capitalism or social media algorithms. Readers can, as Anthony suggested, dig into the history/legacy of discrimination—read anything by Helen Zia or Ronald Takaki and watch the Asian Americans documentary on PBS.

Shirley: Good question. There are many ways in which readers can support the Asian American community during and after the pandemic, some of which Anthony and Diann have already touched on. I think reading about history and discrimination and patronizing Asian American owned businesses are important. I would also add a few more things: slow down and listen. The experiences of Asian Americans (if we can still use that term—a conversation for another time) are multiple and diverse, and we must make space to hear about them. Also: history is now. So when you go to read about the history of Asian Americans, remember to look for sources about what is happening now—and not just about shootings and violence perpetrated against us. Try reading Hyphen magazine, Asian American Writers Workshop’s The Margins. See what’s happening at sites like Asian Americans Advancing Justice—Asian Law Caucus and Asian Prisoner Support Committee. Stand up for people if you see them being bullied or harassed. I recommend the Hollaback Bystander Intervention training.

Have you experienced any lunchbox moments of your own as Asian Americans in a workplace or school setting?

Diann: I’ve experienced my own lunchbox moments from outside but particularly within the Asian American community—from the expectations of me being able to fold immaculately crimped dumplings or steam a perfectly tender whole fish. I never learned to use chopsticks the proper way, and I got called out recently about that—I retorted back to the person that, well, at least I knew how to eat. Even for someone who has cooked professionally, this idea/ideal of perfection while performing Asian identity is stifling, and cuts into complex memories of family, language, and diaspora. It’s something I’m still grappling with to this day.

Shirley: I have experienced lunchbox moments mostly in the workplace or private context from people who would never identify as racist in any way. They were microaggressions—for example, expectations that I would know something about a particular kind of frozen dumplings “because you’re Chinese, you should know” said with absolutely no irony. Another time, the person in charge of ordering a work lunch refused to even consider Chinese food “because it’s so greasy.” She clearly had never had beautiful, nongreasy, delicious Chinese food. I don’t know if this relates to lunchbox moments, but I definitely relate to Diann’s grappling with internal perfectionism and its relation to creation of food. Also, even the notion of perfection could be subject to greater scrutiny. What is perfection in light of differing experiences of what is authentic and real, both in terms of food and in terms of identity?

Will there be a follow-up publication?

Anthony: We are undecided at this time but thank everyone for their generous support.

Diann: (laughs) We had joked that maybe we could start a podcast themed around current events in food media. Stay tuned. In all seriousness, as Anthony had said, we are undecided at this time.

Shirley: Ha, Diann. I would just add that we are undecided, but you know, if someone chose to fund our working together and you know, perhaps help mentor us on the next publication, that might help move us in a certain direction.

Shirley Huey (she/her) is a Chinese-American writer, editor, consultant, daughter, sister, friend, collaborator, cook, music and theater lover, cat mom, and former civil rights attorney. She believes that place and race matter and that we can make the world a better place from wherever we are, right at this moment. Born and raised in San Francisco, Shirley’s writing can be found in such publications as Berkeleyside, Catapult, Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, The Universal Asian, and Endangered Species, Enduring Values, an anthology of San Francisco writers and artists of color. She has received fellowships from VONA, Kearny Street Workshop, SF Writers Grotto’s Rooted and Written, and Mesa Refuge, and is working on a memoir in essays about food, family, and social justice.

Diann Leo-Omine (she/her) is a culinary arts creative and writer rooted in San Francisco (Ramaytush Ohlone land) and the colorfully boisterous Toisanese diaspora. She now resides in the North Central Valley (Nisenan land), in between the ocean and the mountains. Her writing can be found in The Universal Asian and the Write Now SF anthology Essential Truths.

Anthony Shu’s (he/his) first experience in the culinary world came as a breakfast cook at a nonprofit summer program where the “kitchen” consisted of a Presto griddle set up outdoors. He graduated from Princeton University in 2016 and after a brief career in more professional kitchens, Anthony started working at Second Harvest of Silicon Valley and has been focused on client storytelling and multimedia production for the last few years. Also a freelance food writer, his work has been published in Eater SF and the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

Rachel Vinyard is an emerging author from Maryland and a publications intern at Yellow Arrow Publishing. She is working towards her Bachelor’s degree in English at Towson University and has been published in the literary magazine Grub Street. She was previously the fiction editor of Grub Street and hopes to continue editing in the future. Rachel is also a mental health advocate and aims to spread awareness of mental health issues through literature. You can find her on Twitter @RikkiTikkiSavvi and on Instagram @merridian.official.

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Thank you to Anthony, Diann, and Shirley for taking the time to thoughtfully answer Rachel’s questions. Please visit the Lunchbox Moments website to learn more about this initiative and purchase a PDF copy of the zine today!

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Thank you for supporting independent publishing. Visit yellowarrowpublishing.com to learn more about submitting, volunteering, and donating.

(not) just a matchstick

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