Closed Doors, Open Hearts
Dear Yellow Arrow friends,
We are writing today to let you know about the conclusion of Yellow Arrow House. While the doors on our dream of creating a physical, communal space for writers to gather, learn, share, and create have closed, we assure you that our work supporting women writers and artists continues.
After a final blessing of the House last week, in gratitude for all the good energy and passion you all brought to the space, our Board of Directors gathered to reimagine, refine, and breathe life back into our original vision, which was to create a refuge for writers. This time, in a different way.
The community we’ve enjoyed being part of here in Baltimore, and especially in Highlandtown, has been truly restorative and inspiring. We want you to know the impact you’ve made on women writers everywhere by supporting their work. As our mission evolves, please know that we carry this same spirit of hospitality in our hearts and in our hands. And as always, we will let you know more about our shifts and transformations in the upcoming moments as transparency and inclusion always remain important in our hearts.
It has been a long and emotional road to finally let the dream of the House go. At the beginning of the year, we knew this was a risky endeavor with a high potential for failure. We did it anyway out of a desire to create a refuge for women writers. A place to gather and support one another. While the closing of the House is a combination of financial and staffing concerns, especially given the current worldwide pandemic, we also see this as a necessary opportunity to dismantle and start again as we have come to understand that we went about creating a “safe space” in a problematic way. We encourage you all, in your personal quests to support women, to embrace intersectional feminism as our lives and our hearts do overlap. If one of us faces a problem, we all must face that problem. We appreciate those that contributed to our collective wisdom process earlier in the summer, it has been extremely helpful and healing.
As our publication capacity expands, it is also changing. While our volunteer team will no longer be folding and stitching our publications by hand, we are excited to offer a full slate of chapbook releases through 2021 in addition to the biannual Yellow Arrow Journal. Learn more about self-healing from our first chapbook, Smoke the Peace Pipe by Roz Weaver, released earlier this month. Discover your inner warrior with Linda M. Crate in the samurai, to be released in the fall. Look also for our Writers-in-Residence 2020 publication as our four residents explore their year with pen and paper. And stay tuned for incredible heartfelt publications from our authors in 2021. As for the journal, we can’t help but feel we chose a meaningful theme for the next issue (fall 2020, Vol. V, No. 3; submissions open September 1-30): (Re)Formation. Especially now as everyone’s lives have been transformed, for better or worse, emotionally and physically, personally and communally. One final note about publications: we have decided to dissolve our journal subscriptions program (current subscriptions will be fulfilled) and focus on each issue, each group of authors. Check our website periodically as we begin updating and exploring our new options. Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling.
Logistically, everything that is currently on our calendar will remain in a virtual context. All workshops will continue online through 2021, including “A Year in Poetry” with Ann Quinn and “Elements of Story” with Ariele Sieling. We are also looking into adding new online workshop opportunities, which we will share as they emerge.
At the housewarming gathering back in January, we shared a nondenominational blessing together that we find even more relevant today as our focus shifts. Written by Alyssa Kaplan, former Vicar at Breath of God Lutheran Church in Highlandtown, we hope you find some comfort and hope in the prayer below.
As we gather today to honor this new chapter in the life of Yellow Arrow, we recognize that this is but one piece of the story of this place.
We honor this place and the fullness of its history. We honor the different families and businesses of 335 S Conkling. We acknowledge the ways that this place was a sacred vessel for those in its past, holding grief and joy, peace and conflict, anxiety and possibility.
We acknowledge that long before this land was dominated, divided, and commodified with street names and numbers it was cared for and treasured by the Piscataway people. In inhabiting this place we again remember that we inhabit their land. And we pray that this acknowledgement would transform our hearts and make us better partners with and protectors of our earth.
And so as we seek to bless the community that will grow here and the stories that will be shared here, we ask that this place would also give its blessing to us.
May this be a space of radical welcome and grace for all.
May this be a place where all may come to know the vital importance, and Holy uniqueness of their own story.
May this be a house which is attentive and responsive to the realities of the pain and suffering of its neighbors.
May this space become such a powerful holder of Divine creativity that once one enters here, they cannot help but see themselves in that same way--as beautiful vessels of Divine creativity.
May the justice cultivated in this community be an antidote to the sins of patriarchy, queer and transphobia, white supremacy, greed, and violence which infect our neighborhood, city, and world.
May this home offer rest to the weary, comfort to the hurting, inspiration to the stagnant, direction to the aimless.
May this place radiate love, warmth, peace and goodness.
In the name of the Holy Creating Spirit which enlivens our world we pray.
Amen.
With love,
Yellow Arrow Publishing Board of Directors
Gwen Van Velsor, Kapua Iao, Sara Palmer, Gina Strauss, Kerry Graham