Gratitude is a Divine Emotion: Yellow Arrow Staff
By Kapua Iao
“Gratitude is a divine emotion: it fills the heart, but not to bursting; it warms it, but not to fever.”
from Shirley by Charlotte Brontë
One of the many ways Yellow Arrow Publishing encourages women writers and women in publishing is through inclusion within the organization itself. We welcome (and thrive with) our volunteers and interns, not only for our own benefit but to also (hopefully) provide a prospective future publisher with some necessary tools and knowledge about the publishing world. And even if a volunteer/intern does not plan to continue within the publishing world, the tools and knowledge of working in a women-led, collaborative organization. One that champions the different and the unique. One that looks for partners and allies rather than simple connections, whether from our own Baltimore community (such as Towson University!) or from further afar.
As Editor-in-Chief, it would be impossible to organize, create, and publish without the incredible help of our volunteer staff and interns. They provide the thought process behind each journal by picking each issue’s theme and reading/voting on each submitted piece. They then read through the chosen submissions and edit them carefully and thoughtfully, not to change the voice of the author but to ensure that the voice flourishes. They provide continuous feedback and proofread the final product before release. And the same goes for our published chapbooks; the process of forming something for publication is thoughtfully long but fulfilling, nonetheless.
We try to find each volunteer, each intern, space in our organization to grow and flourish in the area they are most interested in (and of course where we need the most help!). Past staff members have worked at our live events and at Yellow Arrow House. They hand bound our publications and put as much love and tenderness into each copy as we could hope. Now that we are a mostly virtual publishing company, they focus on editing as well as writing blogs and press releases. They create promotional material and images for our authors and explore or research for future marketing campaigns, events, and collaborations. And above all else, they support. Not only me but our authors as well. I am so thankful to have had them with me on this journey.
So let’s introduce our newest staff members (editorial associates mentioned in an earlier post still volunteering with Yellow Arrow (see here) are Bailey Drumm and Siobhan McKenna). Each has my appreciation, including Michelle Lin who recently left Yellow Arrow to follow her own arrows.
Katherine Chung
Lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland
YA position: marketing intern, June-Aug 2021
What did you do? I created content for the Yellow Arrow social media pages, edited and proofread their website, and wrote personal narrative blogs.
Did you go to Towson University? Yes! I will be graduating in December 2021.
What are you currently working on? I am currently working as a marketing intern for Towson’s dining halls. I work alongside the head of marketing and am associated with Chartwells student success program. I am also working on a short story for a fiction writing class that I am currently taking. Finally, I am volunteering on-and-off campus since I am in a community service fraternity.
Katherine Chung is a senior at Towson University studying English and Creative Writing. She will graduate in December 2021. Katherine currently lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland with her parents. During her free time, she loves to write short stories and memoirs, read young adult books, and update her blog. To read her blog, visit katchung13.wixsite.com/website.
Angela Firman
Lives in Tacoma, Washington
YA position: editorial associate, Sept 2021-present
What have you done so far? I read submissions and copyedit for the Yellow Arrow Journal. I also proofread Yellow Arrow’s first author/staff zines, EMERGE: Pandemic Stories and Coming Into View.
What are you currently working on? I am working toward earning an Editing Certificate from the University of Washington in June 2022. I write and refine my work with a group of fellow breast cancer survivors each week. We met in a Wildfire Magazine writing workshop in early 2020, and we’ve continued to collaborate ever since.
Angela Firman is a Midwesterner at heart living a Pacific Northwest life with her best friend and their hilarious, sometimes demanding, roommates aged 4 and 8. Angela is an avid reader, a closet cross-stitcher, and a fervent writer. While she has always enjoyed journaling, writing became a source of healing for Angela after being diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer at the age of 33. She found a place in the literary world in a writing group for breast cancer survivors—women who have grown to be some of her dearest friends—and now at the University of Washington where she is earning a certificate in editing. Her nonfiction writing has been published in Wildfire Magazine, Open Minds Quarterly, You Might Need To Hear This, and Press Pause. You can find her on Instagram @angelafirman11.
Lisa Roscoe
Lives in Raleigh, North Carolina
YA position: volunteer/reader, May 2021-present
What do you do? Offer support remotely by compiling and organizing an index of bookstores carrying Yellow Arrow publications, as well as reading poetry chapbook submissions.
What are you currently working on? I’m currently working on a collection of poems focusing on phenomenology as a theme.
Lisa Roscoe is an instructional designer, writer, and voiceover artist based in Raleigh, North Carolina. She has created educational content for global tech companies and international nonprofit Goodwill Industries. Outside of her nine-to-five, Lisa practices creative expression in the form of poetry and black-and-white photography.
Darah Schillinger
Lives in Perry Hall, Maryland
YA position: publications intern, May-Aug 2021
What did you do? Created promotional images for social media, proofread, and copyedited.
What are you currently working on? I’m working on my next poetry collection, and I am currently in my last year at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. I have also become president of my school literary magazine, AVATAR, and am overseeing the acceptance and formatting of student literary works for the fall publication.
Darah Schillinger is a senior at St. Mary’s College of Maryland working toward her undergraduate degree in English Literature, Creative Writing, and Philosophy. She has interned for EcoTheo Review before her summer at Yellow Arrow, and she has had poetry published in both her school literary journal, AVATAR, and in the Spillwords Press Haunted Holidays series for 2020. Darah currently lives in Perry Hall, Maryland with her parents and her dog, and when she’s not writing poems, she’s usually drinking tea. After graduation, she hopes to continue writing new work as she pursues a career in publishing.
Rachel Vinyard
Lives in Pasadena, Maryland
YA position: publications intern, Sept 2021-present
What do you do? Copyedit and proofread, read journal and chapbook submissions, make Canva promo images and swag, organize documents and add to research projects, and write and research for blog posts.
Did you go to Towson University? Yes, I am graduating this December.
Did you work for Towson’s Grub Street Literary Magazine? Yes, I was the fiction editor.
What are you currently working on? I am currently finishing my bachelor’s degree at Towson and working on writing my own chapbook and various short stories. I’ve also rediscovered my love of reading, and I’m finding a lot of new genres I enjoy.
Rachel Vinyard is an emerging author from Maryland and the fall 2021 publications intern at Yellow Arrow Publishing. She is working toward a BA in English at Towson University and has been published in its 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.
Thank you to everyone who supports these women and all writers who toil away day after day. Please show them some love in the comments below or on Yellow Arrow’s Facebook or Instagram. If interested in joining us as an editorial associate or intern, email staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com.
If you haven’t had the opportunity yet, please make sure to donate to our Turning the Next Page fundraising campaign. Yellow Arrow is able to share stories of writers who identify as women because of our incredible community of supporters. Your assistance contributes to the publication of our journal as well as our incredible chapbooks and zines.
Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Thank you for supporting independent publishing.