Igniting a SPARK: Yellow Arrow Vignette Submissions Now Open
By Siobhan McKenna
Welcome to the first day of open submissions for Yellow Arrow Vignette! Now in its second season, Yellow Arrow Vignette is an online creative nonfiction and poetry series developed to better feature women-identifying writers and share their voices beyond Yellow Arrow Journal and our single-author and collaborative publications. In 2022, the inaugural season of Vignette on the theme AWAKEN, authors meditated on the spaces where the unknown comes into light. The poetry and prose published last July through to September awakened us to the shape our love can take for a parent who we didn’t see eye to eye with, the healing power of carrying on ancestors’ legacy long suppressed by colonialism, and the beauty in the “glowing yolk” of a sunset as it slides into the ocean among many other stories.
This year, submissions for Vignette are open from May 1 to 31 and will align with the 2023 Yellow Arrow yearly value: SPARK.
SPARK
: to set off in a burst of activity
: someone or something that ignites an idea
The German novelist and philosopher, Thomas Mann said, “If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.”
What notion or thought has you reaching for your pen or keyboard?
How do you keep that idea or spark lit when faced with interruptions that tell us creative work is frivolous or a luxury rather than a necessity?
From whom or what do you harness your inspiration to maintain your spark? In strangers on city sidewalks, blooming sculpture gardens, daily WORDLE rituals, in the words of fellow writers or ?
Through the guiding theme of SPARK, we invite you to reflect on what ignites your creativity and how you see that reflected back as you move throughout your daily life.
After assembling a collection about awakening, I love that SPARK is our 2023 yearly and Vignette theme as it is a natural next step. An awareness can only lead to a certain point; then there must be an inciting action to propel an idea into being. Yellow Arrow board president, Mickey Revenaugh, spoke of a spark earlier this year as “a precondition, necessary but not sufficient.” When an idea arrives, sparks are vital—they are the lifeblood for creativity. Yet, sparks sometimes fade when it comes to the nitty-gritty, the long hours that must be undertaken in order to have an idea come to fruition. It is then, within the drudgery of labor, when faced with self-doubt and fear (who even wants to hear what I have to say?), that it is essential to remember the spark that drove you to begin your journey.
I’m also fond of SPARK because of the word’s sensory associations. When I think of a spark, I hear the sound of July nights when the fizzing hum of a lit firework shoots into the sky and erupts with a loud crack. I feel the heat on my fingertips from the fleeting flame of a matchstick. I see the pyrotechnic emissions from a sparkler marking the end of a wedding reception and smell the smoky mix of burnt residue rising into the air. I’m just not sure of what a spark tastes like—although Pop Rocks, the fruity flavored popping candy, could be similar to tasting a spark: a frenetic tap dancing on my tastebuds. Yes, perhaps that’s it.
No matter what you conjure when you think of SPARK, I hope you are encouraged to find that impulse behind your work and submit to Vignette! With the pieces in this issue, we want to nudge each other into remembering the reasons for crafting emotions from letters and symbols; the motivation for sharing a slice of worldview that is wildly different from another’s and still, resonates in our core.
For Yellow Arrow Vignette 2023, we are looking for creative nonfiction and poetry by writers who identify as women on the theme of SPARK. Submissions can be in any language as long as an English translation accompanies them. For more information regarding submission guidelines and how to submit, please visit yellowarrowpublishing.com/vignette/submissions. Make sure to read the guidelines carefully before submitting. If you have any questions, send them to submissions@yellowarrowpublishing.com. Vignette will publish two pieces each week beginning on July 3 and ending with our authors coming together for a reading on September 6.
We look forward to reading the submissions for Yellow Arrow Vignette and sharing these stories with you. Since its founding in 2016, Yellow Arrow has worked tirelessly to make an impact on the local and global community by advocating for writers that identify as women. Yellow Arrow proudly represents the voices of women from around the globe. Creating diversity in the literary world and providing a safe space is deeply important. Every writer has a story to tell, every story is worth telling.
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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.