Yellow Arrow Publishing announces the release of our second chapbook of 2024, Iridescent Pigeons by Candace Walsh. Since its establishment in 2016, Yellow Arrow has devoted its efforts to advocate for all women-identifying writers through inclusion in the biannual Yellow Arrow Journal as well as single-author publications and Yellow Arrow Vignette, and by providing strong author support, writing workshops, and volunteering opportunities. We at Yellow Arrow are excited to continue our mission by supporting Candace in all her writing and publishing endeavors.
Candace’s poems in Iridescent Pigeons, her debut poetry chapbook, serve as a restoration project by articulating the everyday unsaid of love, not just in romantic contexts, but as a friend, sister, daughter, dog parent, wildflower admirer, and mother. Amid free verse, Candace’s use of archaic poetic forms (the Sapphic stanza, ode, curtal sonnet, and cento) and homages to Virginia Woolf, William Wordsworth, and Gerard Manley Hopkins claims literary legacies that have historically excluded women and queer writers. This wry celebration of good, bad, ugly, thirsty, reverent, compassionate, unrequited, and fully granted love rouses new lexicons of connection and belonging. As poet J. Allyn Rosser observes of Candace, “Her poems—intensely, warily—celebrate familial, platonic, and romantic bonds, even as they ponder vestiges of the trauma love can leave behind.”
Candace is a queer poet, fiction writer, and essayist with Cuban and Greek ancestry and New York and New Mexico roots. She currently calls pastoral southeast Ohio home, where she lives in an old farmhouse with her wife, their two dogs, hundreds of books, and every kitchen and camping gadget you didn’t know you needed (most recent addition: cherry pitter). Iridescent Pigeons is for the black sheep, the eldest daughters, the overly ardent friends, the dissociated, the dispossessed, the ones surprised by love, and the eschewers of received wisdom. The unashamed divorcées, the lost cousins, the off-season travelers, and the cockamamie schemers. The late-in-life lesbians, those called “precocious” and “old souls” as children, the truth-blurters, and the ruminators. The Heathers with two mommies and the exvangelical pantheists, the brash empaths, and the shy extroverts. The family archivists, the stationery collectors, and the forgetful overcommitters. The underestimated and the overcompensators, and all those hungry for the everyday unsaid.
The cover art was created by Anna Chotlos, and cover design was by Laura M. André. Candace stated that she “wanted a pigeon with the right attitude, which [Anna] captured beautifully. The cover pigeon does not have low self-esteem. It is rocking its iridescent neck feathers and looking out at the world with intention. I love it and I love the journey it took us [Anna, Laura, and Candace] on together.”
Paperback and PDF versions of Iridescent Pigeons are now available from the Yellow Arrow bookstore. If interested in purchasing more than one paperback copy for friends and family, check out our discounted wholesale prices here. You can also search for Iridescent Pigeons wherever you purchase your books, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. To learn more about Candace and Iridescent Pigeons, check out our recent interview with her.
You can find out more about Candace and follow her publication news on her website candacewalsh.com and Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @candacewalsh, and connect with Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram, to share some love for this chapbook. You can also share a review to any of the major distributors or by emailing editor@yellowarrowpublishing.com. We’d love to hear from you.
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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.