Meet the 2025 Yellow Arrow Publishing Best of the Net Nominees
Best of the Net recognizes the work of writers published online by independent presses. The project was started in 2006 by Sundress Publications to create a community among the online literary magazines, journals, and self-publishing platforms. The award represents an incredible opportunity for Yellow Arrow Publishing to further showcase and support our authors. Our staff is committed to letting our authors’ shine. Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling.
Here are our Best of the Net 2025 nominees from Vignette SPARK. You can find some of our authors reading from SPARK on the Yellow Arrow YouTube channel. Best of the Net announces the winners in January.
Angela Acosta
Angela Acosta (she/her) is a bilingual Latina poet and an assistant professor of Spanish at the University of South Carolina. She is a 2022 Dream Foundry Contest for Emerging Writers finalist, 2022 Somos en Escrito Extra-Fiction Contest honorable mention, and Utopia Award nominee. Her work has appeared in Panochazine, Pluma, Toyon Literary Magazine, and The Acentos Review. Her creative and academic work centers on imagining possible worlds and preserving the cultural legacies of women writers. She is the author of Summoning Space Travelers (Hiraeth Publishing, 2022), A Belief in Cosmic Dailiness (Red Ogre Review, 2023), and her forthcoming chapbook, Fourth Generation Chicana Unicorn (Dancing Girl Press, 2024).
Tijanna O. Eaton
“And Her Eyes Fell from the Scale”
creative nonfiction
Finally, animated by their generous and generative support, the chapter was complete. The ouroboros had uncoiled fully, metamorphosing into a dragon.
Tijanna O. Eaton (Tə-zha-na; she/her) is a Black poly kinkster queerdo pocket butch with a high school diploma and a rap sheet. She has been published in Honey Literary, Noyo Review, Panorama Journal (nominated for a Pushcart Prize), and Yellow Arrow Vignette SPARK. She received the 2021 Unicorn Authors Club Alumni award, was a 2023 Rooted & Written Fellow, and was the 2024 Best of the Net nonfiction judge. Tijanna is board chair of Five Keys Schools and Programs, served on QWOCMAP’s board from 2016 to 2018, and was IMsL’s POC liaison from 2015 to 2017. Visit bolt-cutters.com for more information.
Marisa Victoria Gedgaudas
“Colygraphia”
poetry
. . . . The syrupy seduction of believing that I can be a keeper of stories but not the teller of them.
Marisa Victoria Gedgaudas is a writer originally from Colorado who now lives on the windswept bluffs of northern California. She is most inspired by the wild beauty around her and is often found exploring the mountains of her childhood, the unspoiled Pacific coast, and the desert landscapes in between. She is currently working on her first collection of poetry.
Charlene Langfur
“The Way Back”
poetry
. . . steady
or true, a time to rebuild a small world
that works when I am trying to put
myself back together this way
in time . . .
Charlene Langfur is an LGBTQ and green writer and an organic gardener living in the very hot, southern Californian desert. She was a graduate fellow in the Syracuse University Writing Program and her most recent publications include poems in Poetry East (the special Monet edition), The Hiram Poetry Review, London’s Acumen, and The North Dakota Quarterly.
Laurel Maxwell
“A Full Life”
poetry
. . . . To fold ourselves like a paper crane into the creases of delicate existence.
Laurel Maxwell is a poet from Santa Cruz, California, whose work is inspired by life’s mundane and the natural world. Her work has appeared at baseballballard.com, coffecontrails, phren-z, Verse-Virtual, Tulip Tree Review, and Yellow Arrow Vignette SPARK. Her creative fiction was a finalist for Women on Writing Flash Fiction Contest. She has a chapbook forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2025. When not writing Laurel enjoys putting her feet in the sand, reading, traveling, and trying not to make too much of a mess baking in a too small kitchen. She works in education.
Katherine Shehadeh
“My son wants to know what happened before the universe &”
poetry
today we learned the universe was created by fire—an explosion tinier than a tiny pin prick, and the universe, it’s expanding all the time, stretching this way, pulling that, until a moment when it isn’t and it gets smaller & tighter, until it turns back into a tiny little thing, tinier than a pin prick.
Katherine Shehadeh is a poet, artist, and current reader for Chestnut Review who resides with her family in Miami, Florida. Her recent poems appear in Maudlin House, Drunk Monkeys, Saw Palm, and others. Find her on Twitter @your_mominlaw or Instagram @katherinesarts.
Ann van Wijgerden
“Dear Planet”
poetry
. . . . But it was the waters captivating me in aqua hues, light scattering diamantine, undulating surfaces, their expanses exhaling, inhaling, exhaling.
Ann van Wijgerden, born in the United Kingdom, has spent most of her adult life in the Netherlands and the Philippines. She has had nonfiction, poetry, and fiction published (or accepted for future publication) in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Genre: Urban Arts, Orion, Orbis, The Sunlight Press, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Yellow Arrow Vignette SPARK, The Wild Umbrella, and the Queen’s Quarterly. Ann cofounded and works for an NGO called Young Focus (youngfocus.org), which provides education for children living in Manila’s area of ‘Smokey Mountain.’
Veronica Wasson
“On Clothing (Five Pieces)”
creative nonfiction
Clothing was the most visible manifestation of what I was and what I wasn’t; of who I wanted to be and who I dreamed of becoming.
Veronica Wasson (she/her) is a trans writer living in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in Spectrum, smoke + mold, The Seventh Wave, Yellow Arrow Vignette SPARK, and elsewhere. You can find her work at veronica-wasson.com.
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