Yellow Arrow Publishing Blog

Kapua Iao 5/31/22 Kapua Iao 5/31/22

An Interview with a Publisher and English Professor, Sufiya Abdur-Rahman

By Piper Sartison

Sufiya Abdur-Rahman is an author, English professor at Washington College, and publisher. Her recent novel is titled Heir to the Crescent Moon (2021; University of Iowa Press), where she writes about her personal experiences growing up in a black Muslim family in America. Sufiya has won the Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction and continues to focus on other future writing projects while she pursues her career in teaching.

Sufiya has taught me in two different writing classes at Washington College, and she has provided excellent insight on writing to her students. When I asked to interview her, she kindly agreed, and we set up a zoom call. Over the call, we discussed her book and her impact on the writing community as well as her passion for teaching.

What motivated you to become a writer?

I think I grew up around a lot of storytellers in my family. My grandfather, in particular, was one who would often tell stories about when he grew up in the [Jim Crow South]. He had an interesting way of telling stories about that; they were really engaging, and everyone would gather around to hear what he had to say. And later on, he started to write these stories down and turn them into creative nonfiction pieces. . . . He knew that I liked writing as well so sometimes, he would show me stories and ask [about my opinion]. Over the years, I would work with him on things and help him out with [endings] on pieces that he put together. . . . My mother also is a storyteller. . . . Listening to her tell stories also influenced me to [become] a storyteller [but more in the nonfiction realm].

What inspired you to write about your personal life in Heir to the Crescent Moon?

Initially, I just wanted to tell a story about second generation black Muslims. I felt like there was a story out there that hadn’t been told before and I was interested in finding out enough information about it to be able to write a book. My book idea was more journalistic. [I wanted] to [interview] other people and find out what it was like to grow up as a second-generation black Muslim, find out about their parents’ stories and kind of compile them into this book. I went to grad school with this idea in mind to try to get some direction on how I can turn something that started off small into something bigger. . . . I found a way to incorporate what I was hearing from the folks that I was interviewing into what I was writing about my own family.

What do you love about writing or teaching? Do they go hand in hand? Or would you like to focus on writing more in the future?

I really just enjoy trying to figure out new, different, and interesting ways to express ideas. There [are] so many pieces out there [such as books, articles, and essays], and a lot of what people have in mind to say has already been said. I feel like my challenge as a writer is [to] find some other way to say something that someone hasn’t said before. It’s not always possible, which makes it really hard. . . . When I’m sitting down to write, I feel like the process of trying to discover something new or different or unique within myself and how I express something is what keeps me engaged in it. I really enjoy teaching because I enjoy trying to spark the love of writing in other people, too. In particular young people because [I feel like there are] so many stories out there that need to be told. Everyone has one. Even if you’re not writing about yourself and you’re reporting on other people, you can do the work to try to figure out what their story is and bring that to the floor. The more stories that are out there, the more people get to know about other people and that’s just [what life is all about], getting to know other people, [and] trying to understand this whole human experience more concretely.

How has the writing community influenced your creativity as a writer, English professor, and publisher?

I just went to the associated writing programs conference in Philadelphia where I got the chance to be around a lot of writers, and it was the first time I had been to one of those in a really long time. I was amazed by how huge this conference was. There were panels about so many different topics, all happening at the same time. You really got a chance to see poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and all of these little nuances within each genre; all of these little pockets of different writing communities together. It just made me think about how wide and vast our community is, and how many different ways there are to tell a story, how many different focuses on a story there are, which I found really inspiring.

I think the writing community in an event like that [or on twitter for example] is a very vibrant writing community. You’re always hearing about new projects that are out there; books, essays that you should read. It just keeps people engaged, probably in a way that wasn’t possible without the internet. It’s really just inspiring for me to try to be a part of this community with writers.”

Do you have any advice to aspiring women writers in the community?

My advice to all aspiring writers is to read as much as possible. Read what’s out there, read writers you want to try to be like. [The] best teacher that you can have [is] the work that’s already been published. There’s so much of it, there’s almost no way to really read everything that’s out there, and so the work [that] a young aspiring writer has is to read as much as possible. There’s just a wealth of really great stuff.

You can find Heir to the Crescent Moon at the University of Iowa Press: uipress.uiowa.edu/books/9781609387822/heir-to-the-crescent-moon.

Sufiya Abdur-Rahman’s writing investigates questions of family, identity, race, and religion and, often, how they intersect. Her essays, articles, and criticism have appeared in publications including Catapult, The Common Online, Gay Mag, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and NPR. She has earned Notable distinction in Best American Essays, received fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and is a two-time alumnus of VONA writing workshops. She is Creative Nonfiction Editor for Cherry Tree, a national literary journal, at Washington College, where she teaches nonfiction. She lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with her family.

Piper Sartison was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. Her favorite subject in school was English, and she followed her passion for writing into college. Piper attends Washington College in Maryland and is a sophomore, majoring in English and minoring in Journalism. She is a competing member of the women’s tennis team and writes for The Elm, a local community newspaper. When she is not working or playing tennis, she spends her time with friends, watches movies, or enjoys journaling in her notebook.

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Yellow Arrow recently revamped and restructured its Yellow Arrow Journal subscription plan to include two levels. Do you think you are an Avid Reader or a Literary Lover? Find out more about the discounts and goodies involved at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/yellow-arrow-journal-subscription. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

You can support us as we AWAKEN in a variety of ways: 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 102, Glen Arm, MD 21057). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Kapua Iao 5/27/22 Kapua Iao 5/27/22

Her View Friday

Yellow Arrow Publishing supports women-identifying writers from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes us stronger. Women’s voices have historically been underrepresented in literature, and we aim to elevate those voices and stories through our programs, publications, and support.

Part of our mission in supporting and uplifting women writers is to promote the Yellow Arrow community’s individual accomplishments. We’d like to further expand that support and promotion outside of our Yellow Arrow publications. Twice a month, we’d like to give a shout out to those within the Yellow Arrow community who recently published:

single-author publications
single pieces in journals, anthologies, etc.

You can support our authors by reading this blog and their work, sharing their news, and commenting below or on the blog. Congratulations to all the included authors. We are so proud of you!

Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling.

“Disappointed” by Sandra Kacher from Minnesota

Genre: poetry

Name of publisher: Galway Review

Date published: January 28, 2022

Type of publication: print and online

thegalwayreview.com/2022/01/28/sandra-kacher-disappointed/

“Dissolving” by Sandra Kacher from Minnesota

Genre: poetry

Name of publisher: Galway Review

Date published: March 23, 2022

Type of publication: print and online

thegalwayreview.com/2022/03/23/sandra-kacher-dissolving/

“Paul Bunyan Takes a Lover” and “Cassiopeia” by Jessica Gregg from Baltimore, Maryland

Genre: poetry

Name of publisher: Hedge Apple

Date published: March 31, 2022

Type of publication: print and online

hcc-hedgeapple.hagerstowncc.edu/index.php/2022/03/31/paul-bunyan-takes-a-lover-by-jessica-gregg/

hcc-hedgeapple.hagerstowncc.edu/index.php/2022/03/31/cassiopeia-by-jessica-gregg/

You can find Jessica on Instagram @jj_greg and Facebook @jessicajgregg.

“The Cost of Miscarriage” (content warning: miscarriage) by Annie Marhefka from Baltimore, Maryland

Genre: creative nonfiction

Name of publisher: Pithead Chapel

Date published: April 1, 2022

Type of publication: online

pitheadchapel.com/the-cost-of-miscarriage/

You can find Annie on Instagram @anniemarhefka and Twitter @charmcityannie.

“One Good Thing” by Claire Taylor from Baltimore, Maryland

Genre: prose poetry

Name of publisher: Lost Balloon

Date published: April 20, 2022

Type of publication: online

lost-balloon.com/2022/04/20/one-good-thing-claire-taylor/

You can find Claire on Twitter @ClaireM_Taylor and on Instagram @todayweread.

“Cause and Effect,” “Love of Hate,” “just a body,” “No Say,” and “Bleeding Hearts” by Chris Biles from Washington, D.C.

Genre: poetry

Name of publisher: Another New Calligraphy

Date published: April 28, 2022

Type of publication: online

anothernewcalligraphy.com/biles-5poems.html

You can find Chris on Instagram @marks.in.the.sand.

“PTSD” by Chris Biles from Washington, D.C.

Genre: poetry

Name of publisher: Cajun Mutt Press

Date published: May 4, 2022

Type of publication: online

cajunmuttpress.wordpress.com/2022/05/04/cajun-mutt-press-featured-writer-05-04-22/

You can find Chris on Instagram @marks.in.the.sand.

Also, check out Ute Carson's poem, "Flooded with Love," which was shared on social media by Motherwell Magazine UK: facebook.com/motherwellmag/photos/2852090121755709.

Yellow Arrow (past and present) board, staff, interns, authors, residents, and instructors alike! Got a publication coming out? Let us help celebrate for you in Her View Friday.

Single-author publications: here.

Single pieces: here.

Please read the instructions on each form carefully; we look forward to congratulating you!

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Kapua Iao 5/24/22 Kapua Iao 5/24/22

Pivotal Moments: Yellow Arrow Journal (Vol. VII, No. 1) UpSpring

As Rebecca Pelky, guest editor of Yellow Arrow Journal Vol. VII, No. 1, UpSpring, made final decisions about the just released issue, she understood that an upspring for one person does not happen or resolve as it could or would for someone else. One moment in time more than likely means something different to everyone involved. This is why rather than focus on solely happy upsprings, the chosen pieces within the journal issue offer poignant, unique interpretations of what the theme means:

Some [pieces] focus on that thrilling moment of fruitfulness in which an upspring occurs, while others remind us that some upsprings happen only after or because of desperately difficult times. Any act of creation is necessarily tumultuous, so in these pages we celebrate while we also recognize and commiserate with all that birth and life and love entail, as only women can.

With this thought, we are thrilled to release UpSpring, the latest issue of Yellow Arrow Journal. We are privileged to share the voices within and on the cover. Thank you for supporting us and our authors and artists, and we hope you consider how your own pivotal moments, your own upsprings, reflect those explored within the journal.

The issue features Heather Brown Barrett, Sarah Helen Bates, Kamella Bird-Romero, Emma Bishop, Julia Burke, Zorina Exie Frey, Joyce Hayden, Raychelle Heath, Jericho M. Hockett, Whitney Hudak, Julia Hwang, Karen Kilcup, Merie Kirby, Ren Pike, Vanesha Pravin, Darah Schillinger, Kay Smith-Blum, Jillian Stacia, Liane St. Laurent, Jaime Warburton, Elyse Welles, Kory Wells, and Beth Winegarner. You can learn more about the beautiful cover art, “Spiritual Journey,” and how it reflects an upspring of our cover artist, April Graff, at yellowarrowpublishing.com/news/upspring-cover-reveal-spiritual-journey.

Rebecca was one of Yellow Arrow’s ANFRACTUOUS poets with her incredible piece “Nuhpuhk’hqash Qushki Qipit (Braids).” She holds a PhD from the University of Missouri, an MFA from Northern Michigan University, and is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Clarkson University. She is a member of the Brothertown Indian Nation of Wisconsin and a native of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Through a Red Place, her second poetry collection and winner of the 2021 Perugia Press Prize, was released in September 2021. Her first book, Horizon of the Dog Woman, was published by Saint Julian Press in 2020.

Paperback and PDF versions are now available from the Yellow Arrow bookstore. Discounts are also available (here) if you would like to purchase copies for friends and family (minimum purchase of five). You can also search for Yellow Arrow Journal on any e-book device or anywhere you purchase books, including Amazon and most other distribution channels.

On June 28, please join Rebecca and our authors for the live and virtual “Moments in Time: An UpSpring Reading.” More information is forthcoming, but you can let us know that you plan on supporting contributors here.

We hope you enjoy reading UpSpring as much as we enjoyed creating it. Congratulations to Rebecca for all her hard work. Thank you to the Yellow Arrow team for their diligence and thoughtful comments during the editing process. Cover design is by Alexa Laharty; editing is by Isabelle Anderson, Angela Firman, Siobhan McKenna, Ann Quinn, Piper Sartison, and Rachel Vinyard. And thank you for your continued encouragement of Yellow Arrow Publishing and the women involved in UpSpring.

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Kapua Iao 5/18/22 Kapua Iao 5/18/22

Confessions of an Unschooled Poet: Learning that Some Rules are Meant to be Broken

By Amy L. Bernstein

I first composed a poem as an adult around 1986. I read it out loud to my boyfriend at the time, my whole body shaking. Sharing an original poem handwritten on a scrap of notepaper, after several hasty drafts, seemed like a subversive act. I had never felt more vulnerable or exposed than when reading those lines.

That poem did not survive and neither did the relationship. All I can recall (about the poem, not the guy) is that I used metaphors involving textiles to express something about the act of creative writing itself. I think the last line went something like, “In the end, the poem sews itself.”

After that little experiment, I did not write another poem until early in 2019—three decades on. I didn’t know how. I didn’t think I should. I didn’t feel qualified. I assumed I couldn’t simply barge into the world of poets and poetry and find a berth.

After all, as an English literature major in college, I had read tons of so-called classic fiction, from Shakespeare and Chaucer to Thackeray and Eliot. But I did not take a single poetry class (if you exclude Shakespeare) and I did not read poetry for pleasure.

Poetry struck me as an entirely separate branch of literature, off in its own corner, speaking to the cognoscenti. Either the cryptic lines yielded up their secret messages to you—invited you to decode their meaning—or they didn’t. Poetry had rules! So many rules! I knew how to write topic sentences and coherent paragraphs; I knew how to develop and support a thesis statement.

But poems snaked along the page like hieroglyphics, and I lacked the knowledge to decipher or unpack them. I didn’t know a sestina from a villanelle. I figured if I wasn’t willing to study the rules, then I couldn’t (and perhaps, shouldn’t) attempt any of the forms.

Which is not to say that I was totally immune to all of poetry’s seductive charms.

There were moments over the years when a poem (mainly from the traditional Eurocentric canon I was exposed to) briefly turned my head. “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg (I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness . . .). T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo.). Snippets of Walt Whitman (I sing the body electric—a great line in an otherwise not-so-great piece). Amiri Baraka’s chilling, incantatory “Somebody Blew Up America” (who WHO WHO . . .).

But I continued, for the most part, to hold poetry at arm’s length. I left the form to those who were perhaps more patient, more intuitive, or maybe just smarter, than I.

Then came 2019 and something shifted. Was the shift in me, as a writer finding my voice in different forms (playwrighting, novels, essays)? Was the shift occurring in the wider world, given rising levels of injustice, civil unrest, uncivil discourse? I believe it was both.

I sat down at my computer one day four years ago and recognized that a poem was the only form adequate to expressing what I needed to say, just then. I was in the grip of a mild depression, feeling raw—and feeling too much.

Paradoxically, poetry’s stringent economy of language is well suited to big emotions. Compression of form yields expansion of expression.

My subconscious must have understood that premise when I began writing poetry. I dove in because I wanted to, needed to. I cast aside self-conscious concerns about not knowing what I was doing. I wouldn’t let my lack of formal mastery get in the way of what I wanted to say.

First lines from a first poem:

Nothing is wrong with you / You are a glassine harbor on a windless day.

I wrote only free verse from then on (and still do), on the theory that I’m not equipped to compose in more formal forms. I still don’t know a sestina from a villanelle, but so what?

Now, I love making more with less; scraping words away until only the necessary ones remain; finding precisely the right metaphor to create both image and feeling. I love the look of a completed poem on the page, how the ragged lines and unpredictable line groupings keep your eyes moving and the rhythms flowing.

I love how a poem can’t be anything other than itself. Form follows function.

I’m still an uneducated poet. I don’t routinely read poetry, though I do listen to it on a semi-regular basis. I don’t expect I’ll ever grasp more about poetry as an art form than my own practice teaches me.

While others may fault me for my attitude, I’m okay with it. Writers should follow their muses, wherever they lead—or don’t lead.

The lesson I’ve learned from my late lurch into poetry, which I’d like to share with writers everywhere, is that you should always allow your creative heart to be your guide. There is no art form that is off-limits; no door that is closed to you; no club to which you may not belong as a writer, when it comes to the marriage of form and subject matter.

Even though I still hesitate to call myself a “poet,” I fully embrace the act of writing poetry. After all, the label is not what matters. In the end, it’s all about the work you create and share, in any form you dream up. Honor your calling, no matter what it’s called.

Amy L. Bernstein writes for the page, the stage, and forms in between. Her novels include The Potrero Complex, The Nighthawkers, Dreams of Song Times, and Fran, The Second Time Around. Amy’s poetry leans heavily on free-form prose poems that address psychological and political states of mind. Amy is an award-winning journalist, playwright, and certified nonfiction book coach.

Visit her website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Thank you for supporting independent publishing.

Kapua Iao 5/17/22 Kapua Iao 5/17/22

The Publishing Dilemma

By Angela Firman, written March 2022

One of my favorite ways to start a writing session is to open unfinished documents I’ve saved to find a seed worth nourishing. I feel like a genius when a tangled effusion of words from the past awakens my muse, and I set to work. When a piece comes together, what’s next? Dare I share it with others? I created something I am proud of, but when my words go out into the world, they invite others in; specifically, other’s judgement. I don’t generally live in fear of what other people think of me, but when it comes to writing, I am as bashful as they come.

There are writers who do not grapple with the decision to publish or not. Maybe it is because they have thicker skin than I do; they can take an arrow right to the heart without shedding a drop of blood. I am of the kind that dramatically clutches their chest and staggers to the ground, spurting blood every which way. Yes, judgment can be both bad and good, but even if there is only one bad comment among hundreds of good ones, I tend to dwell on the unkind one. Fortunately for my thin skin, I do not have hundreds of comments trailing after my writing, but if I did, it’s not the strangers’ opinions that terrify me: it’s my loved ones’. I have the most to lose with them because something worth publishing is juicy. It is the vulnerable material we hide, the words that will resonate with someone who recognizes themself, and sighs with relief to learn they are not alone.

I recently shared a piece in a writers’ workshop about grappling with being an accomplice to racial injustice while growing up in a predominantly white suburb of the Midwest. The in-person feedback I received left an indelible impression as I watched tears flow from other white women’s faces and heard affirming words from women of color, urging me to publish the piece to contribute to the ongoing, painful conversation in our country. This is important to me but sharing it would be at the cost of my parents’ feelings. I don’t imagine they would enjoy reading a public account of the shortcomings of the community I grew up in. At no point do I call them out, but how could they not feel responsible in-part for the pain I feel? This is just one example of vulnerability. My mom-friends could read about my preference to work rather than stay at home with my kids, or my in-laws could read about my struggles with anxiety and depression. Is a connection to a stranger I may not ever hear about worth the potential negative judgment I could receive from the ones I love?

I don’t know.

But I do it anyway. It makes me feel good to see my words in print. It not only validates my writing, but also my feelings. The magic of the written word—and any art, really—is its ability to express the infinite ways the human condition is experienced. No two artists have the same background or beliefs, so their work is a testament to their unique worldview. What better way to learn and affirm than to see the world through another’s eyes?

When the ones I love, often unintentionally, share their opinions and pierce my paper-thin skin—I won’t lie—it hurts. But I let the blood gush, I wallow in it a bit, and as time does, it heals all things—including my wimpy, thin skin. Wondrously, after I heal, my skin is a bit tougher than it was before. Scar tissue can do that. The barb of criticism will have to dig a little deeper each time in order to wound me. And so, I submit, sending my experience into the wide world in search of those who need to hear it.

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.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 5/11/22 Kapua Iao 5/11/22

Everything is Practice

By Matilda Young

The great Brazilian soccer player Pele said, “Everything is practice.”

As both a writer and soccer nerd, this quote is dear to me. Over the years, it has come to mean different things: how honing a skill requires us to put the hours in, how every moment is an opportunity to learn.

These days, it helps to take some of the pressure off. When I’m out here taking a stab at a poem or an essay or a story, I’m just kicking the ball around, seeing what feels right, finessing my footwork.

Over the past four years, I’ve done my own version of NaNoWriMo, attempting to write a poem a day during April. I started out by participating in Tupelo Press’ 30/30 Project in April 2019. In the years since, I’ve been doing it on my own.

Well, not really on my own. In fact, the best part of the practice has been doing it alongside other writers. Every year, I invite writers I know to join me in a series of messy Google Docs, one per week(ish). It’s an open invitation for folks to forward along to others—my view is the more the merrier!—which has meant I get to write alongside some tremendous writers I’ve never had the pleasure to meet except on the page.

Every day, I’ll put a prompt in the Google Doc that people can respond to (or not). People can put their drafts in the Doc (or not). People can write every day or write whenever it makes sense for them.

It is such a joy to read what folks are writing throughout the month and to see what they create (we have some folks who are also visual artists). Everyone’s style is so different, and no one tackles the prompt in the same way. I am blown away by everyone’s talent, by these wonderful glimpses I get into their writing lives.

And especially during the pandemic, getting to be in community with these writers has been a lifeline. That first April, in 2020, when we were all so cut off from the world and from each other, writing together gave me a glimmer of hope.

This poem a day practice also paradoxically takes the pressure off for me. I can’t let perfect be the enemy of good. The poem doesn’t have to be something that’s publishable or finished or more than a few scraps of lines; it just has to exist.

I haven’t figured out a way to carry this daily practice beyond April. I don’t know if I ever will. And that’s OK—I’m still practicing.

Everything is practice. For me, this is practice in the spiritual sense, too. Writing together every April reminds me why I love writing, why I love writers. And I think everyone who loves writing is a writer. Everyone who loves language is a writer. Everyone with a truth they need to put into words is a writer. And in some small way, in these Google Docs, I get to be part of a jam band of folks who are sharing their truth with the world.

I hope that maybe you and your friends, and fellow writers not yet friends, will give this a shot and make it your own. It doesn’t have to be April. The prompts don’t have to be longer than one word (cardinal, crunch, clasp). But it may be a practice that you will find meaningful.

If not, that’s OK, too! We’re just out here figuring out what feels right for us, finessing our footwork, kicking the ball around.

“In Gratitude For Google Docs – April 2021”

This morning, I tried a new trick – wet rubber

glove across the blanket bringing away layers

of cat fur from four months of napping,

heavy battering even with the blanket surface

rotated in sections like crops. And it worked!

Thank you to the home ec sages of the internet

for this lesson, and who helped us get through

this past year of seeing what works with what we have:

frugal recipe hacks for pantry clean outs, the fruit

fly traps in soda bottles, baking soda and vinegar

for everything, crumble recipes I scanned

and riffed from like Beaker the science muppet

going rogue. And thank you to the free history

podcasts R & I listened to while he puzzled

& I colored. Thank you to the Pratt Library

for the audio book of Red, White & Royal Blue.

Thank you to the young person whose

youtube tutorial on braiding inspired me

even as I decided I needed to buzz it all off.

Thank you to V. for introducing me to TikTok,

with its sea shanties and camembert reviews.

Yes, messy, yes all consuming, yes ads that

won’t click out, yes creepy, yes, the worst of us.

But also fan fic and old friend zoom, poetry

podcasts, that video of the Archbishop

of Canterbury whose cat who creeps on screen

during a reading to steal the milk from a white jug

on his morning table, tentative paw dipping

like a fisher of delight. Yes to this digital

collaboration, this challenge, this gathering

of writers who jam in google docs, who give

me so much joy. Though I may not see you,

meet you, know you, I’m glad you’re here.

Matilda Young is a writer with an MFA in Poetry from the University of Maryland. She has been published in several journals, including Anatolios Magazine and Entropy Magazine. She enjoys Edgar Allan Poe jokes, sharing viral birding videos and being obnoxious about the benefits of stovetop popcorn.

You can follow her on Instagram @matildayoung28.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Thank you for supporting independent publishing.

Kapua Iao 5/10/22 Kapua Iao 5/10/22

Meet a Board Member: Cindy Schuller

Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to welcome Treasurer, Cindy Schuller, to the Yellow Arrow family. Cindy is a CPA and has been working in various accounting and process improvement roles for over 20 years. She was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and has lived in Baltimore, Maryland, since the early 2000s after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a Master of Accounting. She works as a director on the global process transformation team for a leading education company. She currently lives in Millersville, Maryland, with her husband, Kevin, and their children, Lauren and Kyle. In her free time, she enjoys reading, baking, and playing board games.

Cindy says, “I’m excited to make an impact on the finance operations—figuring out how we can do things more efficiently and for a lower cost, so we can use those freed up resources toward the Yellow Arrow mission.”

She recently took some time to answer some questions for us. Show her some love in the comments or on Facebook/Instagram!

What do you love most about Baltimore?

I live between Baltimore and Annapolis. I love our proximity to both cities. We’re able to take advantage of all the family friendly activities in both cities.

How did you get involved with Yellow Arrow and what do you do?

I met Annie Marhefka, Yellow Arrow’s Executive Director, when we worked for the same education company in Baltimore. Annie reached out to me about joining the board when the treasurer role opened.

What do you like most about the work you do?

My job involves streamlining and standardizing process across my company’s global landscape. I enjoy the puzzle of figuring out how our company can do something better, whether it’s by eliminating or reducing reliance on a manual process or creating efficiencies through automation. The improvements free up time to allow our teams to do more meaningful, valuable work, while reducing operational costs within the organization.

What other activities are you involved in besides Yellow Arrow?

I’m a coach for the local middle school’s Heart and Sole team. Heart & Sole is Girls on the Run’s middle school program that meets the unique needs of girls in 6th–8th grade. The program considers the whole girl—body, brain, heart, spirit, and social connection. It provides an inclusive place where girls feel supported and inspired to explore their emotions, cultivate empathy, and strengthen their physical and emotional health.

Given that you aren’t a writer, what is it about Yellow Arrow that intrigued you?

I believe it’s important to encourage women to use their voice. My current and past volunteer efforts focused on helping girls find their voice, and I’m excited to work with an organization that will offer girls an opportunity to have those voices heard as adults.

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We are so fortunate to have Cindy join our team! Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 5/9/22 Kapua Iao 5/9/22

A Spiritual Journey: Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. VII, No. 1, UpSpring

By Annie Marhefka

I met April Graff, the cover artist of Yellow Arrow Journal, UpSpring (Vol. VII, No. 1) decades ago, but it’s been almost 20 years since I’ve spoken with her. Her husband, Monnie, and my older brother were dear friends and worked together as machinists for many years. My brother passed away in 2003 in a car accident on his way home from a shift working with Monnie; they were also greatly impacted by his death. I have this memory of April after my brother’s memorial service that has stuck with me all this time. I think of it whenever I think of her.

After the service, we had gone back to my parents’ house and everyone was standing in the kitchen sharing memories of my brother, and we were just talking about what you talk about at those things—how sudden it was, how shocked we were, how we couldn’t comprehend it just yet. My father in particular was really struggling and I remember watching him grip the kitchen counter and thinking it was the only thing holding him up.

It was right between Thanksgiving and Christmas and there was constant holiday music playing in the background. April started singing along quietly to “O Holy Night” and her voice was just incredible. She wasn’t showing off or looking for attention; it actually seemed like she couldn’t help herself but sing along, like maybe she didn’t even realize she was singing out loud. She was sitting on a barstool across the kitchen counter from my father and when my father heard her voice, he stood upright and asked everyone in the room to quiet down a little. Everyone went silent, including April. My father nodded in her direction and asked her to sing again. When you’re at an event like that, you never really know what you can say or do to help, and I could tell that April was shy or insecure about singing because she hesitated, but I think she also felt like, if this was what he needed, if this was what she could offer, she would do it for him. So despite her hesitation, she sang for him.

I think my father asked her to sing that song five or six times that night and every time, she obliged. Every time, the room went silent, and we just got wrapped up in her voice, the artistic flair she started weaving into the lyrics and the melody. It felt a little like we were watching her grow in her confidence and expand her creativity as the night went on. I don’t remember much about that night, the speeches people gave, or the condolences offered. But I’ll never forget April singing.

And now, almost 20 years later, April’s artwork, "Spiritual Journey," is featured on the cover of Yellow Arrow Journal Vol. VII, No. 1, UpSpring. Guest edited by Rebecca Pelky, a member of the Brothertown Indian Nation of Wisconsin and a native of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Some of the pieces in this issue focus on that thrilling moment of fruitfulness in which an upspring occurs while others remind us that some upsprings happen only after or because of desperately difficult times. “Spiritual Journey” fits into the latter.

I had the honor of interviewing April about her painting and where she is now after her own spiritual journey. She probably didn’t realize at the time how much she helped my family that night, and so to see April finding her voice in this new way, through painting, gives me so much hope that she can continue to use her story and her creativity to inspire and lift others. Here is my conversation with April.

Annie: Tell our Yellow Arrow community a little about yourself and your artwork.

April: I live with my two kids and my husband, Monnie, and our two fur babies in Westminster, Maryland. I have always been into the arts of all sorts—dancing, singing, drawing, painting. I found my love for painting while watching Bob Ross when I was a kid. To this day, he’s still soothing to me. That was where my love for painting started; I loved how it calmed me. I could even fall asleep watching his show!

I am seven years sober—will be eight years in November. When I went into my recovery, I was looking for things to help me cope other than the normal things people run to. My husband got me an art set and an easel because he knew I used to love painting. He got me the basics: little canvases, some oil paints, and an acrylic set. I had never worked with acrylic but started experimenting. I shared some pictures of what I made, and people started asking me for pieces. I wasn’t charging anything initially; I just loved the idea of having my art in people’s homes. Once the supplies started getting more expensive, I decided to start charging and that’s helped me try out different styles and techniques. The painting I did for UpSpring started out as an experiment, but I was feeling all the things that day and it all comes out on the canvas. It’s how I cope with everyday life. I was told to journal, but I can’t organize my thoughts enough. Painting is how I journal. Many people can’t interpret what I was feeling at the time, but I can look at a painting I made, and I can see exactly what I was feeling at that time. I love that no painting ever turns out the same.

Annie: Our theme for this issue of Yellow Arrow Journal is UpSpring. We received so many amazing pieces of writing from readers who connected with this theme. What does the theme mean to you?

April: Every dark place I was in, I’ve always reached out to the light, and you see that through the elements of darkness and light in the painting. I remember being at the rock bottom of my addiction and crying and wondering, why can’t I get out of this, why am I like this. [But], I want[ed] to see my kids grow, I want[ed] to get out of this dark place. Where the painting passes and connects and intertwines, I know that [that] is where I reached my rock bottom. I had lost all of me. Where it passes through is my spirit reaching back through to the person that I used to be, to become even better than the person I was once before. Through my journey of recovery, I found a peace I never knew before. I was always trying to overcome my environment; I was battling every day to not be a product of my environment. I fought hard to get out of that. I think you can see that when you look at the painting.

Annie: Our guest editor for this issue, Rebecca Pelky, also shared how she connected the theme to the idea of raising up: raising children, raising ourselves, raising awareness. What causes do you hope to raise awareness about?

April: There is a purpose for every one of us. I feel like my art is reaching out to other people to pull them in. Through sharing my experience, it’s so tough to see others struggling with addiction and suffering, I feel so helpless sometimes. But to know that I have helped other people is worth how tough it is—I’ve led others to recovery, helped people understand why their loved ones are addicted or that they have no control, that it has nothing to do with not loving them enough. In a way, my paintings are an extended hand, trying to pull other people up with me.

Annie: What does it mean to you to be able to share your art with others in this way? Who are you most excited to share your art with?

April: It’s always gut wrenching to share my work because I’m afraid somebody’s going to say that’s not art or wonder if the [price] I’m charging is worth it. My art is an expression of what I’m feeling and how do you come up with a price for that? When I found out my painting was going to be on the cover, I immediately wanted to share that with my brother. My brother is also an artist, and these days, it’s how we communicate. I’ve always respected him as an artist; he has a talent I’ve always envied. Even growing up, as a little girl, I would try to copy something he made, and he would get mad and say I plagiarized him. I was just looking up to him. I just wanted to be like him. As we got older, he started teaching me techniques, and I started teaching him. I wasn’t the tag along anymore; I was more accepted as a peer in his eyes, and I’ve always respected that side of him.

Annie: What would you say to others who maybe are going through their own difficult journey right now?

April: There’s a reason why you're here; there’s a purpose. Share your experience, share your journey with the world; inspire others to be more, be whatever they want to be. Strive for that every day.

Annie: What gives you inspiration?

April: There’s days where I can’t do it for myself and so I do it for the people that love me. There are days when I do it for the sun, the air, the people that can’t be here. I’m just trying to be here to live the life they couldn't. I remind myself that I’m a survivor, not a victim. I survived. I want other people to survive, to become warriors.

UpSpring is currently available for PREORDER from the Yellow Arrow bookstore. Wholesale copies (discounted copies in lots of 5) can also be purchased. The issue will be released on May 24. And join us for the virtual reading of UpSpring, “Moments in Time: An UpSpring Reading,” on June 28.

Yellow Arrow recently revamped and restructured it’s Yellow Arrow Journal subscription plan to include two levels. Do you think you are an Avid Reader or a Literary Lover? Find out more about the discounts and goodies involved at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/yellow-arrow-journal-subscription.

Thank you, April, for letting us in on your spiritual journey.

April Graff is from Baltimore, Maryland. She now lives in Westminster with her two amazing children, husband, and two family pets. “Spiritual Journey” is her very first published piece of art.

Annie Marhefka is a writer, HR consultant, and mama residing in Baltimore, Maryland, with her husband John, their daughter Elena, and son Joseph. When she’s not reading or writing, she loves traveling, boating, and hiking with her family. Her work has been published by Coffee + Crumbs, Versification, Capsule Stories, Remington Review, and more. Annie is working on a memoir about mother/daughter relationships; you can find her writing on Instagram, Twitter, and at anniemarhefka.com.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 5/6/22 Kapua Iao 5/6/22

Her View Friday

single-author publications
single pieces in journals, anthologies, etc.

You can support our authors by reading this blog and their work, sharing their news, and commenting below or on the blog. Congratulations to all the included authors. We are so proud of you!

Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling.

Author: Joanne Durham

Tell us about yourself: I am a retired educator living on the North Carolina coast. My poem, "BABY!," was published in the RENASCENCE issue of Yellow Arrow Journal (Spring 2021). Since then, about 40 of my poems have been published in various journals, and many of them are found in my latest book and a forthcoming chapbook, On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books).

Where are you from: Prince George’s County, Maryland

What three words describe your main writing space:

ocean energy openness

What did you just publish: To Drink from a Wider Bowl, which won the 2021 Sinclair Poetry Prize and was published by Evening Street Press in April 2022. Find it at eveningstreetpress.com/book-author/joanne-durham.

Tell us about your publication: It is a celebration of many stages of a woman’s life—from ancestors to grandchildren, and the connections between my personal life and the larger world around me. It’s a book of discovery, gratitude, and commitment to working for a better world.

Why this book? Why now? How did it happen for you: I have written poetry all my life, but except for some poems about teaching in teaching journals, never pursued publication until after I retired. Then I went back to the many notebooks I had kept and started revising, taking workshops, joining critique groups. After about a year of writing and publishing in literary journals, I realized I had the makings of memoir in poetry. When I wrote what wound up as the first poem in my book, “Old Folks,” which ends “we are thirsty still / but drink from a wider bowl,” I knew I had the title and the overall theme for the book.

What is your writing goal for the year: To deepen the texture of my poetry and just keep writing and learning and see where it takes me.

What advice do you have for other writers: Write as much as you can, even if it’s just notes you jot down for later. Participate in critique groups, with other poets who will support you but also give you truthful feedback on how your poems land with them. Listen, revise, submit to journals that you like to read.

What else are you working on/doing that you’d like to share: I am a bit obsessed with getting my book out into the world! That has also made me more interested in supporting other poets. So I’m writing a blurb for an anthology, helping a fellow poet figure out the order of poems in her book, buying poetry books and writing Goodreads reviews. I’ve made friends with poets not only across the U.S., but in India, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, and Canada. All of it enriches my life.

You can find Joanne on Twitter @DurhamJoanne and Instagram @poetryjoanne or at joannedurham.com.

Yellow Arrow (past and present) board, staff, interns, authors, residents, and instructors alike! Got a publication coming out? Let us help celebrate for you in Her View Friday.

Single-author publications: here.

Single pieces: here.

Please read the instructions on each form carefully.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 5/4/22 Kapua Iao 5/4/22

How I handle rejection

By Arao Ameny

I published my first poem “Home is a Woman” in The Southern Review in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic.

Before that, I sent the piece out to literary magazines 27 times for two straight years before getting an acceptance.

There’s something extremely humbling about getting out of an MFA program, head fat with ideas of who and what you’ll become, and it doesn’t quite turn out like you imagined.

I graduated from the University of Baltimore in 2019 in the prepandemic, mask-less days (which seem like a lifetime ago) when I had wild ideas of where I would be and what I would be. Although I studied fiction writing in university, I was also reading and writing poetry though I didn’t tell my cohort. In the writing program, we had to choose one discipline but I couldn’t imagine separating prose from poetry. So I asked my poet-classmates many questions, got screenshots of their syllabi, and started doing a poetry self-study alongside my fiction writing program. I also completed several free online poetry courses. I wanted to be a fiction writer and a poet, in that order.

When I graduated from my MFA program, I started submitting prose and poetry to literary magazines and the rejections started rolling in, sometimes three or four in one day. The first one stung so much I had to get a glass of water and sit down for about an hour. I also Googled “how to do breathing exercises” because I was convinced my heart would fall out of my chest that day. That’s when I knew I had to create a plan on how to handle rejection because I needed a way to deal with the rollercoaster of emotions of having something I’d worked on for years be rejected in matter of weeks or months.

I decided to start a journal, scribbling the many reasons I wanted to write. Sentences like “I write because I wanted to be a writer since I was eight years old” or “I write because I love words and sentences and languages” are what I return to when I was down.

Sometimes I would write down 10 reasons and other times I would sit down for an hour and come up with 40 reasons why I write and jot them down into my worn notebook. When a rejection (or two or three) came in, I would immediately open my journal and read aloud the reasons until the sting of the rejection dulled with each repetition.

I remind myself why I write and that it’s okay when others don’t understand my work or find it hard to connect with my story or my voice. I go inward and remind myself that I would be writing even if I had no approval or no audience or any recognition. I do this until the first sentence of the rejection letter rattles less and eventually fades. Then a few days after reading the rejection letter, I commit to studying the story or the poem I’ve submitted, taking it apart, sometimes cutting it to pieces and rearranging those pieces on my floor. If there is feedback from the editor, I address it immediately, let the work sit for a few weeks, and come back again with fresh eyes.

That has been how I have handled rejection. I will continue this ritual until my journal is full of reasons why I write so that I have a compass to guide me when and if I doubt myself or lose my footing. It’s not perfect or pain-free but it helps me have a system and a routine on how to deal with constant and consistent rejection. I’ve learned that having a plan helps me regulate my reaction (and the amount of times I visit the ice cream shop). Having a plan on how to deal with rejection has also helped me put things into perspective. When my mother was alive, I enjoyed making mandazi with her, kneading the slightly sweet dough, rolling it, and cutting into squares before sliding them one by one into hot oil to fry. Whenever I failed at something, she would point to the dough and make me repeat “I rise like well-beaten dough kneaded with both hands.” A cup of tangawizi tea followed.

With each rejection, I rise.

Arao Ameny is a Maryland-based poet and writer from Lira, Lango, Northern Uganda. She is a multigenre writer with a focus on poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She is currently a biography writer and editor at the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry Magazine. She earned her MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Baltimore in 2019. She also earned an MA in Journalism from Indiana University and a BA in Political Science with minors in International Relations and Communications from the University of Indianapolis. She is a former fiction editor and copyeditor at Welter, a literary journal at the University of Baltimore. Her first published poem, “Home is a Woman,” won The Southern Review’s 2020 James Olney Award. In 2021, she was a finalist for the United Kingdom-based Brunel International African Poetry Prize, a nominee for the Best New Poets anthology (USA), and a winner of a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship.

Arao is the recipient of the 2022 Mayor’s Individual Artist Award from the Creative Baltimore Fund, a grant from Mayor Brandon Scott, the City of Baltimore, and The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA). She is also a recipient of the Poets & Writers’ Open Door Career Advancement Grant for women writers of color. The workshops she has attended include Tin House and Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Her favorite writer is Zimbabwean novelist, short story writer, playwright, and poet Dambudzo Marechera. Previously, she worked in communications at New York City government and as a writer and social media editor at Africa Renewal magazine at the United Nations in New York City.

Follow Arao on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @araoameny.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Thank you for supporting independent publishing.

Kapua Iao 5/3/22 Kapua Iao 5/3/22

A Conversation Across Two Time Zones

By Melissa Nunez, written in March 2022

Victoria Buitron is an Ecuadorian writer and translator who resides in Connecticut. She is a graduate of the Fairfield University MFA program and writes in a range of styles from flash fiction pieces that can be found in Litro Magazine and Latinx Lit Audio Mag, to her debut book A Body Across Two Hemispheres: A Memoir in Essays, which came out in March 2022.

In this memoir, Victoria comes of age between Ecuador and the United States as she explores her ancestry, learns two languages, and searches for a place she can call home. It portrays not only the immigrant experience, but the often-overlooked repatriate experience while interweaving facets of depression, family history, and self-love.

On a Sunday of fresh fallen snow in Connecticut and uncomfortable cold in South Texas, Victoria and I met through Zoom to talk about writing life.

Melissa: I love learning what texts and authors other writers find inspiring. What are some of your favorite books? Who are some women writers who have inspired you?

Victoria: One of the people that has most inspired me is Colombian author Adriana Páramo. She was a professor in my MFA program and the first person who told me I should submit my work. I think that I really needed her presence throughout the MFA program to find confidence in myself. She writes about family, immigration, culture shock, and being a Latina—not just in the United States, but throughout the world. I strongly connect to all of that. I also think about Jaquira Díaz, who wrote the book Ordinary Girls. For a long time, I felt like my life was ordinary, and she helped me see that within everyone’s ordinary lives extraordinary things happen. That motivated me to continue writing about my life. I also want to mention Morgan Jerkins. Her memoir is composed of different styles of essay and goes back and forth in time. That inspired me to focus on location over chronological order in my own book. In reading these contemporary works by contemporary writers, I realized that I was capable of achieving my writing goals.

Melissa: I love that ordinary/extraordinary dichotomy and admire writing that can take something a general audience might find boring and make it just the opposite. Writers who, through voice and style, make so much more of a topic than what is on the surface.

What is your favorite part about being a writer?

Victoria: My favorite part is writing that first draft. I have so much fun with it. There’s a little phrase I use when I start writing. Sometimes, I even write it on a sticky note and put it next to me. It says: You are writing on paper, not on rock. It reminds me that on this paper I can do so many things. I can take that route; I can take this other path. Who knows where it is going to lead me today? The process of creation is so much fun. It’s always a surprise. The draft might not become anything substantial by the end of the day, but maybe I’ll go back to it in the future and find a little spark I can use to continue working. The possibilities are infinite.

Melissa: That is a great mindset to have. I’m trying to lean into that methodology. I’ve always been a first draft editor, constantly reviewing and revising, which makes it difficult to get very far. I like this focus of just getting it out on the page first. Definitely more productive.

Victoria: I think a lot of times when we first start writing we might already be thinking about submitting and achieving perfection from the get-go. But it’s so hard. Nothing is perfect in general, but it’s so hard to have something that you consider perfect in the first draft. So, I just let go of that. For me, the first draft equals fun. That’s it. I will worry about the rest later. Sometimes you don’t even know the purpose of the piece until after writing it. You start off writing about X and end up with D. Sometimes your subconscious has other ideas.

Melissa: Finding fun in the process is an excellent approach. I can see how you would get so much more out of the writing experience that way. I’m working on putting that positivity into practice, but still find it difficult at times. What do you find is the most difficult part of the writing process?

Victoria: The most difficult part is knowing when a piece is ready. I think that is what I struggle with the most. There are times when I finish something and feel it is ready, and then a few days later change my mind. I think that now, with a little more experience, with more writing, it’s become easier. But it still happens sometimes. I feel like there’s a fine line, but I have very good writer and nonwriter friends that review my work. They are very honest with me. And it’s not about what is good or bad. It’s about meeting your focus for the piece. If somebody I trust reads my work and my vision for the piece isn’t coming through, then I need to go back to the drawing board. Getting to that point can be difficult.

Melissa: It is so helpful when you have friends or a writing group to be those sounding boards for you. A very beneficial resource. Is there anything else you find especially helpful, specifics you need to have a productive writing session?

Victoria: In the beginning I would say that I could not write unless it was with pen and paper, and I think that really limited me. I work a 9–5 job, so I mostly write evenings or on the weekends. If I was on my break and had an idea, I’d tell myself to remember that starting point for my evening writing session, but by then it would be gone. Now when the muse strikes, I can write something on my phone really quick. I would not have thought this was possible a few years ago. I had to train myself to write anywhere. If I limited myself to a specific environment, I wouldn’t be able to write as much. There are writers who have specific rituals, and I understand that need to help the transition into a writing atmosphere. But you should try to save that closed-off environment for editing. I believe this has allowed me to be more creative.

Melissa: I have had to learn that as well. To take notes on my phone and sometimes even actual drafting, because if not the writing won’t happen. I’ve found this flexibility has helped me get more writing done.

Victoria: I think it has been a process to learn that. You don’t learn that from the get-go. It’s tough.

Melissa: Have you experimented with literary translation, or is it mostly business/professional?

Victoria: Mostly professional, business translation. That’s what I do with my 9–5. I have done some literary translations for fun in the past, but never something that has been published. I do want to venture into that, though. The last four years I have been focused on finishing my memoir and working to get exposure for the book. But I want to dabble with literary translation in the future.

Melissa: Is there a genre you prefer? A writer you feel you’d really want to translate yourself?

Victoria: I would love to focus on Ecuadorian writers because I feel like that is missing, especially the poetry. There is so much beautiful Spanish poetry from my country.

Melissa: That would be wonderful. I have always been intrigued by the craft of translation, especially in poetry, because there is such an art to preserving the rhythm and sound of the language. Not that those qualities are not present in prose, but they can be more amplified in poetry, especially the shorter pieces.

I loved the concept of memoir in essays and found myself really taken by the titles in your book. How do you decide on titles for your works? Is it something you find difficult, or does it fall naturally into place for you?

Victoria: I love that question because I feel that one of my weaknesses is titles. The first piece that I ever published was accepted on the condition that I change the title. It’s a skill I’ve had to work on. What I learned from one of my MFA professors was to work on the title last. Don’t let a title mold the essay. Write the essay first. Even my book went through many different titles. I always feel like my pieces are prone to changing as I’m writing, and a title I started out with might not make it to the end. It is hard for me. I don’t think about it as I’m writing. Or editing. I still think titles are so much fun because you have to be creative. The title is the first thing that people read, and you want to grab a potential reader’s attention.

Melissa: Yes. And it’s also a balance between grabbing that attention and then living up to the promise. I think you do that very well in your memoir. Is there an essay title that is your favorite from the collection?

Victoria: I really like “Let It Burn.” It doesn’t give too much away, but it is powerful. The essay is about something very cultural. When I was growing up, I thought that on all South American countries celebrated New Year’s Eve with a monigote, placing it in the middle of the street and burning it to ash at midnight. With a flash piece like this, where the content can be 300 words or 100 words, the title has to be very strong.

Melissa: There is a theme of otherness in your writing. Not only in your book, but in pieces like “Thin Ice.” How has it felt to reflect upon this in your writing?

Victoria: Otherness was one of the driving factors for writing this book. When I was growing up, it was very hard for me to find books about Ecuadorian American writers, specifically memoirs. I felt othered in general because I came to the U.S. when I was five and had to learn English. Then I moved back to Ecuador when I was 15 and had to learn Spanish, formal Spanish. I never felt like I fit in. In this world where people can move around a lot, at least within borders, it happens a lot. You feel othered because of the language, or the culture, because of the people around you. I wanted to write a book about how I felt othered throughout the entirety of my life. It was one of the core themes. Beyond that, it is also a focus on family. How you deal with your family and construct an identity when you feel othered. That is also why the book is focused on the southern and northern hemispheres.

Melissa: What would you like those who this experience resonates with to draw from your words?

Victoria: I want people to read this book and understand that immigrants are not monoliths. Some people view immigrants as a category where everything these individuals have gone through is the same. That’s not true. I want people to read this book and understand that everyone has an extraordinary life within their ordinary life. There are all these little things or major things that happen to us, which can include moving from one place to another, and they affect our identity individually. I hope that when people read immigrant stories, they understand that there are so many layers to a person, what they have gone through, and that these past experiences mold them.

Melissa: Do you have any upcoming projects, big or small, you’d like to share?

Victoria: I have so many projects in mind, but the one that is most advanced is a poetry collection with a feminist focus on missing and murdered women. Over the last few years, I started following stories of missing and murdered Indigenous women. It was such a shock to me how there is continued bias in the coverage of these events today. I started thinking about the type of woman that the media would consider the perfect missing/murdered woman. And I think that if you’re not that perfect woman, then it’s very hard for the world or the United States to find out that you are missing. This has stayed with me, subconsciously, and I started writing these poems about women, murdered women, missing women. I know it’s a very heavy topic, one that I’m still working on that includes many intersections of feminism. It’s still very much in the early stages, but I have had a few poems published. It’s a project that I want to continue because it is very important to me.

Melissa: I read one of your published pieces on this topic, “Mainstream Outlets.” It was very powerful. It is a heavy topic, but one that deserves the attention.

What advice would you give to someone working on their first book or just starting out with writing in general?

Victoria: When we first start out, we tend to focus on an outside audience, on whether other people will like and want to publish our work. Getting published is the goal. I don’t think we should start out focused on the publishing or marketing aspect. I always ask myself why my writing is this important to me, because first and foremost, I write for myself. Why do I need to write this? Why does past me need this? Why do I need this today? Why does future me need to read about this? The person we must respect the most as writers is ourselves. Once you have a draft, focus on your craft. Try to make it the best possible. After that you can think about how to get it out there. I didn’t publish my first piece until 2018, when I was 28. A lot of people might say that’s late, but I think that everything continued at the pace it needed to. All those years of translation and reading books and not publishing allowed me to get the foundation for craft I needed in order to get my work out there.

Victoria’s debut memoir A Body Across Two Hemispheres is now available from Woodhall Press at woodhallpress.com/product-page/a-body-across-two-hemispheres-a-memoir-in-essays. You can find more of her writing at victoriabuitron.com and stay informed on her upcoming events on Twitter @vic_toriawrites.

Melissa Nunez is a Latin@ writer and homeschooling mother of three from the Rio Grande Valley. Her essays have appeared in magazines like Sledgehammer Lit and Latinx Lit Audio Mag. She has work forthcoming in Acropolis Journal, Minerva Rising, and Re-Side. She is also a staff writer for Alebrijes Review. You can follow her on Twitter @MelissaKNunez.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Thank you for supporting independent publishing.

Kapua Iao 5/1/22 Kapua Iao 5/1/22

Yellow Arrow Vignette Submissions are Now Open!

Today marks the first day of May and with that the opening of submissions for the inaugural issue of Yellow Arrow Vignette—Yellow Arrow’s new online creative nonfiction and poetry series. As a team we settled on the name “vignette” or “little vine” in French because in literature vignettes are described as literary sketches—highly detailed snapshots. In a vignette there may be a bit of dialogue or plot, but the senses are heightened to focus on the emotions and smallest elements of a scene.

Submissions to the the first issue of Vignette are open from May 1 to 31 on the 2022 Yellow Arrow yearly theme AWAKEN:

: to make someone or something aware

: to awake, become aroused or conscious

Aligned with the notion of pausing to observe the details, choosing AWAKEN as this year’s Vignette theme was fitting because to truly be awake means to be conscious of your surroundings. To be awake necessitates acknowledging the spectrum of emotions: to savor the sliver of morning light warming your foot as you wait for your coffee to brew, to feel the low hum of the traffic while scrubbing the dishes, or to curl up with your coziest blanket and embrace the pain. With the stories that come from the Vignette, we hope to paint a feeling of interconnectedness by giving our readers a window into brief, but poignant moments of awakening.

Although Yellow Arrow is planted and cultivated in Baltimore, Maryland—also home to our executive editor, Annie Marhefka—Yellow Arrow’s roots extend to Bosnia where our founder, Gwen Van Velsor, sends love and support; to the streets of Montréal and soils of Greece where our editor-in-chief, Kapua Iao, splits her time; to wherever Vignette’s Managing Editor Siobhan McKenna calls home as a traveling nurse, currently in Seattle, Washington, but soon Alaska; and to numerous other cities and localities that our community calls home. By publishing Vignette online, we look to expand our community’s reach even further by making the words of our writers easily accessible. By making the voices of women heard even more.

For Vignette, we are looking for creative nonfiction and poetry by writers/artists that identify as women on the theme of AWAKEN. 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. Please read our guidelines carefully before submitting. Vignette will begin its release in July 2022.

Through Yellow Arrow Vignette we will increase the number of stories that we publish annually furthering our desire to provide a platform for voices that may otherwise not be heard. Yellow Arrow Publishing may be a small press but like a small vine steadily moving toward the sun, we hope that the Yellow Arrow Vignette will grow our mission of sharing captivating stories from an array of backgrounds.

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.

Kapua Iao 4/26/22 Kapua Iao 4/26/22

The Composition of Ekphrastic Poetry

By Ellen Dooling Reynard, written November 2021

My husband, the French painter Paul Reynard (1927–2005), used to ask me to write about his art. I procrastinated, using the excuse that I was not well enough educated in the plastic arts to be a reliable critic of his work. Little did either of us know that we were so soon to be separated by his death. In addition to my grief, I regretted painfully that I had not taken up his suggestion.

A little more than a decade later, I began to write poetry. I joined several women’s poetry critique groups, and in that process, I came across the word “ekphrasis.” In Greek, the word ekphrasis loosely means ‘description in vivid detail,’ and ekphrastic poetry are poems written about works of art. I listened to the Iranian poet Rooja Mohassessy read her ekphrastic poetry about the artistic works of her late uncle, Bahman Mohassess (1931–2010). In hearing those evocative poems, it dawned on me that I might attempt that with Paul’s work, and finally write about his art as he had wished.

I then made it my practice to sit in front of Paul’s paintings, whose luminescent colors bathed the rooms of my house in a kind of benediction, and I began to write poems. It was as though I walked through the landscapes of those glowing colors, discovering the search for meaning that Paul most likely experienced as he put brush to canvas. I suppose everyone interprets art, especially abstract art, in his or her own way, and my approach to Paul’s work was certainly subjective. But I make no apologies for that.

For example, in my examination of “First Movement” (acrylic on canvas, 1982), pictured here, because I knew that Paul was keenly interested in creation stories, at first, I associated what I was seeing with the creation of the world as described in Genesis. I asked myself, as perhaps Paul did when he regarded the evolving composition on his easel, what was the source of creation, where and how did it all begin? I researched what scholars had to say and found that these questions have puzzled scientific minds for millennia. Was it a big bang, is it an ongoing process, or might it be something else entirely? A beginning of this magnitude is a question without an answer.

Then I looked more closely at the succession of rounded shapes in the painting and was reminded of the sensation of pregnancy. I realized that women have the unique opportunity to know, within their own bodies, the beginning and the developing growth of new life, and are not afraid of the unknown in this miraculous process.

The poem I wrote about “First Movement,” therefore, touches on the intellectual approaches of science and proceeds to the physiological experience of gestation, and includes it all as one great enigma. “First Movement” was published by POETiCA REViEW, issue 8 (Winter 2020).

Former men of science maintained

that the universe was born in a great

eruption of expanded forces.

They argued their theories

with passion and conviction

while inwardly fearing that in fact,

they did not know.

Current theories suggest that creation

is ongoing, but these new men of science

also fear that they do not know.

The woman gazes up at the night sky

and, spreading her palms

over her belly, she feels the first

flutter of the child in her womb.

A shooting star draws its silver path

across the sky, and the woman smiles.

She is not afraid to know,

the great beginning was as gentle

and as magnificent as this.

Each time I sit down in front of one of Paul’s compositions, I go through that same process of allowing myself to search for words for what is unsayable yet expressed so clearly in paint and graphite. Little by little, I recognized that the poems I have written so far about his art could form a chapbook of a very special kind, including high-resolution images of the paintings and drawings that would be on the facing page of each poem. And since the publishers of chapbooks do not have it in their budgets to create such a volume, I decided to pay for the expense of high-quality paper and have the poems and accompanying art published by a small independent enterprise, South Forty Press. That way I will be able to be certain that the color saturation and clarity of the images are appropriate. The book will be titled Double Stream and will be available in 2022.

For me, this has been and continues to be a project of immense creativity and pleasure. I am sure Paul would be happy that I have, at long last, written about his work.

Ellen Dooling Reynard spent her childhood on a cattle ranch in Jackson, Montana. A one-time editor of Parabola Magazine, she is now retired and lives in Temecula, California. Her poetry has appeared in publications including Lighten Up On Line, Persimmon Tree, The Ekphrastic Review, Silver Blade, Muddy River Poetry Review, and Poetica Review. Her first chapbook, No Batteries Required, was published in 2021 by Yellow Arrow Press. Double Stream, a collection of ekphrastic poems based on the art of the French painter Paul Reynard, will be published in 2022 by The South Forty Press.

Happy National Poetry Month!

*****

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 4/19/22 Kapua Iao 4/19/22

Body, Self, Separation: A review of Dena Igusti’s Cut Woman

By Darah Schillinger

In her debut collection, Cut Woman (2020), Dena Igusti explores the realities of being an Indonesian Muslim in a post-colonial world, and the separation of self they experienced as a survivor of female genital mutilation. Igusti’s writing is unique in that the language is authoritative even though the content itself is open and sincere, allowing us a naked view into the celebration and grief embedded into their experience as an Indonesian Muslim and as a survivor.

The anticipation of death is carried throughout the collection as the weight of loss hangs over the speaker’s everyday life. Death is a vessel of grief, an image Igusti can use to show in pictures exactly how all of this loss has made them feel, and how it has transformed their relationships with the self, their people, and loved ones.

“the grenade’s lung exhaled into our chests

and muslims have been spilled ever since”

-bounty

“IF THEY CAN'T FIND MY CORPSE THEY’LL AT LEAST
FIND A BODY (I CRAFT)”

-self portrait as asa akira’s face on google images when searching ‘asian women’

“i’m like my father

i leave half-carcasses // of me // everywhere i go”

“i think a lot // about death // for someone //

so afraid of dying”

-sacrifice (reprise), or trajectory

“I WANT TO

REMOVE // CELLS // DEAD, GENETIC // THAT HANG //

OFF MY BODY // HOLD TRACES OF WHAT // WAS DONE

TO ME WITHOUT BEING // SWALLOWED BY AN OCEAN”

-screen

The loss of self, the prospective loss of loved ones, the past loss of their people—all of this loss influences Igusti’s relationship with death. Death is preemptively mourned in Igusti’s work, something that weighs down the speaker and strings together the past and the present. Loss cannot be shed just as death cannot be avoided, and so Igusti embraces the inevitability of death to cope with the loss that already pervades their experiences.

Water and suffocation are used as one of the many forms of death found in the collection and are especially impactful in “my father never answers to papa” as saltwater acts as a metaphor for their father’s baggage and past mistakes, drowning them both. The speaker tries to drink the water, trying to save their father from his own grief and troubles, but the saltwater burns their throat, and their father takes even this time as they both drown because of his own problems, to blame his child. This poem is such a beautifully illustrated example of the weight of pain and past, showing how undealt with grief can drown not only yourself but your loved ones. Igusti has written true brilliance in describing the very real consequences of the unresolved, and how the mistakes of the father translate and choke the people they should love most.

Female genital mutilation is discussed throughout Igusti’s collection, exploring the separation the speaker feels between the self and their body in the aftermath of that experience and attempting to reconcile their complicated self-relationship through poetry.

“curse the // blade //

reduces // her // small // calls it //

transformation”

-hex for an heirloom

“she reduced me to small and called it transformation. She let me die

and called herself the martyr. She cut out part of me, made it my relative. A

blood bound thing.”

-sunat: a recollection (in the wake)

In “after the incision,” the speaker feels a disconnect between themself and their body because of what happened to them as a child and tries to reconcile this disconnect through conversation with the part they see as missing, personifying their clitoris and begging this missing part to return to them, saying they are hurt because the clitoris is not theirs anymore. The other-self then points out that the speaker’s feeling of loss doesn’t stem solely from the missing piece of their body in asking: “is that the only reason you feel loss?” Loss remains an overarching theme of the speaker’s experience, and they have projected this loss directly onto their body disconnect instead of confronting the other sources. This poem, and the broader discussion of bodily disconnect, acts as a powerful and jarring exploration of the places we store blame when grieving, and the reconciliation that may occur once we confront that blame.

White America appears in Igusti’s collection as its own self-imposed character, interjecting into the speaker’s life in an attempt to tell them who they are and make them question what they know. In “bounty,” the character of white America makes an uninvited appearance in the last stanza as a man who steals the identity of generations effortlessly:

“a man inhales an eighth of all our grandmothers

into his lungs, exhales

what his body didn’t take this time onto my chest

shouts

why the fuck are these muslims everywhere?”

The speaker sees this man as a broader representation of white people in America, breathing in the identities of Muslim women and spitting back hateful, ignore words, which remains an unfortunately accurate portrayal. In “altar,” the speaker describes how CNN’s description of what happened to them as a child as female genital mutilation disrupted their understanding of self, becoming victimized by a country they were “never supposed to set foot in.” The speaker writes:

“i feel obligation //

invite America in // white reporters and “saviors”

pour in by the dozens // break in everything in sight //

i ask // why have you ruined

everything? they say America”

This relationship is clearly intrusive, victimizing the speaker without their permission in a way that paints white Americans as saviors when the speaker believes they have no space to comment on their experiences in the first place. The speaker then powerfully refuses their statements of pity, saying:

“do not write me off an obituary // no one died // i am still // here //

celebrating”

These lines rewrite the victimization white Americans have imposed upon people like the speaker, while also inverting the language of death the speaker has become accustomed to using in terms of themself. It seems through these experiences with white America they have overcome the death narrative found throughout the rest of the collection, resisting the labels placed upon them by people outside of their culture and declaring themself alive.

Igusti’s writing style requires their reader to take their time reading and rereading each line, forcing us to keep discovering new meanings and truths with each consumption of their work. Igusti’s honesty and mastery of writing come together in a beautiful illustration of grief, joy, loss, and celebration, leaving their reader with a necessary, and sometimes jarring insight into the complicated and unique experiences of a Muslim, female, Indonesian, queer identity.

Igusti, Dena. Cut Woman. Game Over Books, 2020. https://www.gameoverbooks.com/product-page/cut-woman.

Darah Schillinger is a rising senior at St. Mary’s College of Maryland studying English Literature with a double minor in Creative Writing and Philosophy. She previously interned for the literary magazine EcoTheo Review in summer 2020 and 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 in her free time she likes to write poetry and paint.

Happy National Poetry Month!

*****

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 4/12/22 Kapua Iao 4/12/22

From Kathmandu to Baltimore: The most beautiful garden by Nikita Rimal Sharma

Yellow Arrow Publishing announces the release of our latest chapbook, The most beautiful garden, by Nikita Rimal Sharma. Since its establishment in 2016, Yellow Arrow has devoted its efforts to advocate for all women writers through inclusion in the biannual Yellow Arrow Journal as well as single-author publications, and by providing strong author support, writing workshops, and volunteering opportunities. We at Yellow Arrow are excited to continue our mission by supporting Nikita in all her writing and publishing endeavors.

The most beautiful garden is an expression of Nikita. It is a collection of poems that includes themes such as mental health, South Asian culture, her mother, and family. It reflects on deep heartaches, dark moments and light moments, pride, joy, and love, with the hope that anyone who reads The most beautiful garden also gets a chance to reflect on the beautiful being they are in spite of the baggage and everything they hold.

The incredible cover art was created by Creative Director Alexa Laharty based on a photograph Nikita provided of her mother. Interior images were also drawn by Alexa.

Nikita currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland with her husband and Pitbull Terrier, Stone, and works at B’More Clubhouse, a community-based mental health nonprofit. She is originally from Kathmandu, Nepal. Nikita is a typical homebody who gets a lot of joy from slow running, short hikes, reading, and deep thoughts. She has always loved writing and started writing at the age of seven when she wrote a fairy tale titled “Star Girls.” Nikita wishes she had saved a copy of it.

Paperback and PDF versions of The most beautiful garden 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 The most beautiful garden wherever you purchase your books including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. To learn more about Nikita and The most beautiful garden, check out our recent interview with her.

You can find Nikita on Instagram @nikita.playwithwords, and connect with Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram, to share some love for this chapbook. We’ll let everyone know about her book launch soon.

Happy National Poetry Month!

*****

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 4/5/22 Kapua Iao 4/5/22

What Makes Poetry Special

By Rachel Vinyard, written December 2021

Poetry, in my opinion, is one of the most versatile art forms when it comes to writing. There’s little you can’t do with poetry. There are classical forms of poetry—poems with set rhythm and calculated linage—and more abstract forms of poetry—poems following no rhythm or math, free-flowing and experimental. Poetry is for everyone. It doesn’t exclude any experience or truth. Readers can easily find themselves in the poetry that speaks to them.

One thing I love about poetry is how experimental it can be in terms of form. I’ve seen poets make shapes and elegant, well-thought designs on a page using word and line placement. Poems that can be read several different ways for different meanings are some of my absolute favorites. When I see a poem uniquely formatted in a way I’ve never experienced before, my jaw drops. The poem “Brick Lane” by Wendy Garnier, featured in Yellow Arrow Journal Vol VI, No. 1 RENASCENCE, is a poem constructed of nine fragmented phrases placed in a way that you can read the poem from several directions in multiple different ways.

Another example of interestingly formatted poetry is Hanif Abdurraqib’s blackout poetry. Blackout poetry is the act of taking a page of written work, coloring over the lines in black, and only leaving a few words still visible. The visible words are chosen specifically by the poet to form a short statement. In his collection A Fortune for Your Disaster, Abdurraqib creates a blackout poem from another poem he wrote, making the two poems a kind of call and response. Poets are artists, not just with the words they chose but with their placement of them.

A couple of my favorite poets include Sylvia Plath and Mary Oliver. Plath’s poetry acts as a window into her life and mind. This is evident in her poem “Elm,” where she states, “I am terrified by this dark thing /That sleeps in me; /All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.” Plath’s works are interesting to me because they exhibit the vulnerability of the poet. Oliver’s poetry, on the other hand, offers encouragement and peace. My favorite poem of Mary Oliver’s is “Wild Geese,” which is about offering yourself forgiveness and focusing on the beauty of the world. Oliver talks about how special it is to be a part of the world and relish in the peace of union with the line “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, /the world offers itself to your imagination, /calls to you like wild geese, harsh and exciting.”

Today, poetry can be found in all kinds of places. The lyrics of songs are a prime example of this. In my opinion, music artists such as Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift have created emotional lyrics worthy of being deemed poetry. I especially love the journalistic beauty of Lana Del Rey’s song “Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman like Me to Have - but I Have It,” for the line “They write that I’m happy, they know that I’m not /But at best you can see I’m not sad.” Taylor Swift is known for her songwriting, and the recent rerelease of the song “All Too Well” displays her incredible talent. Swift’s line “And you call me up again just to break me like a promise /So casually cruel in the name of being honest” allows me to feel the deep pain Swift is trying to portray.

Poetry is an art that can be found everywhere and, in my opinion, does not have a set definition. Poetry is just whatever you make it. It’s whatever speaks to you on an emotional, personal level. Something that challenges your feelings or makes you feel heard. It’s a place to feel comforted and a look into someone else’s life. Poetry lets you be vulnerable and gives you something to relate to. It’s deep and moving and meaningful. It’s journalistic and experiential. I feel like Emily Dickinson’s poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” showcases this well, because, in her first few lines, she’s speaking directly about her depression: “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, /And Mourners to and fro /Kept treading - treading - till it seemed /That Sense was breaking through -.”

Poetry is important to me because I believe humans long to experience the beauty and art and raw emotion that comes from it. One of my favorite movie quotes regarding poetry comes from Dead Poet’s Society. Robin Williams’s character, John Keating states, “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

There is no law when it comes to the subjects of poetry. It is whatever the poet deems meaningful enough to be talked about. Whether it be nature, a past love, the act of growing old, or the idea of sitting beside a cat, the subjects of poetry are powerful in the way they showcase the mind and heart of the artist behind them. I love Ute Carson’s poetry for this reason. She is able to take a simple thing and delve into the emotional framework that makes being human so special. Her poem “Sleeping Beside a Cat” from Listen emphasizes the little pleasures in life: “but he chose my hair as his favorite resting place. /Nose buried in my sparse locks, he purrs /as his soft paws massage the soft strands.”

We live and breathe poetry. Whatever we do, however mundane, can be reimagined, made purposeful, through the magnification lens of poetry. Poetry makes the ordinary something beautiful and important. It emphasizes heartache and love and the emotions behind the simplest of things. The best kind of poem is one that is able to change your perspective on something, one that shows something in a way you haven’t thought of before. This is why I love the poem “Topsoil” by Meg Crane, featured in Yellow Arrow Journal Vol V, No. 3 (Re)Formation:

Now I think

(maybe)

I might be an evergreen.

Now I think

(maybe)

that barren winter earth

could be the perfect place

to plant my roots.

To me, “Topsoil” is a poem about a transformation and a change of perspective toward oneself. Even when we feel hopeless that we aren’t getting far in life, there is evidence that we are still growing.

The amazing thing about poetry is that it’s for everyone. No one is excluded from writing and enjoying it. A poem that is moving is, in my opinion, one of the most meaningful, because it has the potential to change a part of you for the better. Poetry not only exposes the vulnerability of the poet but allows the reader to relate in the most intimate ways.

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.

Happy National Poetry Month!

*****

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 4/1/22 Kapua Iao 4/1/22

Meet the 2022 Yellow Arrow Publishing Writers-in-Residence

Yellow Arrow Publishing is based in Baltimore, Maryland, and loves supporting the array of diverse neighborhoods within the incredible city. And through our 2022 Writers-in-Residence program, the four chosen residents will be weaving the influence of their Baltimore experiences with their words. We encourage our Writers-in-Residence to take inspiration from the Baltimore community by writing in spaces representative of their neighborhood, and we hope that Charm City’s influence is present in their writing. Starting today and continuing through May, our residents will write, collaborate, and grow. Yellow Arrow commits to motivating, supporting, and amplifying their voices.

Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling. We are so proud of everyone within the Yellow Arrow community. Without further ado, let’s meet the 2022 Yellow Arrow Writers-in-Residence!

Follow Arao on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @araoameny.

What will you be working on during your residency?

During my residency, I’d like to revise a poetry manuscript and generate new poems. I would also like to revise a manuscript of 11 fiction short stories and generate a draft for a new story.

How has living in Baltimore shaped who you are as a storyteller?

As a storyteller in Baltimore, I’ve immersed myself in the work of writers with links or connections to this city. I’ve delved into the work of writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zora Neale Hurston, Edgar Allan Poe, Scott Fitzgerald, Frederick Douglass, and many more. As a person who has always found me in transition, migrating, moving, settling, resettling, and ultimately reinventing the self, I look to the writers of each place I go—in this case, Baltimore—as an anchor and a compass for my own writing journey.

Amy L. Bernstein writes for the page, the stage, and forms in between. Her novels include The Potrero Complex, The Nighthawkers, and Fran, The Second Time Around. Amy’s poetry leans heavily on freeform prose poems that address psychological and political states of mind. Amy is an award-winning journalist, playwright, and certified nonfiction book coach.

Follow Amy on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn @amylberstein, and Facebook @AmyLBernsteinAuthor. Find her website at amywrites.live.

What will you be working on during your residency?

I intend to hold twice-monthly workshops with emerging and experienced female-identifying poets and writers aged 16 and up from across the city. We will focus on a joint project, namely, using our creative imaginations to reinvent Baltimore a millennium from now. Writers may use poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, or hybrid forms of literary expression to envision a future city that celebrates their possible descendants. We will write separately and together. This project will hopefully culminate in an anthology that may eventually be published.

How has living in Baltimore shaped who you are as a storyteller?

Baltimore City has had a big impact on the settings and stories included in much of my fiction and poetry. I’ve written several poems that seek to explore and refract aspects of systemic racism through my sensibility as a white female artist. To that end, I’ve researched specific landmarks, including cemeteries and parks, as well as specific streets in Baltimore, where enslaved people were held or marched down to the docks. Walking through actual landscapes is a huge trigger for the literary imagination. In my novels, Baltimore serves as a backdrop for a variety of plots, ranging from the realistic to the highly fanciful. For instance, in my paranormal romance novel, the Inner Harbor morphs into a shimmery gateway to an alternative reality.

Catrice Greer is a Baltimore-based writer and a 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee. In November 2020, she served as a Poet-In-Residence for Cheltenham Poetry Festival (United Kingdom). Her poetic work explores a range of topics about the human condition including mental health wellness, trauma, healing, sciences, nature, astronomy, transcendence, spirituality, identity, heritage, and cultural ancestry. She is published in local publications, online journals, and international anthologies. Currently, Catrice is coeditor of Lapidus Magazine (Lapidus International, UK), guest editor for IceFloe Press (Canada), and a guest poetry reviewer for Fevers of the Mind (U.S.).

Follow Catrice on Twitter @cgreer_greer and Instagram @Gcatrice.

What will you be working on during your residency?

During this residency, my focus is on completing my first poetry chapbook/collection for publication. This particular collection is about trauma, healing, transcendence, nature, and personhood. I explore the human condition.

How has living in Baltimore shaped who you are as a storyteller?

My stories are tethered to experiences as a lifelong resident of Baltimore through my eyes, personal history, cultural and socioeconomic overlaps, and cacophony of life experiences. Though some of the narratives are personal, some are observational, and others, are universal. A sense of place acts as a foundational marker at times, and other times as a pivot or contrast.

Matilda Young is a poet with an MFA in Poetry from the University of Maryland. She has been published in several journals, including Anatolios Magazine, Angel City Review, and Entropy Magazine’s Blackcackle. She enjoys Edgar Allan Poe jokes, not being in her apartment, sharing viral birding videos, and being obnoxious about the benefits of stovetop popcorn.

Follow Matilda on Instagram @matildayoung28.

What will you be working on during your residency?

During my residency, I will be focused on how I can share the practice and joy of poetry with my community—virtually and in person. In addition to leading a virtual daily writing practice in April, I will also be finding ways to connect with people in my neighborhood around poetry. During this time, I’ll also be working on finishing my manuscript of poems. And I’ll be putting together a chapbook around the idea of “women and other monsters.”

How has living in Baltimore shaped who you are as a storyteller?

Although I’m a relative newcomer to Baltimore, I feel like living here has infused a lot of my writing. I love the streets I’ve gotten to wander down, the people I’ve gotten to meet, the hawk sightings in Druid Hill Park, and the seagulls that hang out next to my grocery store. I also am deeply inspired by the amazing writers, creators, artists, and advocates in this city. There is so much creativity and community to be found here.

We encourage you to follow along with them on their creative journeys over the next two months. Our hope is that you will be as inspired by the arts as they are, as well as the diverse community we enjoy.

Happy National Poetry Month!

*****

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 3/29/22 Kapua Iao 3/29/22

The Power of the Right Story: Why Yellow Arrow’s Mission is Important

By Isabelle Anderson

The first time I was moved to tears by a book, Each Little Bird that Sings, I was in the third grade. I came into the reading class discussion with two crucial notes. First, this book had made me cry. Second, I wanted to learn how to do that with words. So at eight years old, I pronounced myself a novelist and my career took off one copy paper sheet of half-plagiarized story at a time, many of which I thrust the burden of reading upon any unsuspecting, too-nice person. The book, about young Comfort Snowberger whose family owns a funeral home, deals with loss in several forms: the death of a loved one, the end of a friendship, and aging out of childhood, topics that I could connect even to my eight-year-old life, having lost the first member of my family the year before. My uncle Ian, my mother’s brother had often eased the strain of my early fatherless years. Before his death, like many children, I could not fathom loss. Each Little Bird That Sings was a story that reached me at exactly the right time. What was most important about this reading experience was both the connection and the revelation; Deborah Wiles’ Each Little Bird that Sings made me cry then, once I was sold on the power of words, made me a writer.

The second time someone else’s words changed the trajectory of my life, I was 15, tearing through the young adult genre looking for words in the remote shape of my uncertain self. When I read Nina LaCour’s Everything Leads to You in a laundromat in the new town we’d just moved to, I found something I hadn’t known I was looking for. The book’s protagonist, Emi, is a young lesbian with a dream of working in set design. Emi’s queerness exists alongside her love for design, and the narrative introduces it neutrally, unaccompanied by a coming-out plot or a trauma-ridden backstory.

By then, I knew I was queer but didn’t know what that meant beyond the difficulties I might endure. I had read so many of those stories—some exploitative tales exhausted with pain or utilizing tropes that harmfully portray queer women, and many more truly beautiful and honest accounts of the challenges that come with embracing queerness—that I had not even considered the happy ones. Once again, the right story had found me. The lightness of Emi’s story was so tonally disconnected from how I had imagined my own future, but after reading the book, I knew the direction I wanted to take this lifelong commitment to writing. My stories could be those stories.

Yellow Arrow Publishing considers creativity “an act of service,” an idea to which I subscribe, believing the giving and receiving of a story to be one of the greatest tools in enriching human connection. The service that Deborah Wiles and Nina LaCour have done by putting out work that touched my heart—and I’m sure the hearts of countless others—is unquantifiable. Their words reaching me at exactly the right time in my life of truly miraculous, especially considering the challenges women face in the publishing world. To carve out a space for women-identifying writers to tell their stories means changing the culture of publishing altogether. My understanding of publishing has always been that only a certain kind of story gets published and that books with diversity don’t sell as well. This ideology centers publishing around money-making rather than honoring the heart of literature: to express and honor the human experience. Yellow Arrow does not shy away from difference, but celebrates it, publishing stories of women across age and experience.

My work so far at Yellow Arrow has shown me the ways in which a space is being made, not just for women writers, but for women in publishing as a whole because Yellow Arrow provides space on the board, in staff positions, and in learning opportunities in teaching and taking workshops. Yellow Arrow’s mission in publishing women-identifying writers, experienced and new to the craft, gets to the root of gender-based inequity in the publishing industry and applies action to the only real solution: publishing women.

That it took me so long to find happy stories about queer women tells me that so many of those stories simply haven’t made it through the rigamarole that is publishing. Yellow Arrow, one publication at a time, is making it possible for life-altering stories—some that can be as simple as someone like you experiencing and expressing joy—to reach the right people at the right time, and to ultimately change the landscape of publishing.

Every writer has a story, and every story is worth telling.

Isabelle Anderson is a fiction writer and poet from Baltimore, Maryland. Isabelle is currently a senior at Washington College studying English and creative writing, and an editor for multiple campus publications, including the student journal Collegian. You can find Isabelle on Twitter @ibaspel.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 3/22/22 Kapua Iao 3/22/22

Meet a Board Member: Donna Hutchison

Yellow Arrow Publishing is incredibly excited to officially introduce Director of Online Programming, Donna Hutchison, to the Yellow Arrow family. Donna’s family hails from Baltimore, Maryland, and she spent many summers at the Chesapeake Bay and in Ocean City. For the last 30 years though, she has lived in Boise, Idaho, and travels frequently for her job. She loves spending time with her husband, children, and five granddaughters in the Idaho mountains looking for mushrooms, huckleberries, hiking, four-wheeling, and other outdoor activities. She is a lifelong educator serving both in higher education and as a superintendent of a virtual school. She currently serves in a leadership position at a leading educational technology company. Donna has her doctorate in education and has published work in educational journals, such as Teachers College Record, and is currently working on a book on best practices in online education.

Donna adds, “I joined Yellow Arrow to support women whether through writing, self-confidence, or providing an opportunity for success. As a lifelong educator who has been blessed with opportunities and individuals who have supported my success, I want to encourage other women to find their voice, to join a supportive community, and create opportunities to help in the achievement of their goals.”

Yellow Arrow’s workshops are in full swing thanks to Donna! Don’t forget to check them out and sign up today.

She recently took some time to answer some questions for us. Show her some love in the comments or on Facebook/Instagram!

What do you love most about Baltimore?

I live in Boise, Idaho, but grew up in Richmond, Virginia. My family is from the Baltimore area, and I spent many summers and holidays in and around the Chesapeake Bay. I moved to Idaho about 30 years ago. I love Idaho and the mountains but miss the beach!

How did you get involved with Yellow Arrow and what do you do?

I got involved with Yellow Arrow due to my connection with Annie Marhefka, Executive Director. Annie and I worked together for many years at an online learning company. I currently serve as the Vice President for Educational Partnerships and work closely with K12 superintendents, school boards, universities, and Departments of Education in creating more online learning opportunities for K12 students. My focus in online learning occurred long before the pandemic, and I am an advocate for those students who need different learning opportunities to be successful. One size does not fit all!

What are you working on currently?

We love going to the mountains and have property near a lake about two hours north of Boise. We spend every second in the spring through the fall working on the property and enjoy the outdoors. During the winter months, we plan for the summer projects!

What genre do you write and why?

I am solely an academic writer focused on online learning pedagogy. Over the last 20 years, I did not have an opportunity to write due to family and job obligations but have recently started collaborating with a higher ed colleague on papers and a possible book.

Who is your favorite writer and why?

In the nonfiction space, my favorite writer is Malcolm Gladwell. He thinks about everyday life, business, and education and challenges our commonly held beliefs. His thought processes are so unique and present topics in ways that I would never even consider. He makes you think.

I also enjoy fiction books that challenge commonly held beliefs. My favorite genre is probably fantasy, especially ones that challenge our social assumptions through the setting, actions of the characters, or circumstances.

Who has inspired and/or supported you most in your writing journey?

My husband is my inspiration and support. We are opposites in so many ways, but I couldn’t ask for a more supportive partner to inspire me, challenge me, and motivate me to accomplish my goals.

What do you love most about writing?

In our busy, media-rich world, writing allows you to slow down, process your thinking, and center your thoughts. It forces you to clearly identify your message so that others can truly understand what you are trying to convey.

What advice do you have for new writers?

I think the most important advice that I can share is to focus on time management. It is important to set time aside that is free from interruptions and let the mind explore its creativity. I completed my dissertation when my son was 4 years old by waking up at 4 am when the house was quiet and free from distractions. It allowed me three hours of uninterrupted time which was key to successfully completing my writing and research.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 3/18/22 Kapua Iao 3/18/22

Tenderness and Terrific Language: A Review of Escape Velocity by Kristin Kowalski Ferragut by Naomi Thiers

By Naomi Thiers

Tenderness. Muscular, crisp language that uses scientific terms. Elegiac poems with earthy tones. Poems in nonce forms (a form made up by the writer for that particular poem). A sense of inclusiveness—of a speaker who welcomes to her embrace both odd metaphors that somehow work and people from her past who have hurt or exasperated her—and also embraces odd words (misanthrope, plushy, shifty-sharp). All these are things I find in Kristin Kowalski Ferragut’s new book, Escape Velocity.

I kept coming back to the idea of tenderness reading these poems. In the speaker/writer’s approach to life, I feel a suspension of judgment; here’s someone who displays great, gentle fondness for the world, who finds joy in a tiger lily, “our beer-soaked weekends,” or in the small ways someone tries their best, even in the crappiest year of their life. How often is tenderness the main feeling suffusing a collection these days? Especially a collection drawing heavily on imagery from physics, meteorology, transportation, and machinery. Take one of my favorites, “Change Takes Energy.” It mixes scientific facts with the raw feelings of divorce and lonely parenting, then ends in momentum:

Thunderstorms rotate into hurricanes, rockets hit

escape velocity over 25 thousand miles per hour, birthday cake

bakes at 350 degrees to tender perfection. No reason to expect

any leftovers. Babies can’t loan you thirty bucks

and butterflies won’t take out the trash upon emerging

from the chrysalis. And she isn’t the one with whom,

You tied the knot, fumbling hands recalling torn-through

mittens on the rope tow because the hill was just too

steep and you never did learn to ski. Gloriously

happy with the band on your finger, all that hide and seek

behind you. He wouldn’t keep you safe or bring you

soup, but still a kind of resting place. Buried beneath

pills and knives, scars and scarves, you’ll never find

him now. You fueled the escape and don’t quite begrudge

it, except in what is misunderstood as finite. All these

Worries of loss overlook what science shows us—renewable

energy in wind, tides, sun, your heart and the smile

you give your kids after taking out the trash.

Each section of the book is named for a term or principle in physics. The section, “Force” deals with two realities: the ache of great changes happening—being driven from home by a fire, hurricanes blowing everything we own away, divorce—and with leaning into change by finding deep friendships and love in late middle age (I don’t know, of course, if the speaker is the poet in these poems—that’s nunmy business—but to me, the speaker of most poems sounds like a middle-aged woman). Hey, Kowalski Ferragut seems to say, there are fresh ways to write about falling in (or losing) love. Two poems in a nonce form (a 3-line stanza with a pattern imposed on the indentation) reflect this. Again, tenderness shows up. Here’s the first stanzas of “Whispers Enough” about new love:

She wanted to love like

a whisper;

Him leaning

in, breath on

cheek; listening.

Her lips curved

upward reaching for

sky; his hands holding

hips to anchor

them both, a kind of home.

Nests, cabins, caves –

homes as well. She considers

tapestry or making do.

And here’s three stanzas from “Transgendered Ex at Son’s Birthday Party,” about an awkward situation involving a past partner:

I think to change into a T-shirt,

something in which I can chase kids with water guns,

something that disregards cleavage and shoulder.

You arrive in a pretty little dress.

It’s edgy, a sweetheart neckline

white with black trim and little crickets and bees

perched about.

. . .

I give you a hug and you feel dewy, like a woman glistening.

Never before good at forgetting, I cannot now remember

what it was like to be yours.

In the section “At Rest,” the poet gets face to face with loss—the death of parents and friends, the burying of a long marriage. But a very subtly funny poem (there are several such poems in the collection) starts off the section. One thing I know about Kowalski Ferragut is she’s a special ed teacher—and she surely has a twisted mind to come up with “If Eulogies Read Like IEPs”:

She demonstrated relative strength

in solving simple equations but required

support to solve multi-step word problems.

. . .

She took on too much. Did too little.

Lacked perspective to know this millennium

is not a Renaissance. She required reminders

that dinnertime came very fucking night.

Although observers note she acted weird,

she maintained efforts to seem normal

This poet observes, with openness and curiosity, people and stories around her: a tantrum-y child (“Repress Nothing”), a quiet man visiting his pet’s grave (“Sugarloaf Pet Gardens”), an imagined 20-something girl who buys a used “Vintage 69” shirt the speaker once owned (“Midlife Legacy”) and falls passionately for her date when she wears it. These poems tell common stories that follow common laws of attraction, repulsion, gravity, and they make me think of a quote I read recently, I think said by Mary Karr, poet, essayist, and memoirist: “Most of what happens to people in life is banal—unless it’s happening to you.” I think of that quote because the stories, people, and emotions weaving through these poems don’t feel banal; Kowalski Ferragut makes them remarkable through language.

Kowalski Ferragut, Kristin. 2021. Escape Velocity. kelsaybooks.com.

Naomi Thiers (naomihope@comcast.net) grew up in California and Pittsburgh, but her chosen home is Washington D.C./northern Virginia. She is the author of four poetry collections: Only the Raw Hands Are Heaven, In Yolo County, She Was a Cathedral, and Made of Air. Her poems, book reviews, and essays have been published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Grist, Sojourners, and other magazines. Former editor of the journal Phoebe, she works as an editor for Educational Leadership magazine and lives on the banks of Four Mile Run in Arlington, Virginia.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

“Disappointed” by Sandra Kacher from Minnesota

“Dissolving” by Sandra Kacher from Minnesota

“Paul Bunyan Takes a Lover” and “Cassiopeia” by Jessica Gregg from Baltimore, Maryland

“The Cost of Miscarriage” (content warning: miscarriage) by Annie Marhefka from Baltimore, Maryland

“One Good Thing” by Claire Taylor from Baltimore, Maryland

“Cause and Effect,” “Love of Hate,” “just a body,” “No Say,” and “Bleeding Hearts” by Chris Biles from Washington, D.C.

“PTSD” by Chris Biles from Washington, D.C.

Arao Ameny

Amy L. Bernstein

Catrice Greer

Matilda Young

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