.WRITERS.ON.WRITING..Writers.on.Writing.
Get to know our authors, the foundation and heart of Yellow Arrow Journal, and what writing means to them through our monthly series.
W.o.W. #70
Amanda Kooser
What period of your life do you find you write about most often?
Childhood is a big one. It’s not so much that everything I write is set in my childhood, but that it explores the reverberations from that time. I have a constant sense of the past boomeranging around. I’m also very engaged in the present moment and with experiences in nature.
What is your writing Kryptonite? Your most interesting writing quirk?
I’ve been fortunate to have a journalism career, which means writing on demand and on deadline. That attitude has spilled over into all of my writing projects, so I never fear a blank page. When it comes to quirks, I brainstorm in the shower at night. If I’m stuck on a piece, I contemplate it while shampooing and figure it out. Then I jump out of the shower and get back to writing.
What are you currently working on (even non-writing things)?
Journalism-wise, I’m covering a lot of space stories involving NASA missions. I’m querying a historical literary mystery co-written with my mother and revising a speculative novel about drought, forgotten gods, and human women. I play guitar and write indie rock/Americana songs for my band The Dawn Hotel. You can find me in an Aikido dojo most week nights, training, and teaching and flying around. Journalism-wise, I’m covering a lot of space stories involving NASA missions. I’ve got a couple novels (one a portal fantasy and one a hybrid fiction/nonfiction postmodern metaphysical detective tale) I’m submitting. In poetry-land, I’m working on a series about the body and a series about the Jemez Mountains in New Mexico. I play guitar and write indie rock/Americana songs for my band The Dawn Hotel. Lastly, I’m trying to catch a pigeon with an injured wing that has taken up residence in my backyard so I can take him to wildlife rehab. So far, he’s evaded me, so I’m putting out food and water for him
What does your inner writing voice tell you?
Oh, it’s a chatty beast and it’s fickle. Sometimes it whispers unkind things about the quality of my work, but I’m good at talking back when it gets like that. We’ve agreed not to dwell on the negative, so my inner voice is usually a swell of excitement that’s at its best when we can say “Hot damn, that was fun!” in chorus.
Amanda Kooser (she/they) is a freelance journalist and longtime contributor to CNET specializing in goofy rocks on Mars. They graduated from the University of New Mexico creative writing MFA program in 2022. Their work has appeared in the Harwood Anthology and Conceptions Southwest with upcoming pieces in The Twin Bill and New Mexico Poetry Anthology. Amanda cruises Route 66 in Albuquerque in a pink-and-chrome ‘50s car and plays a pink-sparkle guitar in indie rock band The Dawn Hotel.
Yellow Arrow published Amanda’s piece “Handsome” in Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. VII, No. 2, PEREGRINE. You can also find them on Twitter @akooser and at their website amandakooser.com.
.Writers.on.Writing.
Get to know our authors, the foundation and heart of Yellow Arrow Journal, and what writing means to them through our monthly series.
W.o.W. #57
Maria S. Picone
Describe an early experience where you learned that language has power.
I’m five or six years old. My uncle has been diagnosed with ALS [Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis], my father, his brother, is struggling with workplace injuries and depression, and I’m at my grandmother’s (his mother’s) watching a TV special about Lou Gehrig in black and white with her, listening to his “luckiest man in the world” speech. The words are echoing in the stadium and in my head. There’s a black-and-white quality to the way meaning and irony enter my grandmother’s living room, something about the idea of “luck” that adults always tell me I’m the recipient of as an adoptee. I learn that “lucky” isn’t always a good thing, that it’s something people call you when facing bad circumstances.
What period of your life do you find you write about most often?
I find myself returning often to childhood, a well of memories and emotions that I fear losing access to as I get older. But sometimes it’s the most miserable times in my life that are the most vivid—graduating into the recession, losing loved ones, struggling with mental health and self-harm.
What does your inner writing voice tell you?
I’m not sure if I have an inner writing voice, but aside from the compulsion to check on the dishes and the cleanliness of the bathrooms when I sit down to write, a lot of advice to wait and be patient has been inculcated in me from various sources. A type of Rome-wasn’t-built-in-a-day feeling toward my writing career and body of work.
How did you first publish your writing and what was it?
My first pieces, translations of Rilke’s French prose poems, were published in Able Muse in 2014. At the time, and when I came back to writing in late 2019, I was desperate for credits so I’m lucky that I had such a great experience with some of my earliest publications. As for self-publishing, I think grade school has great bookmaking experiences—construction paper, staples, visual illustration. and all that. I wrote my first book when I was six and my intended audience were classmates who were reading picture books.
Maria S. Picone/ 수영 is a queer Korean American adoptee who won Cream City Review’s 2020 Summer Poetry Prize. Her debut chapbook, Adoptee Song, was published in late 2022. She has been published in Tahoma Literary Review, The Seventh Wave, Fractured Lit, and more, including Best Small Fictions 2021. Her work has been supported by The Juniper Institute, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, GrubStreet, Kenyon Review, and Tin House. She is Chestnut Review’s managing editor, Hanok Review’s poetry editor, and Uncharted Mag’s associate editor. Find out more at mariaspicone.com or on Twitter @mspicone.
“They need to invent a Korean word for adoptee sorrow” was included in Yellow Arrow Journal PEREGRINE, Vol. VII, No. 2, Fall 2022. You can find Maria reading her poem with other PEREGRINE authors in Fly to Me, Speak to Me: A PEREGRINE Reading on the Yellow Arrow YouTube Channel.
.Writers.on.Writing.
Get to know our authors, the foundation and heart of Yellow Arrow Journal, and what writing means to them through our monthly series.
W.o.W. #56
Laura Rockhold
What is the first book that made you cry? What book is on the top of your to-be-read pile?
As a child, Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. As a mother while reading to my daughter, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and What The Road Said by Cleo Wade.
[In December, I read] All Souls by Saskia Hamilton for my reading group. On top of my personal list is The Search for the Genuine, a book of essays by Jim Harrison.
How did you first publish your writing and what was it?
I became dedicated to submitting my poetry in 2021 and first published poems in 2022. The first publication in 2022 included two poems, “One Story High” and “(I Cried For You) In The Rain.”
What does your inner writing voice tell you?
Yes.
What are you currently working on?
I am currently collaborating with a local artist on two different 2024 projects that combine poetry and visual art as an experience in the community. I am also participating with The Witness Project, a local group of writers engaged in projects that draw attention to ecological relationships between humans and nature and promote solutions to existing systemic racial and economic inequities in the Twin Cities. And I am seeking publication of my first collection of poetry and painting occasionally.
Laura Rockhold is a poet and visual artist living in Minnesota. She is the inventor of the golden root poetic form and 2022 recipient of the Bring Back The Prairies Award and Southern MN Poets Society Award. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and is published or forthcoming in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Cider Press Review, deLuge Journal, Scarlet: A Literary Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, The Hopper, Yellow Arrow Journal, and elsewhere. Find her at laurarockhold.com.
“LICHEN BLOOMS” was included in Yellow Arrow Journal PEREGRINE, Vol. VII, No. 2, Fall 2022 while “LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER” was included in Yellow Arrow Journal’s issue EMBLAZON, Vol. VIII, No. 2, Fall 2023. Laura participated in the readings for both publications, which can be found on the Yellow Arrow YouTube channel.
.Writers.on.Writing.
Get to know our authors, the foundation and heart of Yellow Arrow Journal, and what writing means to them through our monthly series.
W.o.W. #48
Diann Leo-Omine
What is the first book that made you cry?
I couldn’t tell you the first book that made me cry, but I was most recently moved by the cookbook Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown by chef Brandon Jew and writer Tienlon Ho. I haven’t yet cooked any of the recipes, but I felt my childhood and family life really spring to life from the history about San Francisco’s Chinatown and the Toisanese (Southern Chinese) diaspora. Even the choice to include the main collaborators’ Chinese names in their bios at the back nearly brought me to tears.
What does your inner writing voice tell you?
What stories are begging to be told? Tell them.
What period of your life do you find you write about most often?
It’s been a mixed bag about my early 20s and false starts entering the “working world” during the Great Recession spliced up with growing up in San Francisco in the 1990s.
What is a good writing habit you have picked up?
This isn’t so much a personal habit so much as it is realizing the importance of building writing community. I’ve met a lot of inspiring creatives from my Rooted and Written fellowship but also from Food Media Lab (a conference held by San Francisco Cooking School where I met my collaborators for Lunchbox Moments Zine, featured in the Yellow Arrow blog in 2021) and Golden Trout (a local writers group based where I live in Sacramento).
Diann Leo-Omine (she/her) is a creative nonfiction writer born and raised in San Francisco (Ramaytush Ohlone land) and the colorfully boisterous Southern Chinese-Toisanese diaspora. Her creative nonfiction piece “The Hawk” was included in Yellow Arrow Journal PEREGRINE (Vol. VII, No. 2). We nominated “The Hawk” for a 2023 Pushcart Prize.
To combat the recent swell of hate crimes against Asian Americans, Diann cocurated and edited the charity food zine Lunchbox Moments. A grateful alum of Tin House and Rooted & Written, she is currently devising a manuscript centering her maternal grandmother.
You can find Diann reading part of the “Hawk” with other PEREGRINE authors in Fly to Me, Speak to Me: A PEREGRINE Reading on the Yellow Arrow YouTube Channel. Learn more about her on Instagram and Twitter @sweetleoomine or at her website sweetleoomine.com.
.Writers.on.Writing.
Get to know our authors, the foundation and heart of Yellow Arrow Journal, and what writing means to them through our monthly series.
W.o.W. #46
Leticia Priebe Rocha
Describe an early experience where you learned that language has power.
When my family immigrated to the United States when I was 9 years old, I learned English by reading fiction. To be transported into entirely different universes during a time of such challenging personal transition was transformational.
What is a book you wish someone would write?
A poetry collection centering on Brazilian folklore.
What word do you find yourself using most often in your writing?
I am currently gravitating toward the word “unspool.”
What does your inner writing voice tell you?
Go deeper.
Leticia Priebe Rocha’s poem “Lost In” was included in Yellow Arrow Journal PEREGRINE (Vol. VII, No. 2). Leticia received her bachelor’s from Tufts University, where she was awarded the 2020 Academy of American Poets University & College Poetry Prize. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, she immigrated to Miami, Florida, at nine and currently resides in the Greater Boston area. Find her on Instagram @letiprieberochapoems, Twitter @LetiPriebeRocha, or Facebook @leticiaprieberocha and online at leticiaprieberocha.com.
Leticia participated in “Fly to Me, Speak to Me: A PEREGRINE Reading” from December 2022. Support Leticia and the rest of the authors by watching the reading on the Yellow Arrow YouTube channel.