.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.

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.W.o.W. #15

Yvonne

What does your inner writing voice tell you?

“Trouble. Trouble. Toil and bubble.”

How did you first publish your writing and what was it?

The Towers, the annual literary journal of West Catholic Girls High School, published the second poem I had ever written when I was in the 10th grade. The next year it published my first sonnet; I did not write another one until 50+ years later. The first publication that paid me for a poem was Ms. Magazine [where she became poetry editor 1974–1987] in 1972.

What word do you find yourself using most often in your writing?

I don’t know. I keep my thesaurus handy. Maybe the pronoun “she.”

Yvonne’s poem, “BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: The Lena O. Smith House,” about the incredible civil rights attorney, Lena O. Smith (1855–1966), was included in Yellow Arrow Journal’s Vol. V, No. 2 issue HOME. You can find her companion poem, “Ballad of the Arthur and Edith Lee House,” in HOME: An Anthology by Flexible Press (2020), reprinted with permission by Winning Writers. For more information about Yvonne, visit her website iwilla.com.