Yellow Arrow Publishing Blog

Kapua Iao 11/19/24 Kapua Iao 11/19/24

Meet the Yellow Arrow Publishing 2025 chapbook authors

From 2020 to 2024, Yellow Arrow Publishing has had the privilege of publishing 14 chapbooks (for information about the creative minds behind these collections, visit yellowarrowpublishing.com/publish-with-us). Some of our authors published their first books with us while others had gotten their feet wet in the past but wanted to dive into something slightly different and more intimate. Several are from the Baltimore area while others are from all over the United States, with one author (shout out to Roz Weaver . . . are guinea pig and first chapbook author) from England. We’ve learned so much over the years and grown with each writer, figuring out with each book how to best support our authors. With 2025, we were looking for collections that sang to us, made us cry, made us commiserate, made us proud.

In two rounds over several months, we read through the beautiful submissions we received, first creating a longlist, then shortlist, and eventually selecting the three authors we would love to work with in 2025. It was difficult to email submitters to let them know our decision (writing an acceptance email is as hard as a decline as you never know how either message will be received), but the process is done, and we are so excited to work with the three chosen.

So, without further ado, let’s meet the 2025 Yellow Arrow chapbook authors!

**Ann marie Houghtailing**

*Little by Little*
coming April 2025

Ann marie Houghtailing has an ALM in American Literature from Harvard University Extension. She has delivered a TEDx Talk entitled Raising Humans and performed her critically acclaimed one woman show, Renegade Princess, in New York, Chicago, Santa Fe, San Francisco, and San Diego. Houghtailing is a visual artist and cofounder of the firm, Story Imprinting. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Huffington Post, Daily Worth, XO Jane, San Diego Business Journal, Yahoo! Finance, and Thought Catalog.

Find her on Instagram @trailsnotpaths and on Facebook and LinkedIn @annmariehoughtailing.

About Little by Little: “Little by little” is the phrase my mother used to say when things were hard. Things were almost always hard. I grew up in a culture of poverty and witnessed violence, struggle, and wild resilience everyday. What I did not know was that my mother’s phrase would become a life affirming strategy. It was a map that took me back to myself when life took so much from me. From 2019–2020 four members of my family, including my mother, died in rapid succession. Their deaths would be an extension of historic and epigenetic trauma that would require me to sit inside of suffering and paint, write, and garden my way through to transformation. This collection, Little by Little, seeks to explore the universality of human suffering and how we find our way to meaning and purpose. Everyday we experience loss. The loss of innocence, youth, relationships, jobs, money, confidence, power, life, and hope are in constant play. Learning to sit inside of deep suffering can be intellectually, emotionally, and physically demanding territory that invites us to examine who we are and what we’re made of. Little by Little is a way to see, a way to suffer, and ultimately live.

Why is it important to you to have your voice heard and amplified?

Just as there is generational wealth, there is generational poverty. I was raised by a mother who grew up on a sugar cane plantation in Waialua, O’ahu. My mother was born when Hawai’i was still a territory of the U.S. This story is completely absent in American culture consciousness. My mother raised me on a pharmacy clerk’s hourly wage and when she died I didn’t inherit property or expensive jewelry; I inherited her stories that are etched in my bones. Stories that will die if I don’t tell them. I’m also a postmenopausal woman, which means that in midlife I’m invisible, pushed to the margins in our youth obsessed culture And finally, I’ve had a long history of staggering loss; 2019–2020 was a particularly devastating year. I produced all the poetry in Little by Little in a period of deep grief. I lost four members of my family in one year. The intersection of these elements of my experience informs the way I see and process the world. Poverty, death, and middle age are not always the subject matter of my writing, but my writing cannot be separated from these truths that have shaped me.

What made you decide to submit this chapbook to Yellow Arrow Publishing this year?

Candace Walsh [author of Iridescent Pigeons, published by Yellow Arrow in 2024] posted the call for submissions. The publication of Iridescent Pigeons was beautiful, and I had a shock of bravery that inspired me to submit my work that had been swimming in the amniotic fluid of grief for several years.

**Emily Decker**

*Homing*
coming July 2025

Emily Decker was born in Virginia, on the Chesapeake Bay, and spent her childhood in Ghana and her growing-up years in Atlanta, Georgia. She holds degrees in literature and secondary English education from Georgia State University, and her poetry has appeared in Yellow Arrow Journal, Full Bleed, Hole in the Head Review, and Bay to Ocean Journal. Decker currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland, where she also loves to participate in local theater, sing, and sail. Homing is her first collection.

Find her on Instagram and Facebook @emadeck.

About Homing: Where is home? All my life, this question has been a complicated one to answer. I can tell you where I was born, where I spent my childhood, where I’ve lived the most, and where I live now. But home? I’m not sure. Is it a location? Or is it found within the communities and relationships where we feel loved, safe, part of something outside of ourselves? Does it change? And what about the times when we don’t know where—or if—to return? The search for these answers is what led to the poems in this collection. At its core, Homing is an exploration of the transitory nature of belonging and its innate role in our desire for home, even as we try to define it. These poems reflect on the interconnectedness of the paths we take and the moments along the way—between tides and seasons, in nature, amidst love and friendship, within memory and loss, over generations, and most of all, within ourselves—as we seek, find, and return to a place called home.

Why is it important to you to have your voice heard and amplified?

I don’t think it’s important to have my voice heard, per se. But I do hope my poems represent many voices—ones that don’t always know how to be heard but are searching for ways to have their experiences reflected back to them, on a page, in an image, in metaphor. The poet Eavan Boland once wrote that “at the end of the day, what matters is language. Is the unspoken at the edge of the spoken.” If amplifying my words helps someone connect language to their own, perhaps unspoken, search for home and belonging, then I’m happy to be part of the great host of writers bridging the gap between the spoken and unspoken.

What made you decide to submit this chapbook to Yellow Arrow Publishing this year?

Yellow Arrow Journal’s KINDLING issue (2023) was the home of my first published poem and since then [Yellow Arrow] has held a special place in my heart. I also wanted to finish and submit this chapbook before I turned 40 this past September—as a sort of capstone to my 30s. Aging is such a complicated process of self-discovery and acceptance for a woman, and Yellow Arrow’s women-amplifying, community-driven mission further underscored my choice to submit this collection—another first publication—to them.

**Vic Nogay**

*Naming a Dying Thing*
coming October 2025

Vic Nogay is a Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction nominated writer from Ohio. Her work has been published in Gone Lawn, Tiny Molecules, Fractured Lit, Lost Balloon, and other journals. She is the author of the micropoetry chapbook under fire under water (tiny wren, 2022) and the microeditor of Identity Theory. Find her online @vicnogaywrites or haunting rural roadsides where the wildflowers grow.

About Naming a Dying Thing: Naming a Dying Thing is a collection of poems rooted in place, in loss, and in reckoning. Much of the content is sieved through native Ohio wildlife imagery of all seasons, though primarily summer. This is a sticky collection, like humid Ohio summers, often wistful and lovely, but also heavy and heightened. The primary struggle in this body of work is with womanhood, motherhood—how to be a woman and a mother in a society demanding we be somehow everything and nothing all at once. These poems also contemplate and subvert success and failure in love, holding a marriage up to the concurrent events of our hostile American reality. There are no answers here. Topics include pregnancy, motherhood, miscarriage, child loss, abortion, reproductive injustices, gun violence, climate change, marriage, relationships, memory, and the hidden intersections I'm finding between them and the native Ohio wildlife near my home.

Why is it important to you to have your voice heard and amplified?

Sharing my voice is self-sovereignty, it’s how I choose to take up space, to let my little life unfurl beyond itself, catching the wind if only for a moment.

What made you decide to submit this chapbook to Yellow Arrow Publishing this year?

I love that Yellow Arrow is a nonprofit publisher committed to championing cis and trans women writers. I knew my poems and I would be safe and supported in this exemplary community.

We can’t wait to work with Ann marie, Emily, and Vic next year and put out there beautiful collections but would like to acknowledge all the incredible collections we received this summer. Thank you to everyone who submitted and shared. In particular, we would love to give a shout out to both our longlisted (part of the top 25) and shortlisted authors (part of the top 11).

Meet our shortlisted authors:

Rachel R. Baum

Melanie Hyo-In Han

Kathleen Hellen

Beth Kanter

Beth Konkoski

Elina Kumra

Pia Taavila-Borsheim

Bethany Tap

Meet our longlisted authors:

Torey Akers

Jody Brooks

Hannah Burns

Alyx Chandler

Jenn Frayer-Griggs

Victoria Grageda-Smith

Jennifer Grant

Jamie Hennick

Arya F. Jenkins

Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka

Kathryn LeBey

Elizabeth Sine

Sam VanNorden

Thank you to everyone who took the time to send your words to us. Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling. We are so proud of everyone we publish at Yellow Arrow.

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women-identifying writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we AMPLIFY women-identifying creatives this year by purchasing one of our publications or a workshop from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, for yourself or as a gift, joining our newsletter, following us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, or subscribing to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 65185, Baltimore, Maryland 21209). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Kapua Iao 11/12/24 Kapua Iao 11/12/24

Memorializing Griefulness: Yellow Arrow Journal (Vol. IX, No. 2) kitalo

How brave you are
Confronting things you cannot control

“Temporary Homes” by Kat Flores

Kitalo, the just released issue of Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. IX, No. 2, guest edited by Tramaine Suubi, explores the poignant intersection of grief and gratitude. While deciding on the theme of the issue, the term “kitalo” spoke to everyone on staff as it seems to have for those who submitted to Yellow Arrow Journal in August. “Kitalo” is an empathetic Luganda term of solidarity offered when someone experiences a spectrum of loss. Directly translating to “this/that is tragic” but far richer than that, the term and the pieces within kitalo represent so much that we want to say on the concept of griefulness, as individuals and as a collective.

We are honored to release the latest issue of Yellow Arrow Journal and are fortunate to share the voices within. In the issue’s introduction, Tramaine adds:

“Being the guest editor is a privilege, but the greatest gift I received in this role is true vulnerability. I grieve and give thanks alongside each of our artists here. I hope their words are lifegiving for you, just as they are for me.”

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 print and electronic books, including Amazon and most other distribution channels. Discounted bundles of our 2024 issues (ELEVATE and kitalo) are also available from our bookstore.

Tramaine Suubi (she/they) is a multilingual writer who was born in Kampala, Uganda. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Their forthcoming debut is a full-length poetry collection titled phases, which will be published in January 2025. Their forthcoming second book is also a full-length poetry collection titled stages, which will be published in January 2026. Both books will be published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins.

The cover image (cover design by Alexa Laharty) is called Growing by Dark Rivers by Liz Jakimow. According to Liz, “There is often a lot of darkness in my photographs now. While some may find it depressing, it feels more authentic to who I am. Yet there are also often elements that draw attention to the light, symbolizing hope.” Thank you Liz for expressing the heart of kitalo through your photograph and your words.

We hope you enjoy reading kitalo as much as we enjoyed creating it. Thank you for your continued encouragement of Yellow Arrow Publishing and the creatives involved in kitalo.

*****

Guest User 10/29/24 Guest User 10/29/24

Meet the 2025 Yellow Arrow Publishing Best of the Net Nominees

Best of the Net recognizes the work of writers published online by independent presses. The project was started in 2006 by Sundress Publications to create a community among the online literary magazines, journals, and self-publishing platforms. The award represents an incredible opportunity for Yellow Arrow Publishing to further showcase and support our authors. Our staff is committed to letting our authors’ shine. Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling.

Here are our Best of the Net 2025 nominees from Vignette SPARK. You can find some of our authors reading from SPARK on the Yellow Arrow YouTube channel. Best of the Net announces the winners in January.

Angela Acosta

“A Centennial for Herstory”
*poetry*
I didn’t have to, but I remembered you.

Angela Acosta (she/her) is a bilingual Latina poet and an assistant professor of Spanish at the University of South Carolina. She is a 2022 Dream Foundry Contest for Emerging Writers finalist, 2022 Somos en Escrito Extra-Fiction Contest honorable mention, and Utopia Award nominee. Her work has appeared in Panochazine, Pluma, Toyon Literary Magazine, and The Acentos Review. Her creative and academic work centers on imagining possible worlds and preserving the cultural legacies of women writers. She is the author of Summoning Space Travelers (Hiraeth Publishing, 2022), A Belief in Cosmic Dailiness (Red Ogre Review, 2023), and her forthcoming chapbook, Fourth Generation Chicana Unicorn (Dancing Girl Press, 2024).

Tijanna O. Eaton

“And Her Eyes Fell from the Scale”
*creative nonfiction*
Finally, animated by their generous and generative support, the chapter was complete. The ouroboros had uncoiled fully, metamorphosing into a dragon.

Tijanna O. Eaton (Tə-zha-na; she/her) is a Black poly kinkster queerdo pocket butch with a high school diploma and a rap sheet. She has been published in Honey Literary, Noyo Review, Panorama Journal (nominated for a Pushcart Prize), and Yellow Arrow Vignette SPARK. She received the 2021 Unicorn Authors Club Alumni award, was a 2023 Rooted & Written Fellow, and was the 2024 Best of the Net nonfiction judge. Tijanna is board chair of Five Keys Schools and Programs, served on QWOCMAP’s board from 2016 to 2018, and was IMsL’s POC liaison from 2015 to 2017. Visit bolt-cutters.com for more information.

Marisa Victoria Gedgaudas

“Colygraphia”
*poetry*
. . . . The syrupy seduction of believing that I can be a keeper of stories but not the teller of them.

Marisa Victoria Gedgaudas is a writer originally from Colorado who now lives on the windswept bluffs of northern California. She is most inspired by the wild beauty around her and is often found exploring the mountains of her childhood, the unspoiled Pacific coast, and the desert landscapes in between. She is currently working on her first collection of poetry.

Charlene Langfur

“The Way Back”
*poetry*
. . . steady
or true, a time to rebuild a small world
that works when I am trying to put
myself back together this way
in time . . .

Charlene Langfur is an LGBTQ and green writer and an organic gardener living in the very hot, southern Californian desert. She was a graduate fellow in the Syracuse University Writing Program and her most recent publications include poems in Poetry East (the special Monet edition), The Hiram Poetry Review, London’s Acumen, and The North Dakota Quarterly.

Laurel Maxwell

“A Full Life”
*poetry*
. . . . To fold ourselves like a paper crane into the creases of delicate existence.

Laurel Maxwell is a poet from Santa Cruz, California, whose work is inspired by life’s mundane and the natural world. Her work has appeared at baseballballard.com, coffecontrails, phren-z, Verse-Virtual, Tulip Tree Review, and Yellow Arrow Vignette SPARK. Her creative fiction was a finalist for Women on Writing Flash Fiction Contest. She has a chapbook forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2025. When not writing Laurel enjoys putting her feet in the sand, reading, traveling, and trying not to make too much of a mess baking in a too small kitchen. She works in education.

Katherine Shehadeh

“My son wants to know what happened before the universe &”
*poetry*
today we learned the universe was created by fire—an explosion tinier than a tiny pin prick, and the universe, it’s expanding all the time, stretching this way, pulling that, until a moment when it isn’t and it gets smaller & tighter, until it turns back into a tiny little thing, tinier than a pin prick.

Katherine Shehadeh is a poet, artist, and current reader for Chestnut Review who resides with her family in Miami, Florida. Her recent poems appear in Maudlin House, Drunk Monkeys, Saw Palm, and others. Find her on Twitter @your_mominlaw or Instagram @katherinesarts.

Ann van Wijgerden

“Dear Planet”
*poetry*
. . . . But it was the waters captivating me in aqua hues, light scattering diamantine, undulating surfaces, their expanses exhaling, inhaling, exhaling.

Ann van Wijgerden, born in the United Kingdom, has spent most of her adult life in the Netherlands and the Philippines. She has had nonfiction, poetry, and fiction published (or accepted for future publication) in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Genre: Urban Arts, Orion, Orbis, The Sunlight Press, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Yellow Arrow Vignette SPARK, The Wild Umbrella, and the Queen’s Quarterly. Ann cofounded and works for an NGO called Young Focus (youngfocus.org), which provides education for children living in Manila’s area of ‘Smokey Mountain.’

Veronica Wasson

“On Clothing (Five Pieces)”
*creative nonfiction*
Clothing was the most visible manifestation of what I was and what I wasn’t; of who I wanted to be and who I dreamed of becoming.

Veronica Wasson (she/her) is a trans writer living in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in Spectrum, smoke + mold, The Seventh Wave, Yellow Arrow Vignette SPARK, and elsewhere. You can find her work at veronica-wasson.com.

*****

Kapua Iao 10/8/24 Kapua Iao 10/8/24

The value of reflection and moving forward: Ghosts Only I Can See by Julie Alden Cullinane

Yellow Arrow Publishing announces the release of our third chapbook of 2024, Ghosts Only I Can See by Julie Alden Cullinane. 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 Yellow Arrow Vignette, and by providing strong author support, writing workshops, and volunteering opportunities. We at Yellow Arrow are excited to continue our mission by supporting Cullinane in all her writing and publishing endeavors.

Ghosts Only I Can See by Julie Alden Cullinane peeks back in time to Cullinane’s younger self and the ghosts through time that until now, only she could see. It focuses not on literal ghosts, but the ghosts—the shells—of her former self. With this hauntingly woven collection of creative nonfiction and poetry, Cullinane shares these ghosts and the painful, powerful, and wonderful experiences that made her the woman she is today. Cullinane is a neurodivergent poet, author, and mom in Boston. After raising a family and working for many years as a young mom, she was able to return to her graduate studies later in life and earned her master’s in 2021. Under the guidance of many amazing and supportive female professors, Cullinane began submitting her work for publication.

Her latest work, Ghosts Only I Can See, wields Cullinane’s story to encourage readers to look into the past, present, and future of all women’s lives. Growing up with many resilient and strong women, Cullinane was an avid spectator of their lives, their passions, and their trauma as she found her own way through the world. As she got older and decided to grasp her ghosts even closer, Cullinane truly began to understand the tender weaving of women’s lives and their multitude of shared experiences—both of which often remain invisible today because of collective shame, individual shame, and the pressures of perfection in society. The desire to make visible the invisible underlies Ghosts Only I Can See.

Cover photography was by Cullinane and cover design and interior images by Alexa Laharty. Cullinane states, “The photos came out beautifully, capturing isolation and Americana vibes with an old western feel but also modern. I couldn’t be happier with the image I selected. Right down to the sunglasses. I hope everyone loves it as much as I do.”

Paperback and PDF versions of Ghosts Only I Can See 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 Ghosts Only I Can See wherever you purchase your books including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. To learn more about Cullinane and Ghosts Only I Can See, check out our recent interview with her.

You can find Cullinane online at julie.wildinkpages.com/poetry, on Instagram or Threads @HerLoudMind, and on Twitter or Blue Sky @AldenCullinane and connect with Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram, to share some love for this chapbook. You can also share a review to any of the major distributors or by emailing editor@yellowarrowpublishing.com. We’d love to hear from you.

*****

Kapua Iao 8/6/24 Kapua Iao 8/6/24

Shine your light bright: Baltimore creatives radiate in Yellow Arrow Vignette AMPLIFY

Welcome to the third annual release of Yellow Arrow Vignette, Yellow Arrow Publishing’s online creative nonfiction and poetry series. For this issue, we aligned with our 2024 yearly value and chose AMPLIFY, though we did not ask submitters to send in pieces on theme; rather, staff at Yellow Arrow used the idea in-house as a reminder to continue to share and amplify women-identifying voices. With that, here is the AMPLIFY issue of Yellow Arrow Vignette:

yellowarrowpublishing.com/vignette/amplify-2024

With Vignette AMPLIFY, we wanted to return to some of the earliest goals of Yellow Arrow: circulating and augmenting the creative work of voices and themes that aren’t heard loudly enough. And as part of the return to our roots, we wanted to showcase writers who live in or are otherwise connected to our home base of Baltimore. We want our readers to experience the spectrum of voices that Charm City offers.

Before diving into the pages of AMPLIFY, explore the cover art for the issue, “shine your light bright” by Kara Panowitz. Kara has lived in Baltimore City for 19 years. According to Kara, “A positive light needs to shine on Baltimore, amplifying all that’s good about the city. A city of neighborhoods, the sunset highlights the Baltimore classic rowhouse, with the iconic skyline standing strong in the background. I love the way the light makes Baltimore glow in this image.” Kara loves documentary photography, taking photos on hikes, and capturing Baltimore in different lights and seasons. Her photography has been chosen for local art exhibitions.

We hope you see the same light glimmering on the Baltimore rooftops shining on the poetry and creative nonfiction in AMPLIFY. Start with “IT WORKS, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH IT” by Tracy Dimond, who gracefully writes “I’ve never felt so womanly / Since having a hysterectomy // A hollowed-out Barbie / The aesthetic without the danger” and continue through to “Wish You Were Here” by Barbara Westwood Diehl. “Wish You Were Here” ends the series with an incredible vision: “In the city of Wish You Were Here, you will not see the castle washed away.” We don’t want to give too much away in this release. Rather, we ask that you read the words and AMPLIFY pages slowly and really take in and experience the different emotions found within.

Thank you to all the writers who followed the call for amplification and sent in their beautiful pieces. We were amazed by the breadth of our collection of submitters and hope that you have the opportunity to amplify your own voice along with any others that surround you. And to the incredible creatives who let us include their work in AMPLIFY: Trish Broome, Barbara Westwood Diehl, Tracy Dimond, Kay White Drew, Jennifer Martinelli Eyre, Katherine Fallon, Robin L. Flanigan, My-Azia Johnson, Diane Macklin, B. Morrison, Sierra Offutt, Christine Pennylegion, Anna Slesinski, Laura Taber, Brigitte Winter, and Cherrie Woods (aka Cherrie Amour). Thank you for trusting us with your words.

Also, thank you to the Yellow Arrow Vignette team, Dr. Tonee Mae Moll and Isabelle Anderson, for their work on the series. Our staff diligently reads through every submission, works on editing every sentence, and contributes amazing feedback to our authors and submitters! Given this, we would also like to thank our wonderful editorial associates, readers, and interns for this issue: Sydney Alexander, Jill Earl, Angela Firman, Marylou Fusco, Caroline Kunz, Alexa Laharty, Sophia Lama, Amaya Lambert, Siobhan McKenna, Sara Palmer, Samantha Pomerantz, Nicky Ruddell, Mel Silberger, Claire Taylor, and Ally Waldon.

The reading for Vignette AMPLIFY will be in-person at the Baltimore Book Festival on September 28. More information is forthcoming.

*****

Kapua Iao 8/1/24 Kapua Iao 8/1/24

Yellow Arrow Journal (IX/02) Kitalo Submissions are Now Open!

Yellow Arrow Publishing is excited to announce that submissions for our next issue of Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. IX, No. 2 (fall 2024) is open August 1-31, exploring the concept griefulness, an intertwining of grief and gratitude. Guest editor, Tramaine Suubi contemplated about the term and how “it feels deeply resonant for our current times. My life, my very body, feels full of grief. As I tried to find home on 15 wildly different streets, in five cities, across four nations, on three continents, my body certainly kept the score. . . . In my present season of life, I am reclaiming darkness and blackness as spaces of goodness—as spaces of rest, reflection, and revival. . . . Grief and gratitude are often intertwined in my findings.”

This issue’s theme is kitalo

: an empathetic Luganda term of solidarity offered when someone experiences a spectrum of loss

: directly translates to “this/that is tragic” but is far richer than that

Our hope is that this issue gives women-identifying creatives a place where they can meditate on communal grief and communal gratitude. Here are some guiding questions about the theme:

1) In the midst of grief, how have others cared for you, how do you care for others, and how do you care for yourself? What are the most striking or profound examples you have experienced or witnessed?

2) If your grief were to take the form of an animal (remember, humans are animals, too), which animal (fictional, nonfictional, or extinct) would it be and how would this animal behave? Be as specific as possible. Feel free to defy logic and science; grief often can.

3) Have you ever immigrated to or emigrated from a different nation than your current nation of residence? What potential life paths and livelihoods did you leave behind as a result? Which ones do you still yearn for and why, if any?

4) Have you ever experienced a platonic break-up (real or imaginary friend)? If so, how do you specifically navigate or ignore the gaps left by lost friendship?

5) Who (fictional or nonfictional) is no longer present in your life, whom you would like to offer your deepest gratitude to?

Yellow Arrow Journal is looking for creative nonfiction, poetry, and cover art submissions by writers/artists who identify as women, on the theme of kitalo. Submissions can be in any language as long as an English translation accompanies it. For more information regarding journal submission guidelines, please visit yellowarrowpublishing.com/submissions. Please read our guidelines carefully before submitting. To learn more about our editorial views and how important your voice is in your story, read about the journal. This issue will be released in November 2024.

Kitalo’s guest editor, Tramaine Suubi (she/they) is a multilingual writer who was born in Kampala. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Their forthcoming debut is a full-length poetry collection titled phases, which will be published in January 2025. Their forthcoming second book is also a full-length poetry collection titled stages, which will be published in January 2026. Both books will be published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins. Tramaine was one of our 2023 writers in residence and their poem "begin again" was included in Yellow Arrow Journal ELEVATE (IX/01). We appreciate all that she has done for Yellow Arrow and are excited to welcome Tramaine on this new venture.

The journal is just one of many ways that Yellow Arrow Publishing works to support and inspire women-identifying creatives through publication and access to the literary arts. Since its founding in 2016, Yellow Arrow has worked tirelessly to make an impact on the local and global community by advocating for writers who 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.

*****

Kapua Iao 7/16/24 Kapua Iao 7/16/24

On the Fullness of Grief

Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to announce the next guest editor for Yellow Arrow Journal, Tramaine Suubi. Tramaine will oversee the creation of our Vol. IX, No. 2 issue (fall 2024).

This next issue of Yellow Arrow Journal explores the concept grieful, whether grief is unconventional, unexpected, unpredictable, unabashed, undying. How can grieving and its rituals and odes be a loud testament to what it is that one is grieving and gratified for? To learn more about this term, read Tramaine’s words below. Mark your calendar! The theme will be released next week. Submissions open August 1 and the issue will be released in November.

Tramaine Suubi (she/they) is a multilingual writer who was born in Kampala. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her forthcoming debut is a full-length poetry collection titled phases, which will be published in January 2025. Her forthcoming second book is also a full-length poetry collection titled stages, which will be published in January 2026. Both books will be published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins. Tramaine was one of our 2023 writers in residence and their poem "begin again" was included in Yellow Arrow Journal ELEVATE (IX/01). We appreciate all that she has done for Yellow Arrow and are excited to welcome Tramaine on this new venture.

Please follow Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram for the theme announcement. Below, you can read more about Tramaine’s perspective on grief. We look forward to (re)working with Tramaine over the next few months.

Show some love to Tramaine on YouTube here.

By Tramaine Suubi

The idea we plan to explore for the forthcoming issue of Yellow Arrow Journal (Vol. IX, No. 02) is grieful. This term was created by my psychologist, and it feels deeply resonant for our current times. My life, my very body, feels full of grief. As I tried to find home on 15 wildly different streets, in five cities, across four nations, on three continents, my body certainly kept the score. We began the COVID pandemic with emails hoping to find us well, when most of us rarely were. Government officials and publications often wrapped the chaos of our lives in the package of “these unprecedented times.” The times were definitely unprecedented, but they are also so much more than that. Many social media users still allude to the profound exhaustion of living through major historical events. I am right there with them. Decades from now, I wonder what scientific studies will teach us about the unquantifiable loss that our society is simply not processing.

As a writer, editor, and teacher, I am obsessed with words. Not only is “Words of Affirmation” my primary love language for receiving, but it is also the primary way I give love. When it comes to grief, words do not feel adequate because language is inherently limited. I eventually found freedom from this finitude of language by being content to bear witness to the infinity of human experience. There really is an art to witnessing. My favorite essay is “Poetry is not a Luxury” by the late, great Audre Lorde. She is one of my guiding lights not only in the practice of writing but the practice of living. In the first half of the essay, she illustrates the beauty of the dark as a place of transformation. She believes, “These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through darkness.

In my present season of life, I am reclaiming darkness and blackness as spaces of goodness—as spaces of rest, reflection, and revival. And so, as I wade through these depths, I keep encountering grief. I commune with my grief and listen to her diligently. She is teaching me so much. Whenever I come up for air, I am struck by what grief leaves in her wake: gratitude for the good that remains. My philosophy studies taught me how to ask questions more than they taught me how to find answers. My creative studies are teaching me how to ask better questions. I was trapped in why we suffer, now I am exploring how we love as we suffer. Grief and gratitude are often intertwined in my findings.

Through my chronic pain and chronic fatigue, I try to adhere to a daily gratitude practice. The muscle is weak, but the movement is growing. In this issue of Yellow Arrow Journal, I invite us to meditate on communal grief and communal gratitude. The infinite manifestations of our griefulness can find space here. A teacher once told me that we write out of the wound. Though the wound never fully heals, the wound always changes. I hope we move beyond the farce of individualism and into the power of collectivism. After all, as a beloved once reminded me, wounds are for community.

*****

Kapua Iao 7/9/24 Kapua Iao 7/9/24

You will see so much beauty: Iridescent Pigeons by Candace Walsh

Yellow Arrow Publishing announces the release of our second chapbook of 2024, Iridescent Pigeons by Candace Walsh. Since its establishment in 2016, Yellow Arrow has devoted its efforts to advocate for all women-identifying writers through inclusion in the biannual Yellow Arrow Journal as well as single-author publications and Yellow Arrow Vignette, and by providing strong author support, writing workshops, and volunteering opportunities. We at Yellow Arrow are excited to continue our mission by supporting Candace in all her writing and publishing endeavors.

Candace’s poems in Iridescent Pigeons, her debut poetry chapbook, serve as a restoration project by articulating the everyday unsaid of love, not just in romantic contexts, but as a friend, sister, daughter, dog parent, wildflower admirer, and mother. Amid free verse, Candace’s use of archaic poetic forms (the Sapphic stanza, ode, curtal sonnet, and cento) and homages to Virginia Woolf, William Wordsworth, and Gerard Manley Hopkins claims literary legacies that have historically excluded women and queer writers. This wry celebration of good, bad, ugly, thirsty, reverent, compassionate, unrequited, and fully granted love rouses new lexicons of connection and belonging. As poet J. Allyn Rosser observes of Candace, “Her poems—intensely, warily—celebrate familial, platonic, and romantic bonds, even as they ponder vestiges of the trauma love can leave behind.”

Candace is a queer poet, fiction writer, and essayist with Cuban and Greek ancestry and New York and New Mexico roots. She currently calls pastoral southeast Ohio home, where she lives in an old farmhouse with her wife, their two dogs, hundreds of books, and every kitchen and camping gadget you didn’t know you needed (most recent addition: cherry pitter). Iridescent Pigeons is for the black sheep, the eldest daughters, the overly ardent friends, the dissociated, the dispossessed, the ones surprised by love, and the eschewers of received wisdom. The unashamed divorcées, the lost cousins, the off-season travelers, and the cockamamie schemers. The late-in-life lesbians, those called “precocious” and “old souls” as children, the truth-blurters, and the ruminators. The Heathers with two mommies and the exvangelical pantheists, the brash empaths, and the shy extroverts. The family archivists, the stationery collectors, and the forgetful overcommitters. The underestimated and the overcompensators, and all those hungry for the everyday unsaid.

The cover art was created by Anna Chotlos, and cover design was by Laura M. André. Candace stated that she “wanted a pigeon with the right attitude, which [Anna] captured beautifully. The cover pigeon does not have low self-esteem. It is rocking its iridescent neck feathers and looking out at the world with intention. I love it and I love the journey it took us [Anna, Laura, and Candace] on together.”

Paperback and PDF versions of Iridescent Pigeons are now available from the Yellow Arrow bookstore. If interested in purchasing more than one paperback copy for friends and family, check out our discounted wholesale prices here. You can also search for Iridescent Pigeons wherever you purchase your books, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. To learn more about Candace and Iridescent Pigeons, check out our recent interview with her.

You can find out more about Candace and follow her publication news on her website candacewalsh.com and Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @candacewalsh, and connect with Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram, to share some love for this chapbook. You can also share a review to any of the major distributors or by emailing editor@yellowarrowpublishing.com. We’d love to hear from you.

*****

Kapua Iao 5/21/24 Kapua Iao 5/21/24

The Thing I Needed but Didn’t Know Why I Needed It: Reflecting on the ELEVATE Issue

By Jennifer N. Shannon

When Yellow Arrow Publishing Editor-in-Chief, Kapua Iao, emailed me asking if I’d take on the role of guest editor for Yellow Arrow Journal’s spring 2024 issue (Vol. IX, No. 1), without much thought I said yes.

1)     Yes, because it was Yellow Arrow; I used to be on the board, and I have deep respect for the organization and its mission.
2)     It would allow me to be immersed in other people’s writing, given that my own writing had been stagnant.
3)     I’d be the guest editor for a literary journal . . . how many times would I get that chance? Of course, I said yes.

After I sent the Yellow Arrow team several possibilities, the theme that was chosen was ELEVATE. It was right up my alley. Elevate means “to raise or lift (something) up to a higher position,” which is what I had been trying to do in my life and career. There was no better time for me to explore the subject for myself, than through the lens of others.

Once the call for submissions went out, my immersion into other women’s work was busy and delightful. I read with a hunger I hadn’t had in a while. I was blown away by the talent I was witnessing and happy that I would be the one to make the final selections, and that I’d get to fulfill my vision for ELEVATE.

So much of what I was craving for myself I found in the words I read, the artwork I saw, and the collaborations with the Yellow Arrow readers, who were heads down, also reading and exploring the 181 submissions sent in. I was inspired to write and pursue my own dreams more wholly just as the women who sent in their work were doing. Even if writing wasn’t full time for them, I realized that it was the kind of elevation I was looking for: to hike a mountain and reach its summit, aka start a new venture called Creative Communion and make sure I get to the top.

I’ve refined my writing skills and reaffirmed several truths during my time as guest editor for Yellow Arrow Journal:

1)     I figured out how to meet deadlines even though my world already seemed overwhelmed with time constraints.
2)     I was reminded that putting in the work of sitting down and writing is what creates the space and energy for more writing, and more ideas.
3)     I realized that my intuition is still undefeated. Whenever I’ve trusted my gut over what others wanted or thought was best, things have always worked out better than imagined. The same is true for ELEVATE.

Becoming a guest editor and working on every aspect of the issue has done so much to move me forward while pushing me to take chances in my creative life. This experience was exactly what I needed to be doing to jump start my writing and to encourage me to create the things I want to see in the world.

I’m thankful to Yellow Arrow Publishing for this opportunity. I’m also grateful for the incredible women-identifying creatives who furnished the stories and artwork for this awesome issue. My hope is that everyone who reads ELEVATE will be inspired to pursue something more wholly, push fear out of the window and soar.

If you haven’t already got your copy, order ELEVATE at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/yellow-arrow-journal-elevate-paperback. Thank you for supporting independent publishing.

Jennifer N. Shannon has published three books: Silent Teardrops; for the LOVE, short stories and poems, vol. 1; and for the LOVE, short stories and poems, vol. 2. Her poetry, short stories, photographs, and essays have been in an anthology and literary magazines, including North Dakota Quarterly, Yellow Arrow Journal, Deep South Magazine, Auburn Avenue, and others. Jennifer was a 2022 Baker Artist Awards finalist, a poetry fellow at the Watering Hole, and in 2023, she was selected as a Maryland State Arts Council Triennial Artist for Literary Arts. Jennifer is a proud South Carolinian and Gamecock who lives in Maryland with her son and fiancé. Visit jennifernshannon.com or follow her @writerjns on Instagram and Facebook.

*****

Kapua Iao 5/7/24 Kapua Iao 5/7/24

Life’s extraordinary moments: Yellow Arrow Journal (Vol. IX, No. 1) ELEVATE

But isn’t that how life is? Full of moments when we are so high that we are enjoying a different type of air, and others where we feel like we’re falling fast and furiously toward a diverted destination.

Jennifer N. Shannon, guest editor of just released Yellow Arrow Journal Vol. IX, No. 1 ELEVATE, is so thankful to the women-identifying writers who submitted to the issue and to those who joined the Yellow Arrow community by letting us include their pieces on our pages. She writes in the introduction to ELEVATE:

“From the poignant cover of ELEVATE to the brilliant words that adorn each page, this issue is like flying above the clouds, in a never-ending sky, over terrain that’s both foreign and familiar. Work that’s about overcoming and accepting where we are. Stories about loss and love. There are poems that allow us to be in the sky while we march here on the ground. And creative nonfiction that gives us permission to cry and proclaim that we are not afraid.”

We are excited to release the latest issue of Yellow Arrow Journal and happy to share the voices included within our ELEVATE issue. 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 print and electronic books, including Amazon and most other distribution channels.

Jennifer N. Shannon has published three books: Silent Teardrops; for the LOVE, short stories and poems, vol. 1; and for the LOVE, short stories and poems, vol. 2. Her poetry, short stories, photographs, and essays have been in an anthology and literary magazines, including North Dakota Quarterly, Yellow Arrow Journal, Deep South Magazine, Auburn Avenue, and others. Jennifer was a 2022 Baker Artist Awards finalist, a poetry fellow at the Watering Hole, and in 2023, she was selected as a Maryland State Arts Council Triennial Artist for Literary Arts. Jennifer is a proud South Carolinian and Gamecock who lives in Maryland with her son and fiance. You can connect with Jennifer by visiting her website at jennifernshannon.com or follow her @writerjns on Instagram and Facebook.

The artwork on the cover (cover design by Alexa Laharty), “As I Am” by Lizzie Brown, was created of acrylic on canvas. According to Lizzie, her painting “depicts a woman embracing her flaws and scars, represented by a gold-filled crack down her back,” inspired by the Japanese art of kintsugi. “As I Am” is an incredible “reminder that our imperfections make us beautiful, and our scars tell a story of what we’ve overcome.” Don’t forget to check out a conversation between Jennifer and Lizzie on the Yellow Arrow YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/AOSpTHqvs7k.

We hope you enjoy reading ELEVATE as much as we enjoyed creating it. Thank you for your continued encouragement of Yellow Arrow Publishing and the women involved in ELEVATE. On June 26 at 8:00 p.m., please join Jennifer, Yellow Arrow, and some of our contributors for the live, virtual reading of ELEVATE. More information is forthcoming.

*****

Kapua Iao 4/9/24 Kapua Iao 4/9/24

Experience, Treasure, and Know: Beyond the Galleons by Isabel Cristina Legarda

Yellow Arrow Publishing announces the release of our first chapbook of 2024, Beyond the Galleons by Isabel Cristina Legarda. 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 Yellow Arrow Vignette, and by providing strong author support, writing workshops, and volunteering opportunities. We at Yellow Arrow are excited to continue our mission by supporting Isabel in all her writing and publishing endeavors.

Beyond the Galleons by Isabel Cristina Legarda is a meditation on Filipino experiences of colonization, ancestral connection, alienation, and the ghosts that haunt people living in geographic or psychological diasporas. Isabel juxtaposes historic moments from the days of Spanish and American colonial rule with threads of real women’s lived experiences, to raise awareness of multicultural histories that might be less known or talked about.

Isabel was born in the Philippines and spent her childhood there before moving to Bethesda, Maryland. She holds degrees in literature and bioethics and is currently a practicing physician in Boston. Beyond the Galleons first looks at the complicated interactions between Filipino natives and their colonial subjugators, shifting from Spanish to American imperialism, and culminating in imagined individual voices descended from those who lived through these histories. Tagalog, baybayin, Spanish, and English weave together to help tell a sometimes forgotten, sometimes ignored history. Isabel’s poems contemplate longing, resilience, and the need to hold on to memory while moving forward beyond pain.

The cover design and interior images were created by Alexa Laharty, Yellow Arrow creative director. Isabel stated, “I am in awe of what [Yellow Arrow creative director] Alexa Laharty produced and absolutely love the cover. With no visual art ability or aptitude, I had only vague ideas as to what a fitting design would be, and she brought together images that really capture the themes of historic memory and cartography, literal and figurative, that I try to explore in many of the poems.”

Paperback and PDF versions of Beyond the Galleons 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 Beyond the Galleons wherever you purchase your books including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. To learn more about Isabel and Beyond the Galleons, check out our recent interview with her.

You can find Isabel on Instagram and Twitter @poetintheOR and connect with Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram, to share some love for this chapbook. You can also share a review to any of the major distributors or by emailing editor@yellowarrowpublishing.com. We’d love to hear from you.

*****

Kapua Iao 4/1/24 Kapua Iao 4/1/24

Yellow Arrow Vignette 2024 AMPLIFY Submissions Are Now Open!

Welcome to the first day of open submissions for Yellow Arrow Vignette! Now in its third season, Yellow Arrow Vignette is an online creative nonfiction and poetry series developed to better feature women-identifying writers and share their voices beyond Yellow Arrow Journal and our single-author publications. This year, submissions for Vignette are open from April 1 to 30 and will align with the 2024 Yellow Arrow yearly value AMPLIFY.

(Please note that this issue of Vignette does not ask submitters to send in pieces on the theme of AMPLIFY; rather, staff at Yellow Arrow are using the idea in house as reminder to continue to share and amplify women-identifying voices.)

We’re here this year to showcase our authors to a bigger audience, to increase the conversations around our published creative works and their themes, and to increase the understanding that our audience has about these works, their writers, and the issues that matter most to them. And for Vignette AMPLIFY, we want to hear specifically from creatives who live in or are otherwise connected to our home base of Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore is a big, diverse, beautiful city, and we want to see its diversity represented in Vignette AMPLIFY. From Highlandtown (our starting point!) to Hampden, Pigtown to the Black Arts District, we want our readers to experience the spectrum of voices that Charm City offers. If you currently live, grew up in, or recently lived in the Baltimore area and are a creative who identifies as a woman, read the guidelines and submit at yellowarrowpublishing.com/vignette/submissions.

We’ve been making some exciting, behind-the-scenes updates to Vignette this year! One such change is that Vignette AMPLIFY will be curated and created by Vignette managing editor Dr. Tonee Mae Moll and Vignette assistant Isabelle Anderson. Tonee Mae (she/they) is joining the team this spring and summer from Baltimore, the place where our story started and the focus of AMPLIFY. She holds a PhD in English from Morgan State University and an MFA in creative writing and publishing art from University of Baltimore. Tonee Mae has worked for a number of literary organizations and publications throughout the region, including Mason Jar Press, Washington Writers Publishing House, The Sable Quill, Welter Literary Journal, CityLit Project, and more. She is the author of two books, Out of Step: a Memoir (Mad Creek Books, 2018) and You Cannot Save Here (Washington Writer’s Publishing House, 2022), and the former cohost of the literary podcast Lit!Pop!Bang!

Isabelle (she/her) is a poet and fiction writer, also from Baltimore. She recently graduated with a BA in English from Washington College where she was a finalist for the Sophie Kerr Prize and the recipient of The Pfister Poetry Prize through the Academy of American Poets. When she is not reading or writing, she can be found on a nature walk, checking the trees for good spots to hide golf pencils à la Mary Oliver.

For Yellow Arrow Vignette AMPLIFY, we’re looking for creative nonfiction, poetry, and ‘cover art’ by writers/artists who identify as women and have a connection to the Baltimore area. For more about what this means and for information on how to submit, please visit yellowarrowpublishing.com/vignette/submissions. Let us amplify your voice and ensure that it rings clearly, truly, and beautifully. Let’s show how proud we are of Charm City and all that our incredible city has to offer.

If you have any questions, send them to submissions@yellowarrowpublishing.com. The online issue will be released on August 6, 2024, and a reading will follow in the fall.

We look forward to reading the submissions for Yellow Arrow Vignette and sharing 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.

*****

Kapua Iao 3/12/24 Kapua Iao 3/12/24

Dwelling in Possibility: A Conversation with Isabel Cristina Legarda about Beyond the Galleons

We are the vowels of our villages’ lives,
supplying meaning and depth, sometimes invisibly,
but ever-present in the stories unfolding.

“Reading Tutorial for a Jesuit Missionary, 1668”

If home is where the heart is, as the saying goes, for many people of diasporic communities, that heart is found within the stories of generations past and carried in the contemporary voices descended from that resilience and strength. Isabel Cristina Legarda is one of these voices. She is a writer and practicing physician residing in Massachusetts whose work speaks to her Filipina heritage, the lived female experience, and the multifaceted nature of identity.

Isabel’s debut poetry chapbook, Beyond the Galleons, is forthcoming from Yellow Arrow Publishing and will be released in April 2024. Beyond the Galleons is a meditation on Filipino experiences of colonization, ancestral connection, alienation, and the ghosts that haunt people living in geographic or psychological diasporas. This collection combines reflection on the echoes of historical events and rumination on the character of culture with a tribute to the strength of women the author admires, both known and unknown.

Beyond the Galleons is available for preorder (click here for wholesale prices)! Follow Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram @yellowarrowpublishing for Friday sneak peeks into Isabel’s incredible words. Pick up your copy today and make sure to show your love to Isabel in the comments.

Melissa Nunez, Yellow Arrow interviewer, and Isabel engaged in conversation where they discussed the creative inspirations behind this collection and the process of forging compelling poetry from themes both delicate and complex.

What inspired this project? Can you talk about how this idea developed into a poetry chapbook?

These poems were written over a couple of years, many of them in workshops led by poet Caroline Goodwin, a beloved mentor. (Shout-out to poet Diane Lockward, whose craft books we used and whose prompts generated so many poems in these workshops.) Being Filipina emerged as an important, recurring focus in my writing, and when I had a critical mass of poems written, I started grouping [them] together around that focus.

The dates, locations, and historical details included in your poems are a powerful thread throughout. What did the research for a collection like this entail?

I’ve had an interest in the Philippine-American colonial period for a long time. A few years ago, I found an eye-opening collection of political cartoons from that period entitled The Forbidden Book, some nonfiction work about the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, and first-hand accounts by American women who went to the Philippines as schoolteachers, including a diary I was able to physically handle and read at the Schlesinger Library [at Harvard University]. Those [words] inspired me to keep searching for articles about that period online as well as contemporary photos. I’m interested in Spanish colonialism, too, of course, and one day stumbled across what Father Alcina wrote about women being good readers, which made me want to explore those centuries as well. I could spend hours happily falling down these rabbit holes.

There is a strong message of feminine strength that simmers among these pages. Can you share a little of your personal experience with this strength and why it is important to share?

My widowed maternal grandmother got her PhD at Stanford [University], then became a respected professor of history at the University of the Philippines, all while raising my mom as a single parent. Years after her teaching career was over, her former students would rave about what a phenomenal teacher she was. My paternal grandmother, who came from a tiny island near Palawan, was a suffragist and a civic leader. Both of my grandmothers were wonderful writers. My mother started [medical] school at 17 and was a practicing pediatrician by her mid 20s. My mother and grandmothers are all survivors of war. I have another role model in an older first cousin, an attorney, who prosecuted a congressman for sexual assault of a child and won. I’ve been fortunate to have grown up surrounded by such exemplars of tenacity, integrity, and courage. When I’d feel discouraged or nervous about something, my mother would often remind me that the genes and spirit of these brave, intelligent, hard-working women are part of me. I’ve always seen women as strong-willed and capable of anything. I think it’s important to remind the world—and ourselves—that that’s who we are.

Orange clouds: not sunset,
but Manila burning in the distance.
//
How can I be brave like you . . .

“Far from the Tree”

Who are some female-identified writers who have inspired you and your poetry?

The first woman author who inspired me was Natalie Babbitt. I read her novel Tuck Everlasting when I was nine, and it was life changing. She showed me what language and story could do, in ways I had never encountered or imagined. I had the privilege of meeting her at a Q&A for kids at a bookshop I [now] miss, The Cheshire Cat in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Growing up I idolized mostly fiction writers: Madeleine L’Engle, Isabel Allende, Flannery O’Connor, Edith Wharton, and Zora Neale Hurston. For poetry there are so many now—almost too many to name. I’ve been inspired by Sandra Cisneros, Lucille Clifton, Paisley Rekdal, Pattiann Rogers, Caylin Capra-Thomas, Leila Chatti, Michelle Peñaloza, and of course my mentor Caroline Goodwin.

What was your process for capturing such strong experiences and emotions in such small spaces?

My writing almost always starts with an image I can’t stop thinking about. Sometimes it’s a line I “hear,” but most often it’s something I “see” in my mind—I’m a very visual thinker. If the image stays with me and really won’t go away, I eventually have to write about it. Usually there’s something about it that carries significant emotional charge, and if I keep close to the image while I write—follow its energy closely—that emotional charge can find a habitat in the emerging words. My poem about Saint Lorenzo Ruiz is one example of that process. He came and stood in a corner of my living room with his rosary and wouldn’t leave till I wrote that poem. Not literally or paranormally, of course—I don’t see ghosts or anything like that. But in my mind he waited there, patiently, silently, until the words were down. I was supposed to be working on a poem for a workshop based on a totally unrelated prompt, but I ended up turning in Lorenzo’s poem instead that week.

There is a rich discourse on language in the lines of your poetry. To what extent do you think a language shapes a person’s identity?

I think language and identity are inextricably entwined. (When I see people who are not genetically Filipino or Austronesian speaking a Philippine language fluently, I perceive them as having real insider understanding of our culture in ways that ethnic make-up can’t automatically provide.) I was raised in three languages—English, Spanish, and Tagalog—and I think that gave me early exposure to the way language not only forms but also reflects cultural difference and how we relate to the world. Language can shape our very reality, or at least how we think about it, depending on the language we use, but it also arises from the way we live in that reality in the first place. In the communitarian Tagalog culture, there’s not a great word for privacy as we know it in English; we have to borrow the English word, alter a Spanish word, or use an inexact Tagalog word for it. In English there isn’t an equivalent for gigil, sometimes translated as the uncontrollable urge to squeeze something cute, or nakakagigil, an adjective meaning “making you grit your teeth together out of delight,” for instance when seeing a cute baby (do non-Filipinos clench their teeth together when they find a baby cute?). Growing up with a word with no exact equivalent in other cultures, a word for a particular idea or experience, must surely shape a person’s self-concept and perception of the world.

(I actually just published a whole essay on this topic, in case you’re interested: herstryblg.com/true/2023/02/24-poetry-in-a-second-language-why-i-cant-fully-decolonize-my-life.)

No mere condiment, bagoong becomes a meal’s soul
in the way mere salt cannot, the secret of a dish’s complexity,
an ocean spirit possessing the food.

“Bagoong Alamang”

I appreciated the vivid descriptions of Filipino dishes and delicacies in your work. Can you expand on the relationship between food and culture and its importance to the diaspora?

Food is most definitely a love language in the Philippines, and for Filipinos in exile, it is a lifeline home. We need to eat to survive, but we love to eat because of the sensory pleasure, contentment, and sense of home food has the power to bring us. I feel that sense of home, that kinship, any time I share a bowl of rice or a coconut milk-based dessert with someone, and we both close our eyes for a moment just savoring the morsel in our mouths. No words needed. Full understanding of a lifetime of experience in one moment. Shared moments over food bring a little warmth from home into our colder diasporas, console diasporic loneliness, and can restore a sense of identity and community when we feel a little lost or alone.

We released the gorgeous cover of Beyond the Galleons with this interview. What do you think about the final version?

I am in awe of what [Yellow Arrow creative director] Alexa Laharty produced and absolutely love the cover. With no visual art ability or aptitude, I had only vague ideas as to what a fitting design would be, and she brought together images that really capture the themes of historic memory and cartography, literal and figurative, that I try to explore in many of the poems.

What would you like your readers to take away from this collection?

I would like us Americans and us Filipinos to be aware that our shared history includes Americans putting Filipinos in a human zoo in Saint Louis as well as thousands of Americans dying on battlefields while helping us during World War II. I would like readers to understand that having your homeland or language or physical self or mental or spiritual self devalued, dismissed, assumed to be inferior, or taken away hurts deeply, but moving past trauma with dignity and grace can be redemptive, just, and peacebuilding. I would like people to know that Philippine women are a force to be reckoned with and deserved the power and equality they had before white men started to fear and subjugate it. Finally, I want readers to know that by virtue of our geographic reality as an archipelago that’s been a crossroads for so many cultures traversing the globe, Philippine history is complex and Philippine culture multifaceted, dynamic, flawed yet beautiful, worth caring about.

Are there any future projects you would like to share?

I’m trying to find a home for a second chapbook (a collection of poems I’ve written about the writing life). I’m also pursuing a years-long dream of completing a short story collection. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll go back to a novel I started working on but put away last year. I dwell in possibility.

You can find more about Isabel and follow her publication news on Instagram and Twitter @poetintheOR. You can order your copy of Beyond the Galleons from Yellow Arrow Publishing at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/beyond-the-galleons-paperback. We’d love to get this collection out far and wide! If you know of any bookstore in your community or local school that would be interested in adding Beyond the Galleons to their shelves, please add a comment below or send an email to editor@yellowarrowpublishing.com.

Isabel Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to Bethesda, Maryland. She holds degrees in literature and bioethics and is currently a practicing physician in Boston, Massachusetts. She enjoys writing about women’s lived experience, cultural issues, and finding grace in a challenging world. Her work has appeared in America magazine, Cleaver magazine, The Dewdrop, The Lowestoft Chronicle, Ruminate, Sky Island Review, Smartish Pace, Qu, West Trestle Review, and others.

Melissa Nunez makes her home in the Rio Grande Valley region of south Texas, where she enjoys exploring and photographing the local wild with her homeschooling family. She writes an anime column at The Daily Drunk Mag and is a prose reader for Moss Puppy Mag. She is also a staff writer for Alebrijes Review and interviewer for Yellow Arrow Publishing. You can find her work on her website at melissaknunez.com/publications and follow her on Twitter @MelissaKNunez.

*****

Thank you, Isabel and Melissa, for sharing your conversation. Preorder your copy of Beyond the Galleons today. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women-identifying writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we AMPLIFY women-identifying creatives this year by purchasing one of our publications or a workshop from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, for yourself or as a gift, joining our newsletter, following us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, or subscribing to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 65185, Baltimore, Maryland 21209). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Kapua Iao 2/1/24 Kapua Iao 2/1/24

Yellow Arrow Journal (IX/01) ELEVATE Submissions are Now Open!

Yellow Arrow Publishing is excited to announce that submissions for our next issue of Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. IX, No. 1 (spring 2024) is open February 1-29, providing a platform for authors to embrace and amplify their own voice. Guest editor, Jennifer N. Shannon, contemplates about her voice by reflecting on The Color Purple:

“I am proud of my becoming, as a mother and writer and friend and daughter and partner. I am also excited about the honesty I am searching for even when it’s scary. The Color Purple did that. The latest version of this masterpiece still does that for me. It makes me want to be brave, live in my truth, evolve into who I will become, and share my voice as loudly as I can. It makes me want to help other women do the same, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to do just that, with my curatorial work and with Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. IX, No. 1.”

This issue’s theme is ELEVATE

: to improve morally, intellectually, or culturally
: to lift up or make higher
: to raise the spirits of

1. What story do you want to tell but haven’t found the words for? How will the story affect those who read or hear your truth? What will it do for you to share this story with the world?

2. What has guided you along your journey? What actions have elevated you? Are there any themes that show themselves to you repeatedly and if so what do you think they mean?

3. How are you moving forward in your writing, in your life, in your job, in your relationships, within your passion(s)? What is expanding and evolving you? Is your mindset growing? What scares you about your progression? What brings you joy? What’s stopping you?

Yellow Arrow Journal is looking for creative nonfiction, poetry, and cover art submissions by writers/artists who identify as women, on the theme of ELEVATE. Submissions can be in any language as long as an English translation accompanies it. For more information regarding journal submission guidelines, please visit yellowarrowpublishing.com/submissions. Please read our guidelines carefully before submitting. To learn more about our editorial views and how important your voice is in your story, read about the journal. This issue will be released in May 2024.

ELEVATE’s guest editor, Jennifer N. Shannon, has self-published three books: Silent Teardrops, for the LOVE, short stories and poems, vol. 1, and for the LOVE, short stories and poems, vol. 2. Her poetry, short stories, photographs, and essays have been in lit magazines such as North Dakota Quarterly, Yellow Arrow Journal, Deep South Magazine, Auburn Avenue, and others. In 2022, she curated the six-month artist exhibition “Black Joy Is My Protest,” which featured 12 artists from across the country and was showcased at Busboys and Poets in Baltimore. Jennifer was also a 2022 Baker Artist Awards finalist, a poetry fellow at The Watering Hole, and in 2023, she was selected as a Maryland State Arts Council Triennial Artist for Literary Arts. Jennifer is a proud South Carolinian and Gamecock who now lives in Maryland with her son and partner. Visit Jennifer’s website jennifernshannon.com or follow her @writerjns on Instagram and Facebook. Jennifer previously served on the Yellow Arrow board as marketing director and her poem “We Smile” was included in Yellow Arrow Journal RENASCENCE (Vol. VI, No. 1). We are excited to work with Jennifer over the next few months.

*****

Kapua Iao 1/16/24 Kapua Iao 1/16/24

The Color Purple: Still Evolving After 40 Years

Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to announce the next guest editor for Yellow Arrow Journal, Jennifer N. Shannon. Jennifer will oversee the creation of our Vol. IX, No. 1 issue.

This next issue of Yellow Arrow Journal gives creatives who identify as women the opportunity to be their authentic selves by exploring and embracing their voices within its pages. With this issue, we want our authors to reach higher — move forward — live proudly. To learn more about this idea, read Jennifer’s words below. Mark your calendar! The theme will be released next week. Submissions open February 1 and the issue will be released in May.

Jennifer N. Shannon has self-published three books: Silent Teardrops, for the LOVE, short stories and poems, vol. 1, and for the LOVE, short stories and poems, vol. 2. Her poetry, short stories, photographs, and essays have been in lit magazines such as North Dakota Quarterly, Yellow Arrow Journal, Deep South Magazine, Auburn Avenue, and others. In 2022, she curated the six-month artist exhibition “Black Joy Is My Protest,” which featured 12 artists from across the country and was showcased at Busboys and Poets in Baltimore. Jennifer was also a 2022 Baker Artist Awards finalist, a poetry fellow at The Watering Hole, and in 2023, she was selected as a Maryland State Arts Council Triennial Artist for Literary Arts. Jennifer is a proud South Carolinian and Gamecock who now lives in Maryland with her son and partner. Visit Jennifer’s website jennifernshannon.com or follow her @writerjns on Instagram and Facebook. Jennifer previously served on the Yellow Arrow board as marketing director and her poem “We Smile” was included in Yellow Arrow Journal RENASCENCE (Vol. VI, No. 1).

Please follow Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram for the theme announcement. Below, you can read more about Jennifer’s perspective on the importance of amplifying one’s own voice. We look forward to (re)working with Jennifer over the next few months.

By Jennifer N. Shannon

I recently started reading the beautiful hardcover book Purple Rising: Celebrating 40 Years of the Magic, Power, and Artistry of The Color Purple. It’s about The Color Purple, a book written by Alice Walker who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work. Purple Rising celebrates The Color Purple’s 40-year journey from the written piece to the 1985 film, its reinvention as a musical on Broadway, and finally to its latest transformation as a musical movie.

There is so much about Purple Rising that I already love . . . finding out more about Alice Walker’s motivation for writing what is one of my favorite books (the 1985 film is also a favorite), the photographs that span decades and capture the evolution of each iteration of The Color Purple, and the paths of all who have been involved in the various projects.

“If it is true that it is what we run from that chases us, then The Color Purple (this color that is always a surprise but is everywhere in nature) is the book that ran me down while I sat with my back to it in a field.” – Alice Walker, preface to the 1992 edition

In 2021, I gave birth to a baby boy. Nothing could prepare me for the bevy of emotions I’ve felt since that moment. I’ve doubted myself as a mother and questioned who I was becoming as a woman. Not to mention feeling as though I had lost my voice as a writer and poet. That has been one of the most difficult things about transitioning into motherhood; the losses I’ve felt even though I have gained so much. However, the process of rediscovering who I am at this moment, during this time, has brought me to hidden places. Watching my son’s curiosity, his zest for all things “Christmas,” such as Elmo and Tango’s Nutcracker, and his fearlessness, pushes me to be more fearless in my writing. To explore my entrance into this world, my family history, and the stories that I’ve been reliving in my head—real and imagined. As I journey through my past, there is a reckoning that’s happening which is making me face what has been chasing me.

“I was dealing with some skeletons in the closet in the family, wanting to bring light to very murky corners.” – Alice Walker from Purple Rising

My paternal grandmother was physically abused by her husband for 30 years. Many years ago, she told me about it, matter-of-factly, as I sat with all the wonder in the world at how she survived and why she didn’t leave sooner. Although I didn’t realize this before, in many ways she was Celie from The Color Purple. And like Celie, she found her way out of that marriage and forged ahead making a life for herself. She wasn’t bitter and she’s still one of the nicest people I have ever met.

The Color Purple is a revelation of what women, Black women, have been experiencing since forever. It is an example of what it is to be courageous—to bellow out for the world to hear. Back when it was first published, it brought to light so much about women’s concerns, abuse, mistreatment, and beauty while showcasing love and tenderness. That’s what makes it timeless and inspiring. It is gentle but harsh, truthful yet fictitious. It is the epitome of vulnerability. And it is an example of the type of writer and artist I aspire to be.

I am proud of my becoming, as a mother and writer and friend and daughter and partner. I am also excited about the honesty I am searching for even when it’s scary. The Color Purple did that. The latest version of this masterpiece still does that for me. It makes me want to be brave, live in my truth, evolve into who I will become, and share my voice as loudly as I can. It makes me want to help other women do the same, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to do just that, with my curatorial work and with Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. IX, No. 1.

*****

Kapua Iao 1/9/24 Kapua Iao 1/9/24

Amplify: Reinforcing Women’s Voices with Yellow Arrow Publishing’s 2024 Yearly Value

By Nikita Rimal Sharma

“We are fighting misogynists in every culture. My solution is to listen to the women in each community and amplify their voices.”
~Mona Eltahawy

Choosing one word to exemplify 2024 for Yellow Arrow Publishing is a ritual we have followed since 2020. I think of it as being an intentional way to reflect on the past year and take those experiences forward with a new energy.

Previous yearly values include REFUGE for 2020, EMERGE for 2021, and AWAKEN for 2022—watchwords that trace not only Yellow Arrow’s experience of the last few years but the culture as a whole. Last year we chose the word SPARK to rekindle our fire. We used that flame and that sparkle to light a flame. We hosted 39 workshops, published three chapbooks and two journal issues, released our second edition of Yellow Arrow Vignette, organized two fundraisers, one in-person in our home town of Baltimore and one online, represented Yellow Arrow in four local and one national conference, and the list goes on.

The root that we established in our beloved Baltimore City is growing, spreading its branches and leaves to so many more writers beyond borders. We are proud of the growth while remaining committed to our home base and are ready to capitalize on what we have created. For 2024, we are ready to AMPLIFY, to get women-identifying voices out loudly and proudly into the ethos.

When I think of amplify, I think of taking what we have and going to the next level: supporting more women-identifying writers to bring their creation to the world through publications; inspiring seasoned and aspiring writers to take up more space and share their stories without any inhibition through our workshops. As we work on our mission and bring beautiful morsels of writing into life, we find that each piece we publish or showcase brings us and our humanity together and helps us nurture our emotions with vulnerability and grace. There is so much power in creation.

Our 2024 will be about amplifying women-identifying authors with our biannual Yellow Arrow Journal, our chapbook series, and our online publication Yellow Arrow Vignette. We can’t wait to introduce you to our first guest editor in the new year and open submissions to Vol. IX, No. 1 in February, release our first 2024 chapbook Beyond the Galleons by Isabel Cristina Legarda, or find new voices to showcase with Vignette. With 2024, we also look to strengthen the voices of women-identifying authors (those taking and those teaching the workshops!) with our 2024 workshop offerings, such as, for the spring, the revamped Poetry is Life, The Written Womb, Write Here Write Now, and Ekphrastic Poetry (SOLD OUT!). And finally, we’re using 2024 to intensify our presence within the Baltimore community and beyond with more in-person and virtual events, festivals, and get togethers.

The word AMPLIFY fills me with a sense of pride and gratitude. It is a sign that we have come a long way fighting through adversities, changes, and challenges to a place where we can dream a little bigger. I am truly thankful for every staff member on the team who has continued to work tirelessly for women-identifying authors. And all of this would not be possible without our readers and supporters. Your faith in the power of creativity, storytelling, and writing was our spark in 2023 and will be our energy to amplify in 2024.

Now, let’s go!

Nikita Rimal Sharma (she/her) currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with her husband, Prashant and dog, Stone. She works at B’More Clubhouse, a community-based, mental health nonprofit organization focused on psychosocial recovery. She graduated with a master’s in public administration from Wichita State University, Kansas, which is where she landed when she first moved to the U.S. in 2013. When she is not working, Nikita is busy reading, writing and reflecting, hiking, or spending time with family and friends. She has been involved with Yellow Arrow Publishing through the Poetry is Life workshop, her first poem ever published in Yellow Arrow Journal, and her first chapbook publication, The most beautiful garden. She loves being a part of this amazing women driven creative community. Nikita is on Yellow Arrow’s board as director of fundraising. Find her on Instagram @nikita.playwithwords.

*****

Kapua Iao 12/19/23 Kapua Iao 12/19/23

2023 Year in Review: We Belong Here, and You Belong Here, Too

Dear Yellow Arrow Community,

It is hard to believe I have only been a part of this incredibly warm community of writers for just a few years when it often feels like I have always belonged here. This year, I had the great honor of representing Yellow Arrow Publishing at many conferences and literary festivals in Baltimore (and beyond!) and every Yellow Arrow writer and reader I meet tells me the same thing: Yellow Arrow made me feel like I belong here. Friends: you do belong here. We are so incredibly grateful to have you on this journey with us. Let’s take a moment to look back at all we have done in our 2023 Year in Review.

Each year we select a yearly value that embodies the energy we want to bring into our work, and this year, we selected SPARK. Yellow Arrow Vignette managing editor Siobhan McKenna reflected on what spark means to her and to Yellow Arrow when she introduced the focus for Vignette SPARK this summer:

“When an idea arrives, sparks are vital—they are the lifeblood for creativity. Yet, sparks sometimes fade when it comes to the nitty-gritty, the long hours that must be undertaken in order to have an idea come to fruition. It is then, within the drudgery of labor, when faced with self-doubt and fear (who even wants to hear what I have to say?), that it is essential to remember the spark that drove you to begin your journey.”

The words and stories we published this year all orbited around this idea of why we write, what stories we have to tell, and who is listening? I can tell you, Yellow Arrow community, we are listening. We love reading your submissions, and though the final selection process is often difficult, and we can’t publish everyone, know that your words stay with us. Vignette SPARK authors used the theme to take on a variety of forms of the word from literal to the meta, exploring the influences in their lives that have ignited their creative pursuits.

With Yellow Arrow Journal this year, we first explored the theme of KINDLING with guest editor Matilda Young. Our KINDLING cover artist and contributing poet Violeta Garza captured the theme of the issue perfectly: “I see kindling as the grouping of individual pieces that, with enough chemistry and action, create an explosion.” What a stunning metaphor she has articulated for just how we feel about the work we do here at Yellow Arrow! Then, our second release of Yellow Arrow Journal Vol. VIII, EMBLAZON, focused on life’s fleeting moments and how we make them last. Guest editor Leticia Priebe Rocha shared, “What is writing and creating if not an attempt to emblazon those moments on the page? And are we not all simply stumbling around, feverishly trying to emblazon ourselves onto this world?” We are so honored to emblazon and kindle the stories of our contributors onto the page in Yellow Arrow Journal. (P.S. If you don’t have copies of either issue yet or want to gift them to someone for the holidays, you can buy them at a discount of $25 here). We published 77 incredible writers in Yellow Arrow Journal and Yellow Arrow Vignette this year and are so happy to have had the chance to hear so many diverse, rich voices.

In addition to these creatives, we published three incredible poetry collections: Lifecyle of a Beautiful Woman by Ann Weil, Black girl magic & other elixirs by shantell hinton hill, and Swimming in Gilead by Cassie Premo Steele (you can share in the happiness of these three authors as they saw their books for the first time on YouTube!). We enjoyed meeting with these chapbook authors in a cohort this year to collaborate on how to share their stories. For the remainder of 2023, you can support Ann, shantell, and Cassie by purchasing a bundle of all three 2023 chapbooks for a discounted price. Note that we recently announced our 2024 chapbook authors and are eagerly looking ahead to their publications next year and can’t wait to support them.

With our Writers-in-Residence program, we are able to build community amongst local writers by offering access to our workshops, one-on-one meetings with team members, and more. We were also able to add a stipend and a gift card to Bird-in-Hand to our Writers-in-Residence program this year and were thrilled to have Kat Scott and Tramaine Suubi join us on their creative journeys this fall. Stay tuned for information about an in-person reading featuring their work in early 2024!

We were also (finally) able to get out and about in Baltimore and beyond this year! In March, board president Mickey Revenaugh and I took a trip to Seattle to check out the AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) conference for the first time, and wow, were we blown away by the presence of so many amazing small presses and writers! And beyond that, we were overcome with the feeling that we, the Yellow Arrow Publishing team, belong there, too. That we were finally able to really spark and sparkle. We are delighted to share that we’ve decided to attend AWP as official participants with a Yellow Arrow table in the book fair in February 2024. We hope to see writers from our community in Kansas City! We also spent a lot of time connecting further with our Baltimore-area community at the Washington Writers Conference, the Waverly Book Festival, The Lost Weekend Festival, and the Baltimore Writers Conference. It is truly inspiring to see the love for reading and writing so present across so many thriving local arts neighborhoods. Now that we can transition many of our programs from fully virtual to in person (hooray!), we are excited to solidify our Baltimore-area presence in 2024. Our roots are in Baltimore; Baltimore is where we belong, even if we are supporting writers beyond our region (which we love to do!). Stay tuned for exciting updates about how you will be able to engage with us locally. If you know a Baltimore creative who isn’t connected with us, please encourage them to subscribe to our newsletter for updates!

Finally, this year, we had a goal of expanding our workshops and are so thrilled that we were able to host a total of 39 workshops on craft writing topics! One workshop participant shared, “I enjoyed the instructor’s blend of reading poems for inspiration, sharing her unique thoughts on the subject, and allowing time for writing and sharing. I felt connected to the other workshop participants and appreciated the diversity of thought and writing styles represented.” We just released our 2024 winter workshop schedule which includes four incredible workshop series: Ekphrastic Poetry, Poetry is Life, The Written Womb, and Write Here Write Now. You can sign up for sessions one at a time or buy the full series at a discounted price. We also introduced the Gift of Writing Card so that you can prepay for workshops (or gift them!) and choose which ones to attend as your schedule allows. This is a great way to kick off the new year by honoring your writing intentions in our supportive community! Our writing workshops are accessible, affordable, and foster a sense of community and support among writers in all stages of their creative journey. No matter where you are on your writing path, we welcome you to our workshop community. You belong here, too.

We could never do this incredible work without our tremendous team that collaborates so diligently behind the scenes. Every single team member, whether volunteer, staff, workshop instructor, intern, guest editor, or board member, is focused on supporting and empowering women-identifying writers at every stage of their artistic journey. We are excited to be expanding our amazing team in 2024 and look forward to sharing more information about our new team members with our community in the coming months.

We are ever so grateful for your continued support of women-identifying writers. We always welcome donations that support our mission, especially as we wrap up the year and begin planning for 2024 (get ready for the release of our 2024 theme in January!). Donate today to support our 2024 initiatives!

Yellow Arrow depends on the support of those who value our work; your continued support means everything to us. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@DonateYAP), or US mail (PO Box 65185, Baltimore, MD 21209). You can further support us by purchasing one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, joining our newsletter, following us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, or subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Once again, thank you for supporting independent publishing and women writers. See you in the new year!

Warmest Wishes,

Annie Marhefka and the Yellow Arrow Publishing team

Yellow Arrow 12/5/23 Yellow Arrow 12/5/23

Meet the 2024 Yellow Arrow Publishing Pushcart Prize Nominees

The Pushcart Prize honors the incredible work of authors published by small presses and has since 1976. And since then, thousands of writers have been featured in its annual collections—most of whom are new to the series. The Pushcart Prize is a wonderful opportunity for writers of short stories, poetry, and essays to jump further into the literary world and see their work gain recognition and appreciation.

The Prize represents an incredible opportunity for Yellow Arrow to further showcase and support our authors. Our staff is committed to letting our authors shine. Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling. We are so proud of everyone we publish at Yellow Arrow. Without further ado, let’s meet the 2024 Yellow Arrow Pushcart Prize Nominees!

SHANTELL HINTON HILL

“i’m every woman”
from *Black girl magic & other elixirs*
~ it was third grade
when i finally discovered
the lyrics of my favorite song
were an incantation
to ward off evil
pale-faced women. ~

shantell hinton hill is the ultimate Renaissance woman. An engineer turned pastor, shantell situates her work at the intersections of social justice, public theology, and Black feminism/womanism. A native of Conway, Arkansas, shantell is married to Rev. Jeremy Hill. They recently welcomed their first child, Sophie June, to their growing family. shantell obtained a master of divinity from Vanderbilt Divinity School. She also earned a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from Vanderbilt University and a master of science in electrical engineering from Colorado State University.

She is a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and the National Society of Black Engineers. She is also an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Her vocational experiences include work as a process control engineer, a Bible teacher, and as Assistant University Chaplain at Vanderbilt. At Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, shantell focuses on community engagement, faith-based coalition building, and narrative change to imagine more just communities in Arkansas. In her spare time, shantell is also a freelance writer/author and curates digital content that centers on wholeness and thriving.

shantell’s chapbook Black girl magic & other elixirs was released in July 2023 and can be found in the Yellow Arrow bookstore.

SARAH JOSEPHINE PENNINGTON

“Myths and Lore”
from *Yellow Arrow Journal* Vol. VIII, No. 2 **EMBLAZON**
~ We told tall tales and fish tales and jack tales and dog tails, too, family lore we called little dead dog stories, stuffed full of wonder and padded with big lies that came natural in the dark country night. ~

Sarah Josephine Pennington (she/her) is a queer, disabled writer and artist currently living in Louisville, Kentucky, though her roots are in Appalachia. She studied creative writing while attending Bellarmine University and the University of Louisville, as well as through the Appalachian Writer’s Workshop and the Carnegie Center in Lexington. Recently her writing has been included in Still: The Journal, and she has been awarded a 2023 writing residency through the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Her art, which includes ceramics, printmaking, and fiber arts, can be frequently found in venues throughout Louisville.

Sarah contributed her piece, “Myths and Lore,” to Yellow Arrow Journal’s Vol. VIII, No. 2 issue, EMBLAZON and can be found in the Yellow Arrow bookstore.

CASSIE PREMO STEELE

“Volcano Woman”
from Swimming in Gilead
~ Proud, out, loud,
Fire, feisty, you
Woman of waves. ~

Cassie Premo Steele is an accomplished American writer celebrated for her profound contributions to literature and ecofeminism. Her extensive body of work encompasses evocative poetry, insightful essays, and explorations of ecofeminist philosophy. Cassie’s writing resonates with readers by intertwining themes of women's experiences, spirituality, and nature, forming a tapestry of thought-provoking narratives. As an advocate for environmental consciousness and gender equality, her words bridge the gap between the personal and the ecological. Her acclaimed works, such as We Heal from Memory and Earth Joy Writing, reveal her deep-rooted connection to the natural world and her commitment to inspiring change. Her latest books are the novel, Beaver Girl, and the poetry collection, Swimming in Gilead, from Yellow Arrow Publishing. Find her at cassiepremosteele.com.

Cassie’s chapbook Swimming in Gilead was released in October 2023 and can be found in the Yellow Arrow bookstore.

JANNA WAGNER

“Sun City: Témoignage”
from *Yellow Arrow Journal* Vol. VIII, No. 1, **KINDLING**
~ It is a place known to Haitians as the worst place to live in the country, a place described by locals and outsiders alike as a human tragedy, a place where poverty is feral ~

Janna Wagner has been a nurse with Doctors Without Borders since 2014 and writes from her home base at the end of the road in Homer, Alaska. Janna's essays exploring humanitarian work, grief, and body image have been published or are forthcoming in The Forge Literary Magazine, Spectrum Literary Journal, Yellow Arrow Journal, Exposition Review, and others. She recently won joint first place in The Letter Review Prize for Poetry and The Letter Review Prize for Short Stories. She can be reached at janna.e.wagner@gmail.com.

Janna contributed her creative nonfiction piece, “Sun City: Témoignage” to Yellow Arrow Journal Vol. VIII, No. 1 issue, KINDLING and can be found in the Yellow Arrow bookstore.

ANN WEIL

“Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman”
from *Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman*
~ Sixty-one.
I used to be what I no longer am. The switch—no, the electricity—
that lit the room. Powered the whole damn city. ~

Ann Weil is a former special education teacher and professor of education who now writes with the squirrels of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the manatees of Key West, Florida. Her most recent work appears in Maudlin House, Pedestal Magazine, DMQ Review, 3Elements Review, and The Shore. Her chapbook, Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman, debuted in April 2023 from Yellow Arrow Publishing. Read more of Ann’s poetry at annweilpoetry.com.

Ann’s chapbook Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman can be found in the Yellow Arrow bookstore. Ann also contributed her piece “The Unraveling” to Yellow Arrow Vignette AWAKEN, which can be found on the Yellow Arrow website.

*****

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we SPARK and sparkle this year: 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 65185, Baltimore, Maryland 21209). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Kapua Iao 11/14/23 Kapua Iao 11/14/23

Meet the Yellow Arrow Publishing 2024 chapbook authors

By Kapua Iao

From 2020 to 2023, Yellow Arrow Publishing has had the privilege of publishing 11 poetry chapbooks. In 2020, we released our first two chapbooks: Smoke the Peace Pipe (Roz Weaver) and the samurai (Linda M. Crate). Learning how to navigate the world of single-author publications and getting to know the authors was truly rewarding. Roz and Linda were and are fantastic writers and fantastic women. In 2021 we published three more incredible collections, No Batteries Required (Ellen Dooling Reynard), St. Paul Street Provocations (Patti Ross), and Listen (Ute Carson). And in 2022, as we formalized our chapbook submissions process, we had the privilege of working with three local, Baltimore authors with their collections The most beautiful garden (Nikita Rimal Sharma), when the daffodils die (Darah Schillinger), and What is Another Word for Intimacy? (Amanda Baker). This year, we found three more amazing poets who published Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman (Ann Weil), Black girl magic & other elixirs (shantell hinton hill), and released last month, Swimming in Gilead (Cassie Premo Steele).

With 2024, we wanted to spark and sparkle and made some changes to our submissions process. First, we opened submissions to not only poetry chapbooks but also creative nonfiction and hybrid chapbooks. And second, we added a sliding scale fee so that we could better support and promote our authors while remaining accessible to all writers. We are thrilled to use the fees collected to pay our 2024 chapbook authors and to give a stipend to our creative director, Alexa Laharty, who designs each of our beautiful covers.

In two rounds over several months, we read through the beautiful submissions we received, first creating a longlist, then shortlist, and eventually selecting the three authors we would love to publish in 2024. It was difficult to email submitters to let them know our decision (writing an acceptance email is as hard as a decline as you never know how either message will be received), but the process is done, and we are so excited to work with the three chosen.

So, without further ado, let’s meet the 2024 Yellow Arrow chapbook authors!

**Isabel Cristina Legarda**

*Beyond the Galleons*
coming April 2024

Isabel Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to Bethesda, Maryland. She holds degrees in literature and bioethics and is currently a practicing physician in Boston. She enjoys writing about women’s lived experience, cultural issues, and finding grace in a challenging world. Her work has appeared in America Magazine, Cleaver Magazine, The Dewdrop, The Lowestoft Chronicle, Ruminate, Sky Island Review, Smartish Pace, Qu, West Trestle Review, and others. Find Isabel on Instagram and Twitter @poetintheOR.

Beyond the Galleons is a meditation on Filipino experiences of colonization, language conflict, loss of homeland, finding footing in new homes, ancestral connection, family, alienation, cultural agility, and the ghosts that haunt people living in geographic or psychologic diasporas. The poems within contemplate longing and resilience, and the need to hold fast to memory even while moving forward beyond pain. It is Isabel’s hope that this small collection can become part of the diasporic voices and joined multicultural histories that are not currently so well known or talked about.

What sparked your interest in writing?

Reading! My elementary and middle schools had wonderful libraries and librarians, and my parents actively modeled and encouraged a love of books, so I contracted bibliophilia at an early age. My father also recited poetry by heart, not infrequently, and between that and the word-centered liturgical traditions I grew up with, I was surrounded by reverence for language. Finally, I was fortunate to have had teachers who helped me find ways to channel some of that love of words and story into creative writing pretty early. (Thanks, Mrs. Riederer, for the journals you made us keep!)

What sparked your interest in Yellow Arrow Publishing?

When I found Yellow Arrow’s website, I was immediately drawn to [its] woman-centered ethos and active valuing of underrepresented voices. I felt a real sense of writerly community reading through the blog posts and the .Writers.on.Writing. section. I was also so impressed by the quality of work showcased in the journal. Yellow Arrow felt like the kind of safe space so many women writers are looking for.

**Candace Walsh**

*Iridescent Pigeons*
coming July 2024

Candace Walsh is a PhD candidate in creative writing at Ohio University. She holds an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson College. Recent/forthcoming publication credits include for poetry, Sinister Wisdom, Vagabond City Lit, and HAD; for fiction, The Greensboro Review, Passengers Journal, and Leon Literary Review; and for creative nonfiction, March Danceness, New Limestone Review, and Pigeon Pages. Her craft essays and book reviews have appeared in Brevity, descant, New Mexico Magazine, and Fiction Writers Review. She coedits Quarter After Eight literary journal. Find her on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @candacewalsh.

Queer love, so often mischaracterized, contains multitudes. The poems within Iridescent Pigeons represent it in romantic, maternal, filial, platonic, symbiotic, erotic, and sylvan modes. They also hold love and loss in cupped hands. We are mortal; so is love. We have life spans; so does love, whether measured in dog years, golden anniversaries, or the number of hours of a tryst that will expire at dawn. Amid the loss, retrieval and rebirth stir within the included poems that inhabit and annex traditional and endangered forms, such as a [William] Wordsworthian ode, an homage to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty,” a cento composed of phrases from Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, and a triptych of Sapphic stanzas.

What sparked your interest in writing?

Before I could read and write, I scribbled in a marble composition notebook and proclaimed it writing. In first grade, I asked my teacher for an “empty book” so I could write a story in it and illustrate it. My guess is that listening to and reading stories sparked my interest in writing; my mother read to me every night from birth on. I wonder if architects, as children, look at buildings the way I looked at books: without a barrier between the object and one’s admiration, enjoyment, and the desire to create. A thread that has unspooled alongside me my whole life is at the root of writing as resistance: to make an indelible record of what has been ignored, diminished, gaslighted, or stonewalled in the form of conversation—or seems too volatile to say aloud.

What sparked your interest in Yellow Arrow Publishing?

I happily stumbled across Yellow Arrow’s call for submissions when I was researching poetry chapbook publishers while procrastinating finishing my novel. One of the best things about being a writer is that you can procrastinate very fruitfully if you put that energy toward another writing project. I also noticed a sense of readiness in the poems—that they were talking to each other and would be amplified in each other’s company. Yellow Arrow’s mission of supporting women-identified writers and honoring poets’ voices really landed with me, as I hold those values dear as well.

And, after receiving [the Editor-in-Chief] Kapua Iao’s wonderful, dream-come-true email, I learned that one of my dear friends and writing colleagues, Cassie Premo Steele, is also one of Yellow Arrow’s authors. I published Cassie’s gorgeous essay “Pregnant with Myself” in Greetings from Janeland: Women Write More About Leaving Men for Women (2017), a Lambda Literary finalist. Cassie and I are both queer women writers who are also mothers. We have a special bond.

I didn’t want to marginalize my mother self as a poet any more than I’d want to marginalize my queer self as a poet, and I feel so affirmed that Yellow Arrow Publishing enthusiastically accepted Iridescent Pigeons in an iteration that unabashedly reflects the ways motherhood and mother love are muses.

**Julie Alden Cullinane**

*Ghosts Only I Can See*
coming October 2024

Julie Alden Cullinane is a poet, author, neurodivergent, and mom in Boston. Her first publication was a poem in The Boston Globe at age 8; she has been writing ever since. After raising a family and working full time for many years as a young mom, she was able to return to her graduate studies later in life and earned her master’s in 2021, during the pandemic. Under the guidance of many amazing and supportive female professors, she began submitting her work for publication. She has published poems and short stories in 20+ literary magazines since 2020. She currently works in academia full time when she is not writing. Julie’s focus of writing is often on the untold seasons and shades of a woman’s life. She loves to highlight the dichotomy of the modern pressures on women and mothers, between having a successful career and an expected perfect domestic life. Her favorite writers are Eavan Boland and Anne Enright. When she is not writing she enjoys long naps on the couch with her beloved dog. She is currently knee-deep in a midlife crisis. It takes up all her time. She will definitely be writing about it. Find Julie at julie.wildinkpages.com/poetry or on Instagram or Threads @HerLoudMind and Twitter or Blue Sky @AldenCullinane.

Ghosts Only I Can See is a look back into the past, present, and future of women’s lives. It focuses not on literal ghosts, but the ghosts of our former selves as we navigate the world as women. Growing up in a world filled with many amazing, strong women, I was an avid spectator of their lives, their passions, and their trauma. Only when I was older and began experiencing life myself did I realize the tender weaving of women’s lives and the multitude of shared experiences that often do not get told because of societal shame and the pressures of perfection put upon them. But women have universal yet intimate experiences that are better understood when shared, which is why this collection of poetry and creative nonfiction peeks back in time to my younger self, the ghosts through time that only I can see. Ghosts Only I Can See unites and shares the painful and wonderful experiences of what is means to be a modern woman.

What sparked your interest in writing?

As a woman in the literary world and the real world, I am trying to tell my stories about the personally felt struggles that are uniquely experienced by women of all ages, colors, shapes, sizes, and economic backgrounds. As modern women, we often strive to do it all, have a career, be a great mom, be healthy and thin, be a good spouse, be a writer and a friend. The limits as well as the expectations put on women are exhausting, confusing, and rarely exposed in literature. I feel these stories often don’t get told because of fear of shame of not being perfect. In my chapbook, I examine many pivotal moments in a woman’s life that often get overlooked. Women who are going through postpartum depression, women who are grieving, women who are fighting their own bodies, and women who love, think, and are passionate. Living in the world as a grown woman is such a beautiful, colorful, and often heart-wrenching experience, reading each other’s stories about shared experiences with existence, pain, and love can only unite us and make us stronger. This is the ultimate goal of putting my stories out into the world. To let women know they are not alone in all the magnificent, strange, and painful things that happen in their lives.

What sparked your interest in Yellow Arrow Publishing?

I was immediately drawn to the message that Yellow Arrow believes in and posts on its website. Their support of woman-identifying authors and under-represented female voices perfectly aligns with the stories I am trying to tell in my chapbook. As I was looking for a press to send my work to I couldn’t have found a better fit for submission than Yellow Arrow.

We can’t wait to work with Isabel, Candace, and Julie next year but would like to acknowledge all the incredible collections we received in the summer. In particular, we would love to give a shout out to both our longlisted (part of the top 20) and shortlisted authors (part of the top 10).

Meet our shortlisted authors:

Elizabeth Crowell

Michele Evans

Laura Foley

Pauline Joyce Lacanilao

Francesca Moroney

Lore Nissley

Beth Oast Williams

Meet our longlisted authors:

Keidra Chaney

Nicole Friedman

Jessica Gregg

Wendy Kagan

Inna Krasnoper

Thomasin LaMay

Kathryn Paul

Amanda Russell

Terry Sann

Shizue Seigel

Thank you to everyone who took the time to send your words to us. Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling. We are so proud of everyone we publish at Yellow Arrow.

Kapua Iao 11/7/23 Kapua Iao 11/7/23

Emblazing a Path of Love: Yellow Arrow Journal (Vol. VIII, No. 2) EMBLAZON

It is with . . . love that I strive to move about the world.

According to Leticia Priebe Rocha, guest editor of just released Yellow Arrow Journal Vol. VIII, No. 2 EMBLAZON, the pieces within this issue are steeped in love. Love for the people that adorn our lives as family, lovers, friends, and strangers. For the land that cradles our bodies. For the places and moments that inevitably carve themselves into our essences. For the self, ever reaching for radiance. For aliveness, and beyond. They explore those fleeting moments in life that anchor the human experience and make us who we are.

And with that beautiful thought, we are excited to release the latest issue of Yellow Arrow Journal and privileged to share the voices included within our EMBLAZON issue. 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 print and electronic books, including Amazon and most other distribution channels.

Leticia Priebe Rocha earned 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 the age of nine and currently resides in the Greater Boston area. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Salamander, Rattle, Pigeon Pages, Protean Magazine, and elsewhere.

The artwork on the cover (cover design by Alexa Laharty), “Cycles” by Elizabeth Jiménez Montelongo, was created of acrylic, ink, and glitter on wood. “Cycle” serves to emblazon the interconnectedness of natural life and the place of humanity within the rest of nature. We are part of the cycles of life and nature and should strive to take our place as part of the balanced natural systems—giving as much as we take to the survival of all our sibling life forms on earth.

We hope you enjoy reading EMBLAZON as much as we enjoyed creating it. Thank you for your continued encouragement of Yellow Arrow Publishing and the women involved in EMBLAZON. On November 29 at 8:00 pm EST, please join Leticia, Yellow Arrow, and some of our contributors for the live, virtual reading of EMBLAZON. More information is forthcoming.

*****

Ann marie Houghtailing

coming April 2025

Emily Decker

coming July 2025

Vic Nogay

coming October 2025

Angela Acosta

“A Centennial for Herstory”

Tijanna O. Eaton

“And Her Eyes Fell from the Scale”

Marisa Victoria Gedgaudas

“Colygraphia”

Charlene Langfur

“The Way Back”

Laurel Maxwell

“A Full Life”

Katherine Shehadeh

“My son wants to know what happened before the universe &”

Ann van Wijgerden

“Dear Planet”

Veronica Wasson

“On Clothing (Five Pieces)”

Now, let’s go!

SHANTELL HINTON HILL

“i’m every woman”

from Black girl magic & other elixirs

~ it was third grade

when i finally discovered

the lyrics of my favorite song

were an incantation

to ward off evil

pale-faced women. ~

SARAH JOSEPHINE PENNINGTON

“Myths and Lore”

from Yellow Arrow Journal Vol. VIII, No. 2 EMBLAZON

~ We told tall tales and fish tales and jack tales and dog tails, too, family lore we called little dead dog stories, stuffed full of wonder and padded with big lies that came natural in the dark country night. ~

CASSIE PREMO STEELE

“Volcano Woman”

from Swimming in Gilead

~ Proud, out, loud,

Fire, feisty, you

Woman of waves. ~

JANNA WAGNER

“Sun City: Témoignage”

from Yellow Arrow Journal Vol. VIII, No. 1, KINDLING

~ It is a place known to Haitians as the worst place to live in the country, a place described by locals and outsiders alike as a human tragedy, a place where poverty is feral ~

ANN WEIL

“Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman”

from Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman

~ Sixty-one.

I used to be what I no longer am. The switch—no, the electricity—

that lit the room. Powered the whole damn city. ~

Isabel Cristina Legarda

Beyond the Galleons

coming April 2024

Candace Walsh

Iridescent Pigeons

coming July 2024

Julie Alden Cullinane

Ghosts Only I Can See

coming October 2024

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