Yellow Arrow Publishing Blog
Yellow Arrow Journal Submissions Now Open!
Yellow Arrow Publishing is excited to announce that submissions for our next issue, fall 2020 (Vol. V, No. 3) are now open September 1–30 on the theme:
(Re)Formation
Spending the time to create something—to give shape to a place, a person, yourself, or an idea—is a significant step in life. Then imagine needing to reform it, make an improvement.
What does it take to shape or form something? Ourselves? How do we sustain what we form? Why is it meaningful?
How do we know when reformation is necessary? Why is it necessary sometimes? What can we gain through such a transformation?
Can a personal (re)formation become a community act? How? Why might this be necessary at times?
For more information regarding all journal submission guidelines, please visit yellowarrowpublishing.com/submissions. Please note that our guidelines have recently changed; read them carefully before submitting. To learn more about our editorial views and how important your voice is in your story, read About the Journal. Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling.
The journal is just one of many ways that Yellow Arrow Publishing works to support and inspire women 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 hosting literary events and publishing writers that identify as women. Creating diversity in the literary world and providing a safe space is important to us. Yellow Arrow proudly showcases the voices of women from around the globe.
You can be a part of this mission and amazing experience by submitting to Yellow Arrow Journal, publishing full-length creative nonfiction and poetry chapbooks, joining our virtual workshops and events, volunteering, or donating today. Publications are available at our bookstore, on Amazon, or on any eReader. Click here for information about current and future changes to the Yellow Arrow family.
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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. To learn more about publishing, volunteering, or donating, visit yellowarrowpublishing.com.
New Release: HOME
Like the rest of the world in this time of pandemic, the volunteers of Yellow Arrow Publishing are experiencing Home in a new way now. However, they have mustered all of their resilience showcased in the most recent issue of Yellow Arrow Journal to push forward with the release of the new issue, HOME. As stated by Ella Peary in Authors Publish, Yellow Arrow sees “creativity as an act of service and a path toward communal empathy.” This connection and empathy is needed now more than ever. The theme—originally intended to represent the organization’s move into its own offices at Yellow Arrow House—has become impactful and relevant beyond what YAP’s board and editors could have imagined. As a result, this issue has become a masterful piece of collaboration among strong women working to create, illustrate, and define “Home.”
As always, Yellow Arrow Journal supports and inspires women in the literary arts by featuring poetry and creative nonfiction from women writers as well as one art piece per issue to serve as its cover, but the HOME issue introduces several new developments that promise to make this the best issue yet. It’s no secret that YAJ is growing in popularity, and in size as well. After receiving around 300 submissions—a record high for the young journal—Editor-in-Chief Kapua Iao made the decision to extend the journal so its readers would not miss any of the engaging pieces and promising writers connected to YAJ for lack of space. With creative nonfiction, one of our authors, Roberta S. Kuriloff, takes the reader through the experience of literally and figuratively building her home in “Unearthing Home.” Poets such as Paula Bonnell, Ann Howells, Stephanie Kadel Taras, Hannah Rousselot, and Cynthia Gallaher have contributed some of the issue’s poems sure to inspire conversation and community. In exciting news, the journal will include a book review for the first time ever, opening with local writer Kara Panowitz’s review of Landing on Your Feet and Putting Down Roots: 21 Rituals to Transform Your Life and Interior Space by Sherry Burton Ways. Her review inspires energy and persistence in the current world, making this a promising addition to the journal’s lineup and a form sure to be included in future issues. The amazing writers mentioned here are only some of those included in the issue. HOME features women writers from all over the United States as well as Canada, Germany, and Pakistan.
Perfect-bound and PDF versions, as well as our annual subscription, are available at the YAP store. You can also search for Yellow Arrow Journal on any e-book device. Although Yellow Arrow traditionally produces a limited edition, hand-bound version of the journal in an effort to emphasize the humanness behind the writing, YAP trusts that this will shine through in the writing itself, despite the hand-binding process being on-hold for the moment.
YAP’s founder Gwen Van Velsor states in her introduction to the issue, “It is our mission to always bring hope and positivity to our publications and to our work. And now, more than ever, we offer this issue to you as a font of goodwill during a time when great healing must be our task.” Yellow Arrow would like to encourage its readers to support small businesses, literary magazines, and presses as we all struggle through this tough moment in history together. They hope they can count on your support and look forward to the day when their other programs can resume and allow everyone to gather again in creativity and community. Buy HOME and join us for a virtual reading on June 5th from 6 to 7PM featuring authors from the issue and hosted by writer-in-residence Stephanie Garon.
We are RESILIENT!
It’s time to celebrate the launch of the latest Yellow Arrow Journal, RESILIENCE. As a Baltimore-based nonprofit, Yellow Arrow Publishing prides itself on supporting women writers and ensuring their voices are heard.
Yellow Arrow Journal features poetry and creative nonfiction from women writers as well as one art piece per issue to serve as its cover. The works included showcase feelings of optimism and hope and proudly represents voices of women from around the globe.
This issue features work by: Margie Deeb, Stephanie Garon, Haadia Hyder, Sandra Kacher, Kimberly Knowle-Zeller, Martha McLaughlin, Rissa Miller, Meesh Montoya, Sarah Nelson, Ariele Sieling, Gina Strauss, Taína, Claire Taylor, Naomi Thiers, and Gail Thomas
Cover art by: Megha Balooni
To purchase an issue or subscribe annually, visit the YAP store. Yellow Arrow Journal issues are also available on your eBook.
The journal is just one of many ways that Yellow Arrow Publishing works to support and inspire women through publication and access to the literary arts. Since founded in 2016, Yellow Arrow has worked tirelessly to make an impact on the community by hosting literary events and publishing local writers, because of the importance of sharing the underrepresented voices of women in literature. To Yellow Arrow Publishing, creating diversity in the literary world is deeply important work. Furthermore, creating space in which women can participate in the literary arts gives an opportunity for social change and the expansion of literary norms. The RESILIENCE issue, as with all Yellow Arrow projects, is about contributing to the voice of the community by sharing the voices of women in the hopes of creating a cultural ripple effect of empathy, compassion, and understanding. As it states on the Yellow Arrow website, “Expressing who we are and sharing our experiences, strength, and hope, deepens the understanding of the human condition, allowing us all to better empathize with one another.” You can be a part of this mission by subscribing to Yellow Arrow Journal. Each subscriber gets a limited edition hand-bound copy of the journal twice per year.
If you are in the Baltimore area, please come celebrate the launch of RESILIENCE at Yellow Arrow House on February 7th. Many of our contributors will be reading their work and discussing what resilience means to them. Full details on the event here.
RESILIENCE
Yellow Arrow Journal Announces New Theme
Submissions open November 1st and your voice is needed!
With the official start of Autumn, Yellow Arrow Publishing has turned its attention to production of the upcoming winter issue of the Yellow Arrow Journal with the announcement of its new theme: Resilience. As a Baltimore city-based nonprofit, YAP prides itself on supporting women writers and ensuring their voices are heard. This cannot happen, however, unless they have the work of women to share. Submissions will be open for “Resilience” from November 1st through November 30th.
The Yellow Arrow Journal features poetry and creative nonfiction from women writers as well as one art piece per issue to serve as its cover. The works included showcase feelings of optimism and hope. Creative nonfiction submissions must be between 500 and 5,000 words upon submission and only one submission per author is accepted per issue. Poetry, on the other hand, can be any length and five submissions per author are accepted for each issue provided they have all been compiled into one document for submission. Yellow Arrow proudly represents the voices of women from around the globe and accepts works in languages other than English as long as the author also provides an English translation for their piece. When it comes to the cover, the Yellow Arrow Journal excitedly welcomes paintings, drawings, prints, photos, graphic design, comics, and anything else related to the theme of “Resilience,” that women artists are able to dream up. As a special thanks, all contributors receive $10.00 USD and one free hard copy of the issue in which they are featured. More information regarding the submission guidelines and process can be found on the Yellow Arrow website at https://www.yellowarrowpublishing.com/submissions.
The journal is just one of many ways that Yellow Arrow Publishing works to support and inspire women through publication and access to the literary arts. Since being founded in 2016, they have worked tirelessly to make an impact on the community by hosting literary events and publishing local writers, because` they see the importance of sharing the underrepresented voices of women in literature. To Yellow Arrow Publishing, creating diversity in the literary world is deeply important work. Creating space in which women can participate in the literary arts gives opportunity for social change and the expanding of literary norms. The upcoming “Resilience” issue of the journal, as with all Yellow Arrow projects, is about contributing to the voice of the community by sharing the voices of women in the hopes of creating a cultural ripple effect of empathy, compassion, and understanding. As it states on the Yellow Arrow website, “Expressing who we are and sharing our experiences, strength, and hope, deepens the understanding of the human condition, allowing us all to better empathize with one another.” You can be a part of this mission by contributing to the Yellow Arrow Journal.
FREEDOM is here!
Cover art by Amber Sliter
We are delighted to announce the release of the latest issue of the Yellow Arrow Journal, FREEDOM. A talented group of women and identifying writers submitted their creative nonfiction and poetry for Vol. IV, No. 2 of our biannual literary journal. Below is more detailed information about each writer. You can purchase a hand-bound copy here, sign up for an annual subscription here, download a PDF version here, or look for it on your eReader.
Each copy is lovingly hand bound and printed in small batches.
Thank you for supporting independent publishing.
Editor-in-Chief
Kapua Iao
Editors
Meredith Eilola, Eleanor Hade, Alexa Laharty, Mindy Stokes, and Gwen Van Velsor
Contributors
Katherine Anderson Howell is a 2018 Pushcart Prize Nominee from Washington, D.C. A mother of two children and a recovering academic, she currently studies esthetics, skin care, and makeup at the Aveda Institute in Washington, D.C. and is the editor of Fandom as Classroom Practice: A Teaching Guide (2018). Her poems can be found in Stillwater Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly,e Account, Misfit Magazine, and Mojave He[art] Review among others. Other work is forthcoming in Whale Road Review. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/@genKatieOrgana.
Raga Ayyagari is an emerging poet who is inspired by nature, family history, and identity and enjoys learning from conversations with strangers. Her work has previously appeared in Stanford University’s Leland Quarterly Journal. She works as a public health research analyst in Washington, D.C. and enjoys both technical and creative writing.
Linda M. Crate’s work has been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has six published chapbooks: A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013), Less an A Man (The Camel Saloon - 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications - 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press - 2017), and splintered with terror (Scars Publications - 2018), more than bone music (Clare Songbirds Publishing - 2019), as well as one micro-chapbook Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project - 2018). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (2018).
Margie Deeb’s passion for beauty is the heartbeat of the art she creates and writes. She has published five books on color and beading, one of which the Library Journal voted the Best Craft How-To book of 2009. She has published countless print and digital articles on design and color and is a professional art director, graphic designer, illustrator, and color expert. She conducts design, color, and writing workshops for artists online and throughout the United States and Canada. Her art has been featured in galleries across the United States and in many books and publications.
Jenny Fraser is an artist from the east coast of Australia. She has a background in art and media education spanning over two decades. After completing her undergraduate degree, she taught art and film and media in high schools. In 2009, she then completed a Master of Indigenous Wellbeing at Gnibi, Southern Cross University. In 2017, she also graduated with a Creative Research PhD in ‘The Art of Healing and Decolonisation’ through Batchelor Institute in the Northern Territory. Her current focus is in native foods, body work, floral arts, and being able to use their raw energy to benefit healing and to help people to help themselves.
Betsy Housten is a Brooklyn-based queer writer and massage therapist. She earned her MFA at the University of New Orleans where she won three awards and served as Associate Poetry Editor of Bayou Magazine. Her work appears in Rogue Agent, The Hunger,Lunch, Bone & Ink Press, Longleaf Review, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. Find her at betsyhoustenwrites.com.
M. Kanani Milles is a Native Hawaiian writer who has been living and gardening in Connecticut and New Hampshire since 2003. She shares a small plot of land (stolen from the Quinnipiac) with her husband and two young daughters, a dozen chickens, two goats, and a hive of bees. She is writing her way to healing as her mind–body struggles to come to terms with a stage IV cancer diagnosis.
Ann Quinn is the author of the poetry chapbook Final Deployment (Finishing Line Press - 2018). Her poetry has appeared in a wide variety of publications including Potomac Review, Little Patuxent Review, Broadkill Review, Haibun Today, and Snapdragon, and is included in the anthology Red Sky: Poetry on the Global Epidemic of Violence Against Women. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and her poem “Three Years after my father’s Final Deployment to the Gulf of Tonkin” won the 2015 Bethesda Literary Arts Festival poetry contest, judged by Stanley Plumly. Ann is a graduate of the Pacific Lutheran University MFA program. She teaches reflective and creative writing and music and lives with her family in Catonsville, Maryland. Please visit online at www.annquinn.net.
Amber Sliter is an artist and activist living and creating in Buffalo, New York. Amber studied painting and art history at the University at Buffalo where she received several awards and scholarships. The Rumsey Scholarship funded participation on a Minoan archaeological dig in Crete, Greece. Her art explores natural and synthetic relationships, relating to her experience as a woman living in the Anthropocene era. Her work ranges between sculptural paintings, installations, and murals to activist prints and performances. Amber is currently apprenticing in a woman run woodworking shop.
Ashley Stimpson is a freelance writer based in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Longreads, Johns Hopkins Magazine, Potomac Review, Little Patuxent Review, and elsewhere. See more of her work at www.ashleystimpson.com.
Sarah Van Sciver is a freelance writer, artist, mother, personal chef, and a FEEL practitioner residing in Baltimore, Maryland. Her passion for writing stems from the healing and recovery from PTSD she has experienced through working with horses. She is currently working on a memoir about the healing effects horses have on humans who experience trauma. To find out more about Equine Experiential Learning, to view her artwork, and to read other essays, please visit https://untetheredmare.com/.
Nancy Wade is a Colorado native who has lived in Boulder since 2002. She earned a BA in Communications in 2000 and an MA in Spiritual Memoir in 2009. Her career includes 15 years in legal word processing and 20 years as an employment administrator in the Human Resources Department of a scientific research organization. Retired since 2015, she enjoys spending time with her husband, two grown children, two stepsons, and especially with her two lively grandsons, ages 6 and 9. In retirement, she has more time for reading and writing, mostly in the memoir genre.
Roz Weaver is a spoken word performer and internationally published poet living in England. She has been published in a number of journals, zines, and anthologies, including most recently with Snapdragon, Voice of Eve, and Cultivate. In 2018, her work was displayed at the annual Rape Crisis UK Conference, as well as being displayed and performed at two further exhibitions in London— ‘Th Sunlight Project’ and ‘Testimony,’ the latter as part of a conference hosted by UN Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson. More recently, her work has been on exhibit with London based ‘What You Saying?’ and performed at Leeds International Festival.
Matilda Young is a writer working for a civil rights nonprofit with an MFA in Poetry from the University of Maryland. She lives in Washington, D.C. with a poet, an environmental lawyer, and an angry ginger cat. She has been published in several journals, including Sakura Review, The Golden Key, and District Lit.
Yellow Arrow Journal: Winter 2019
The Winter 2019 edition of the Yellow Arrow Journal is now available as a hard copy, PDF, or an ebook on your Kindle.
This season we explored the theme of "Doubt" through creative nonfiction and poetry by T.J. Butler, Jessica Cappelluti, Diane Finlayson, Jessica Gregg, Tami Lauteren, Edele C. Morgan, Ann Quinn, Mindy Stokes, and Roz Weaver.
Thank you to our hard working editorial staff, to the talented writers, and of course to you, our beloved readers.
Support independent publishing through an annual subscription to the journal. Our hard copy editions are printed in small batches and bound by hand.
Submissions open
Submissions open OCTOBER 1st to NOVEMBER 30th 2018 for the winter 2019 issue of the Yellow Arrow JournalGuidelines:-The theme is "Doubt." We leave it up to authors to interpret the theme however they choose.-Submissions of creative nonfiction and poetry by women and identifying authors welcomed.-Submissions for cover art by women and identifying artists welcomed. Must supply a high resolution image. Cover art can be a painting, drawing, print, photo, graphic design or anything else you dream up.-Submissions of creative nonfiction must be no more than 5,000 words, however any piece between 500 and 5,000 words will be considered. You may submit up to 5 poems per author.-Please send your submissions in the body of an email to info(at)yellowarrowpublishing.com. Cover letters are not necessary unless you need to explain how your piece relates to the theme. Attachments are not accepted.-We are seeking pieces of writing with an optimistic or hopeful vibe.-Multiple submissions are fine, but please do let us know if your piece gets published elsewhere in the mean time.-Please no previously published work aside from blogs and personal websites. If you're not sure, just ask.-Accepted submissions may be edited for content and grammar. We will seek your permission before editing.-Submissions are $.99 per piece of creative nonfiction and $.99 for up to 5 poetry submissions. Payment accepted here. If you are unable to pay for your submission, please explain this in your submission email and we will permit scholarships on a case by case basis.-You will hear back from us by December 17th, 2018 regarding your submission.-If your piece is selected, you will receive payment of $10USD and one free hard copy of the journal.Send submissions to: info(at)yellowarrowpublishing.com
Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. III, Courage
Dear Yellow Arrow Family,Volume III of the Yellow Arrow Journal is here and we couldn't be more excited and proud to share it with all of you. The theme this time around is "Courage." Inside you will find a collection of poetry and essays by writers who identify as women from all over the world.We hope you consider supporting independent publishing by subscribing to the journal, purchasing a single hard copy, downloading a PDF, or reading it on your Kindle.A very special thank you goes out to our volunteer staff Kapua, Leila and Maggie who spent hours and hours sifting through submissions, editing, formatting and looking over many revisions with a close eye. We so appreciate your dedication to this project.If you happen to get a copy of this journal in your hands you'll notice it is hand bound with string. That's right, we sat and stitched them with needle and thread, because we love you. Also because we wanted to produce a product that was entirely in-house. In the past we had printed copies made through Amazon because it was cheap and easy. Cheap and easy isn't a bad thing, but we just really wanted to give you a journal that was touched by our very own hands and made special for each of you.We hope you enjoy this volume,Gwen Van Velsor
Yellow Arrow Journal, Volume II, January 2018
We are proud to present the second volume of our biannual literary journal. The theme is Time.Thank you to all the courageous writers who offered their precious time to this edition.To read the journal as a PDF, please click the link or image below. To purchase a hard copy for $7.00 (including shipping), please email info@yellowarrowpublishing.com with your name, mailing address, and preferred payment method. Or, purchase on Amazon for $10.00. You may download the ebook version for $.99 on your Kindle or ereading device.
Cover art by Marie Hassell Doctorchik
Yellow Arrow Journal: Volume I, July 2017
We are proud to present the first volume of our biannual literary journal. The theme is Journey. Creating this compilation was a journey of its own, and we are very grateful for your support and readership.Thank you to all the talented and brave writers who submitted their hearts and souls to this enterprise.To read the journal as a PDF, please click the link or image below. To purchase a hard copy, please email info@yellowarrowpublishing.com
