Yellow Arrow Publishing Blog

Kapua Iao 4/13/21 Kapua Iao 4/13/21

No Batteries Required by Ellen Dooling Reynard: Living Life’s Non Moments

Yellow Arrow Publishing announces the release of a new chapbook, No Batteries Required, by Ellen Dooling Reynard. Since its establishment in 2016, Yellow Arrow has devoted its efforts to advocate for all women writers through inclusion in the biannual Yellow Arrow Journal as well as single-author publications, and by providing strong author support, workshops, and volunteer opportunities. We at Yellow Arrow are excited to continue our mission by supporting Ellen in all her writing and publishing endeavors.

The 28 poems included in No Batteries Required float through several themes and are divided into four sections: moments and non moments, Life’s Journey Home, Other Creatures, and Seasoned with Humor. As a whole, No Batteries Required examines the world around Ellen from the perspective of her inner world. She considers what she calls ‘moments and non moments’—those brief stops along the way to look at something as simple as a flower or to witness something as complex as the death of a loved one.

As a senior, Ellen looks back on her life, its joys and sorrows, its loves and losses, while she navigates the unknown currents of old age and ponders about the journeys of life, death, and what lies beyond. Observing the natural world, she recognizes what is to be learned about the human condition from animals, insects, and plants. In the final title poem, Ellen muses about the craft of writing with a pencil, which she describes as a simple computational device with one end for ‘enter,’ the other end for ‘delete.’

Ellen spent her childhood on a cattle ranch in Jackson, Montana. Raised on myths and fairy tales, the sense of wonder has never left her. A one-time editor of Parabola Magazine, her poetry has been published by Lighten Up On Line, Current Magazine, Persimmon, Silver Blade, and The Muddy River Poetry Review. She is now retired and has relocated to Clarksville, Maryland, where she will continue to write fiction and poetry. She is currently working on a series of ekphrastic poems based on the work of her late husband, Paul Reynard (1927–2005).

Paperback and PDF versions of No Batteries Required 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 No Batteries Required wherever you purchase your books including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and smaller bookstores. Connect with Yellow Arrow Publishing on Facebook and Instagram, and Ellen on Facebook, to share some love for this chapbook. To learn more about Ellen and No Batteries Required, check out our recent interview with her. And as part of our April Poetry Series, join us for a book launch of No Batteries Required on April 30 at 6 p.m. More information about the reading, as well as the Zoom link, can be found on our Events Calendar.

***

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. To learn about publishing, volunteering, or donating, visit yellowarrowpublishing.com. If interested in writing a review of No Batteries Required or any of our other publications, please email editor@yellowarrowpublishing.com for more information.

Kapua Iao 4/6/21 Kapua Iao 4/6/21

Until We Meet Again . . .

Aloha ʻoe, aloha ʻoe (farewell to thee, farewell to thee)

E ke onaona noho i ka lipo (the charming one who dwells in the shaded bowers)

One fond embrace,

A hoʻi aʻe au (ʻere I depart)

Until we meet again

“Aloha ʻoe,” composed by Queen Liliʻuokalani in 1878

Gwen, your Yellow Arrow family wants to send you off with a heartfelt bon voyage! Thank you for everything you have done for the Baltimore writing community and for Yellow Arrow. Here’s to new adventures!

If you want to support Gwen, please purchase one of her incredible books in the Yellow Arrow Bookstore or send her your own farewell message on Instagram @gwenvanvelsor. Visit www.gwenvanvelsor.com to follow her adventures.

I can’t believe it’s been 16 years since I first met you! We had fun that summer in Greece and some exciting times building Yellow Arrow Publishing. Thank you for letting me volunteer with Yellow Arrow and for thinking I would make a good Editor-in-Chief.

We constructed a great foundation for something beautiful! Have an incredible journey and adventure.

Aloha nō, Kapua Iao

Gwen gave me the opportunity to pursue what I love and become part of the Yellow Arrow family and I greatly appreciate her for it. I hope for her safety and happiness in her move with her family and that they get to enjoy the new opportunities and experiences that come with it, especially after giving me the same. Thank you so much, Gwen!

Brenna Ebner

It is unbelievable to think that it was only a little over a year ago that I drove through a snowy winter night in order to sit and chat with Gwen about my potential involvement with Yellow Arrow Publishing. Upon meeting Gwen, I was immediately struck by her warmth and passion as she described her vision for YAP and ways to become involved. Her openness in listening to my own interests and ideas asserted that she saw YAP as not only hers but as a collaboration of many voices—an astounding notion in a society that is often focused on the individual rather than the community.

Now, that I know Gwen better, I am not surprised because I have learned that everything she does is undertaken for the purpose of helping others blossom. Because Gwen let me into her YAP family, I have been able to chat about poetry with a fellow writer across the Atlantic Ocean, learn the art of bookbinding, and edit stories from voices from all over the world. I wish Gwen and her family all the best as they continue on their journey.

Siobhan McKenna

One of the first things that I noticed about Gwen was her warm smile. I was a bit nervous coming to speak at an author’s event and her warmth made me instantly feel better. After another event, Gwen reached out to me to chat about life and we met up at Belvedere Square. We had an instant connection and shared conversation about some of the things we had in common: motherhood, teaching, our love of travel, passion for feminine wisdom, and of course, writing. That night she gave me a small gift. I cherish it as a thoughtful recognition of our connection. Later, Gwen welcomed me into her home to talk more about Yellow Arrow and it was there that she invited me to join the board.

Gwen, thank you for noticing the new expression that was blossoming in me and providing a safe and meaningful space to grow as a writer. I know this next adventure will provide you with many learning opportunities and the chance to emerge as an even more beautiful, loving, and fulfilled version of you.

Much love! Gina Strauss

Gwen, it’s been great working with you and getting connected to the Yellow Arrow family. I wish you and your family prosperity, joy, and love as you start on this next journey.

Jennifer N. Shannon

Gwen, thank you for the ways you’ve made me become more of the writer and resident of Highlandtown that I hope to be. Your ingenuity has opened doors I would have never dreamed of, let alone found a way to walk through. The opportunities you’ve given me through Yellow Arrow have forever changed me.

Kerry Graham

Gwen is someone who gathers good people around her—there’s something about her that makes you want to help out because it’s doing stuff you wanted to do all along AND it means you get to hang out with her and her good people. She has such neat, creative ideas, and wants to make good things happen for others—it’s an infectious cycle that brings out the best in all of us. Thank you, Gwen, for everything! May our connections be strong, wherever you are in the world.

love, Ann

Yellow Arrow, in its roots, is Gwen. Passionate and dedicated to helping others. Providing space and lifting up pride for those who may not know where their art belongs or to what direction it is trying to go.

Gwen has helped me realize over the past few years what it means to be a writer, as well as an editor, and a member of a community. It means getting dirt under your nails to help other’s flowers bloom, stapling 100s of pages to see other’s names in print, taking time to see someone past their writing to understand their work.

I first met Gwen when I was invited to read at a First Friday Art Walk. Her energy was contagious. I immediately knew she was someone I wanted to learn from and work with by the excitable yet professional energy she was emitting.

We’ll miss Gwen but, with Yellow Arrow, she’ll still be a piece of Baltimore.

Bailey Drumm

Dear Gwen,

The first time we met was pure serendipity. Yellow Arrow was hosting a series of writing workshops at the Y:ART Gallery, and since I happened to be on the gallery’s email list, I received an invitation. I was not familiar with Highlandtown, but I had gone to an exhibit at Y:ART several months before, when one of my friends was showing some paintings, and visitors were asked to sign in. It was coincidental that the invitation arrived just when I’d decided to make more room for creative writing in my life. What a lovely accident of fate led me to follow those yellow arrows to Highlandtown—and to you—and embark on a new chapter in my life!

When I arrived for my first class, I felt your welcoming warmth like a physical presence—a hug or a blanket. You were at home in the space, with your fellow teachers, with yourself. I remember that you brought coffee, donuts, and fresh strawberries for the students, a kindness I found incredibly comforting. And at each place around the writing table, you had set out yellow-covered booklets for taking notes and doing writing exercises—another homey touch that drew me in. When you talked about Yellow Arrow, your vision for nurturing women writers, and your own writing journey, I was swept along on the current of your enthusiasm, joy, and hopefulness. By the time the series of classes was complete, I was not only more confident in pursuing my own writing journey but also sure that you—and Yellow Arrow—would play a part in my success.

Gwen, I am so thankful to you for opening the door to so many “firsts” in my life. For starters, introducing me to the artsy vibe of the Highlandtown neighborhood. I remember having lunch at DiPasquale’s with you and Cija Jefferson after her class, and the thrill of feeling welcomed into the “club” of local writers. Helping you hand-bind the Yellow Arrow Journal, stapling and stitching care, love, and pride into every copy, was a uniquely joyful way to experience the process of producing printed works. When I joined the board of Yellow Arrow, you gave me the opportunity to manage grant writing, learn new skills, work with Kapua and the rest of the board members, and ultimately connect with other arts organizations and resources in Maryland that will help us reshape Yellow Arrow in the future. You invited me to join a live poetry reading at the Highlandtown Literary Night event, which was my first time reading my poems in public. You introduced me to Ann Quinn, whose poetry class this past year has helped me hone my craft and form relationships with local poets. You encouraged me to submit to Yellow Arrow Journal and my poetry publication in HOME was my first, a milestone moment for me that not only encouraged me to submit new work to other journals but to see the potential in my old, “dormant” poems—and to revisit, rework, and submit them as well.

Through my relationship with you and Yellow Arrow, I’ve come to appreciate the term “publishing house.” Even though we had to close the Yellow Arrow House, Yellow Arrow Publishing remains a “house”—and more importantly, a home—for women writers to be supported, nurtured, gain confidence, grow, and thrive in their creative endeavors. Gwen, your vision, your optimism, your hard work, and your faith have made our house a home—and whether we downsize, renovate, reconstruct, or move away, the Yellow Arrow home that you envisioned will live on inside us—a spiritual, creative, and loving space where we can nurture each other, ourselves, and our creativity. You leave us this precious gift, for which I will always be grateful.

Gwen, as you prepare for the next steps on your life’s journey, I wish you and your family many blessings—safe travels, health, love, and happiness. I wish you new friends, fresh ideas, the pleasure of exploring a new landscape and culture, novel inspirations for your writing, and the joy of watching your daughter grow up and learn about the big, wide world. No doubt, there will be many challenges, but I’m sure you will meet them with your unique blend of courage, curiosity, optimism, and faith. Follow your arrow, Gwen!

With love and gratitude, Sara Palmer

Thank you to everyone who supports women writers and publishers. Please show Gwen some love in the comments below or on Yellow Arrow’s Facebook or Instagram. If interested in joining Yellow Arrow Publishing as a staff or volunteer, email staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com for more information.

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.

Kapua Iao 3/30/21 Kapua Iao 3/30/21

Can I Become an Author at My Age?

by Diane Vogel Ferri, from February 2020

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave it neither time nor power.” Mary Oliver

You have always wanted to write a book. You thought that would be a great accomplishment in life, but you had children, a job, obligations. Suddenly the kids grew up but then maybe you were caring for your elderly parents, and now—now you have some time. Is that desire still there? Do you have something to say?

It is my belief that older people are not revered in American society. We have valued youth and beauty too much. It is only in the 21st century that Hollywood has decided that older women can have roles in movies! But we have had life experiences, we have done the hard work, we have figured so much of it out. We have strong opinions based on those life experiences.

Countries such as Japan have longer life expectancies and less dementia. This is often attributed to their respect and positive treatment of the elderly. Korea celebrates the 60th and 70th birthdays with large feasts. China has an “elderly rights law” mandating that children attend to their parents in old age. Native Americans look to their aging for wisdom. In India, the elderly are considered the head of the family.

On the wall of my writing room—a room of my own being something I earned in later years as well—is an essay I wrote when I was 10 years old. My mother saved it for me. It is about my desire to write a book someday. I remember my mom telling me that I hadn’t lived long enough to have something to write about. Well, I do now. In my 30s my life took a dramatic and chaotic turn. I began filling notebooks with poetry although I had never read or studied poetry and it was like a savior to me. Now I have two poetry books and many poems published in journals.

Walking through the world as an older woman I often feel invisible, as if I am nothing to look at, with nothing important to share. But women who have fulfilled their caregiving duties have the most understanding of life. Every woman has experiences that are unique to being female. In these later years I have been a part of many poetry readings. It is so fulfilling to stand in front of a microphone and read my poems. I have people’s attention. I am heard and seen, and I have so much to say. I watched my own mother blossom into a prolific artist in her 50s then continue to create into her 80s. Her example leads me, and I constantly remind my own daughter that a woman reinvents herself throughout her life. There is nothing that cannot be accomplished in the future, even if it is not possible now.

Creativity is an important piece of our identities. We may not need to make money from it or become famous, but we need it to stay vital, to maintain who we are in this world. I have been retired for six years but I still get a thrill out of waking up in the morning and knowing I have nothing I need to do that day but walk back to my writing space and write my heart out. Stephen King once said, “If God gives you something to do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it?” Yes.

There are many wonderful online and print publications like Yellow Arrow Journal that are looking for your wisdom, although the submission process can sometimes be arduous and discouraging. The best advice I heard at a craft talk was to aim for 100 rejections a year. That sounds awful, but it means you are submitting a great deal of work. Obviously, the odds of getting something published are much better the more you submit. I’ve had about a dozen essays published in recent years.

I am now 65 and my third novel has just been published by a local company. The first book not to be self-published! I was recently interviewed and a substantial article about my book was published online and in the local newspaper. An unexpected gift. So, it’s never too late.

Diane Vogel Ferri is a teacher, poet, and writer living in Solon, Ohio. Her essays have been published in Scene Magazine, Cleveland Stories, Yellow Arrow Journal, and Good Works Review, among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Plainsongs, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications are Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), The Desire Path (novel), and her newest novel, No Life But This: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling.

******

Kapua Iao 3/23/21 Kapua Iao 3/23/21

Burning Words of Women to Be Heard: A Review of The Fire Inside by Zora’s Den

By Bailey Drumm

The Fire Inside: Collected Stories & Poems from Zora’s Den is a collection of prose and poetry written by members of Zora’s Den, a writing group centered in Baltimore, Maryland, about the empowerment of a group of writers expressing womanhood and the power women hold in their autonomy. Zora’s Den is a place where these women can express themselves unapologetically, with support, encouragement, and sisterhood.

The Den began as a Facebook writing community of Black women that was started in 2017 by Victoria Adams-Kennedy and named after Zora Neale Hurston. The foreword, written by Zora’s niece, Lucy Anne Hurston, and the preface explain the inspiration for the collection and how Zora led these women to write with “fire in the belly.”

In the midst of the cultural awakening that the U.S. is currently undergoing, this collection is a moving example of the way women, especially BIPOC women, think, feel, and have interacted within a blinded world. And in The Fire Inside, there are moments of subtlety and an admiration of their bodies, juxtaposed next to pain and suffering under the hold of a man’s aggression.

As I looked over my notes for this review, there was a word that I wrote next to my comments time and time again: POWER. The power of the Den itself is moving. The collection as a whole is powerful. Then, to look at every piece individually and really explore the embers of each fire burning inside the collection, it’s mystic, overwhelming, and beautiful. The piece “Legacy” by Chenise Lytrelle exemplifies just that, rounding out the collection by recalling the pain and torment experienced by women who came before her, who were able to walk on with pride and awakening. That same bold feeling of pride punches the reader from the first piece, “Finding Zora,” by Jacqueline Johnson, as she writes, “We wore our braids like crowns.” The collection also explores the relationships between mother and daughter, alongside the character’s relationships and struggles with folklore, tradition, ancestry, religion, and culture.

Throughout the pages, there is love, unity, and confidence in the tone of each piece, even if a piece itself is addressing cruel, degrading actions. There are no curtains to hide behind for these women when it comes to discussing freedom, oppression, and growth. They tackle the individual struggles that young women suffer, and how it is possible to grow stronger, year by year. Though every person experiences different pressures, pains, and expectations, as women of color, Zora’s Den experiences it together.

The Fire Inside allows the reader to glimpse the outcome of the Den’s figurative kitchen table, where the women can speak freely and honestly about their grief, pleasure, dignity, and other experiences as Black women and the outcome surely is a flame.

Kennedy, V., ed. The Fire Inside: Collected Stories & Poems from Zora’s Den. Baltimore: ZD Press, November 17, 2020. Available as a paperback or eBook from Amazon. Visit the group’s website to learn more about a recent call for submissions, for The Fire Inside (Volume II).

Bailey Drumm is a fiction writer whose work has been featured in Grub Street, and whose digital art was displayed as the cover art for the 2017 edition of Welter. She is an M.F.A. graduate from the Creative Writing and Publishing Arts program at the University of Baltimore. Her collection of short stories, The Art of Settling, was published in the spring of 2019. Find out more at Bailey-Drumm.square.site.

*****

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

Kapua Iao 3/16/21 Kapua Iao 3/16/21

Gratitude is a Divine Emotion: Yellow Arrow Editorial Associates and Interns

By Kapua Iao

“Gratitude is a divine emotion: it fills the heart, but not to bursting; it warms it, but not to fever.”

from Shirley by Charlotte Brontë

One of the many ways Yellow Arrow Publishing encourages women writers and women in publishing is through inclusion within the organization itself. We welcome (and thrive with) our volunteers and interns, not only for our own benefit but to also (hopefully) provide a prospective future publisher with some necessary tools and knowledge about the publishing world. And even if a volunteer does not plan to continue within the publishing world, the tools and knowledge of working in a women-led, collaborative organization. One that champions the different and the unique. One that looks for partners and allies rather than quick connections, whether from our own Baltimore community (such as Towson University!) or from further afar.

As Editor-in-Chief, it would be impossible for me to organize, create, and publish without the incredible help of our editorial associates and interns. They provide the thought process behind each journal by picking each issue’s theme and reading/voting on each submitted piece. They then read through the chosen submissions and edit them carefully and thoughtfully, not to change the voice of the author but to ensure that the voice flourishes. They provide continuous feedback and proofread the final product before release. And the same goes for our published chapbooks as everyone involved takes the time to make sure the final draft is perfect for the author.

We try to find each volunteer, each intern space in our organization to grow and flourish in the area they are most interested in (and of course where we need the most help!). Past interns have worked at our live events and at Yellow Arrow House. They hand bound our publications and put as much love and tenderness into each copy as we could hope. Now that we are a mostly virtual publishing organization, they focus on writing and/or copyediting grants, blogs, and press releases. They create promotional material and images for our authors and explore or research possible future marketing campaigns. And above all else, they support. Not only me but our authors as well. I am so thankful to have had them with me on this journey.

Currently, we have two new volunteers as well as several who started with us a couple of years ago. I would like to introduce you to our present editorial associates and interns as well as a few from the past (not listed below but valued for their assistance: Meredith Eilola, Eleanor Hade, Josie Hatton, and Rebecca Massey). Each has my appreciation.

Elaine Batty

me bw.jpg — Lives in Baltimore, Maryland
*YA position*: marketing intern, Aug-Dec 2020
*What did you do*? I did a lot of fun things while working with Yellow Arrow, but some of my favorites were making the press releases and promo images. I also really enjoyed making my blog posts (see Elaine’s latest here).
*Did you go to Towson University*? Yes! I will be graduating in May 2021.
*What are you currently working on*? I am currently working on a winter class and gearing up to start my final semester at Towson. I am also actively trying to spend as much time in nature and as much time reading as possible!

Elaine is a student at Towson University graduating with a B.S. in English on the literature track. Her poetry has been featured in the College of Southern Maryland’s Connections Literary Magazine. In her free time, she enjoys reading all genres of fiction, writing poetry, and playing with her two cats, Catlynn and Cleocatra. Elaine’s two real passions are literature and travel, and she plans to look for a job following graduation that will allow her to pursue both full-time. Find her on Instagram @elaine_batty.

Bailey Drumm

bailey bw.jpg — Lives in Fallston, Maryland
*YA position*: editorial associate, Aug 2019-present
*What have you done so far*? I’ve edited two editions of the journal, written a book review for the last edition, assisted in binding last January, and participated in the First Friday Art Walk Reading series.
*Did you go to Towson University*? Yes (though this is not how I became associated with Yellow Arrow), May 2014.
*Did you work for Towson’s Grub Street Literary Magazine*? Sure did! I was the nonfiction editor.
*What are you currently working on*? I review pieces submitted to *JMWW* and work for the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I have just recently taken a position with *Baltimore Fishbowl* reviewing books and interviewing authors.

Bailey is a fiction writer whose work has been featured in Grub Street, and whose digital art was displayed as the cover art for the 2017 edition of Welter. She is an M.F.A. graduate from the Creative Writing and Publishing Arts program at the University of Baltimore. Her collection of short stories, The Art of Settling, was published in the spring of 2019. Find out more at Bailey-Drumm.square.site.

Brenna Ebner

IMG_3862 bw.jpg — Lives in Baltimore/Towson, Maryland
*YA position*: publications intern, Sept-Dec 2020; CNF Managing Editor, Feb 2021-present
*What did you do (as publications intern)*? Copyedited and proofread *the samurai*, YAJ **(Re)Formation**, and Writers-in-Residence zine; researched and contacted reviewers, podcasts, blogs, and bookstores; approved submissions for **(Re)Formation** and assisted in the layout; wrote blog posts and a guide for authors to market themselves; and created promotional images for social media.
*Did you go to Towson University*? Yes, May 2020.
*Did you work for Towson’s Grub Street Literary Magazine*? Yes, online nonfiction editor of volume 68 and Editor-in-Chief of volume 69.
*What are you currently working on*? Learning how to format eBooks with Mason Jar Press, walking dogs and pet sitting part-time, and trying to finish a memoir reading list.

Brenna is a recent Towson University graduate and intern at both Mason Jar Press and Yellow Arrow. She is fascinated with creative nonfiction and hopes to pursue a dream career editing it full-time. You can find pictures of her and her dog on Instagram @look_its_brenna.

Kierstin Kessler

self picture bw.jpg — Lives in Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania
*YA position*: editorial associate, Jan 2019-present
*What do you do*? I’ve proofread/edited multiple chapbooks, read through submissions, and contributed edits to the final versions of two Yellow Arrow literary journal issues.
*Did you go to Towson University*? Yes, I graduated in December 2019.
*Did you work for Towson’s Grub Street Literary Magazine*? Yes! In one semester I was an assistant fiction editor, and in the other, I was the online creative nonfiction editor.
*What are you currently working on*? I am currently working on a few of my own projects, including a fiction book and a memoir.

Kierstin lives a relatively quiet life in Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Towson University with a degree in English in December 2019. In her spare time, Kierstin enjoys reading and writing urban fantasy. Instagram her @kierstinkessler.

Alexa Laharty

FullSizeRender bw.jpg — Lives in Olympia, Washington
*YA position*: editorial associate, July 2019-Jan 2021, Creative Director, Jan 2021-present
*What do you do*? I edit creative nonfiction pieces for *Yellow Arrow Journal* and have recently begun to help with graphic design and layout for Yellow Arrow publications.
*Did you go to Towson University*? No.
*What are you currently working on*? I am currently writing my dissertation for my masters in Bioarchaeology.

Alexa grew up in Portland, Oregon (just a few blocks away from Gwen Van Velsor, Yellow Arrow’s founder!) before moving to Boston for college. She has spent the last several years living in England for graduate school where she studies archaeology. Due to the pandemic, she has returned to the Pacific Northwest and is enjoying being near family and the gorgeous outdoors. Find her on Instagram @alexaelisabeth.

Michelle Lin

IMG_4318 bw.jpg — Lives in Lutherville – Timonium, Maryland
*YA position*: marketing intern, Jan 2021-present
*What do you do*? I help Yellow Arrow with marketing. Some of these tasks include creating newsletters, updating Yellow Arrow’s website and calendar, creating Facebook events, writing and editing press releases, and creating weekly posts on Yellow Arrow’s social media platforms.
*Did you go to Towson University*? I am currently attending Towson University and will be graduating in Spring 2021.
*Did you work for Towson’s Grub Street Literary Magazine*? I did take part in Towson’s *Grub Street Literary Magazine* course. I was their online poetry editor for volume 69.
*What are you currently working on*? Outside of Yellow Arrow I am currently working on graduating from Towson University with a B.A. in English on the writing track.

Michelle is a student at Towson University who will be graduating in spring 2021. She had previously served as the Online Poetry Editor for volume 69 of Towson University’s literary magazine Grub Street. Michelle currently lives in Lutherville – Timonium with her family. During her downtime, she enjoys reading and writing poetry. To read more of her work, her writing can be found on Instagram @m.l_writes.

Siobhan McKenna

McKenna. EA.YAP2 bw.jpg — Currently living in Jacksonville, Florida
*YA position*: editorial associate, Dec 2019-present
*What do you do*? During my time with Yellow Arrow, I have worked with Kapua and the editorial team as an editorial assistant on three literary journals: **Resilience**, **Home**, and **(Re)Formation**, as well as on two chapbooks: *Smoke the Peace Pipe* by Roz Weaver and *the samurai* by Linda M. Crate. In preparation for the chapbook releases, I was honored to also interview both Roz and Linda about their pieces and the purpose of their work. In addition, I worked with Gwen and the bookbinding team to bind, by hand, **Resilience**.
*Did you go to Towson University*? No.
*What are you currently working on*? Outside of Yellow Arrow, I am a cardiac surgery ICU nurse; I care for patients recovering post-operatively from surgeries including heart and lung transplants and bypass grafts. This past year, I also was among the frontline workers caring for COVID-19 ICU patients. I am the editor of my unit’s newsletter and am actively involved with Dr. Laurel Braitman’s Writing in Medicine group – a virtual creative writing outlet for healthcare workers throughout the pandemic.

Siobhan is a middle child and a lover of bikepacking and practicing yoga. She enjoys writing essays, poetry, and long-winded letters to friends. For the past nine years Siobhan has lived in the charming city of Baltimore but beginning in the spring she will start work as an ICU travel nurse—moving to a different city every three months to work, write, and explore all that this crazy, broken, and beautiful country holds. You can follow her on Instagram @sio_han.

Madison Miller

unnamed (1) bw.jpg — Lives in Logan, Utah
*YA position*: editorial associate, Feb 2021-present
*Did you go to Towson University*? No.
*What are you currently working on*? I am currently a senior at Utah State University, and I am double majoring in English and Political Science.

Madison is currently a student at Utah State University and is so excited to be a part of the Yellow Arrow Team! Madison is originally from Southern California so getting used to the snow and cold weather has been a big adjustment for her. She is interested in Yellow Arrow’s mission statement of helping women become voices in literature because so often women’s voices have not been heard enough. Madison loves to read books and watch movies and TV shows. She is into Young Adult Fiction but has recently found a love in the classics like Little Women. Madison is grateful to be working for Yellow Arrow this year and cannot wait to see all the publications she gets to work on!

Deja Ryland

IMG_6875 bw.jpg — Lives in Baltimore, Maryland
*YA position*: grant writing intern, May-July 2020
*What did you do*? I researched grant opportunities that would be a good fit for Yellow Arrow, copyedited grants, assisted in writing portions of grants, synthesized data into a spreadsheet, helped draft letters of intent, created a survey, and was able to learn from and work alongside supportive and amazing women.
*Did you go to Towson University*? Yes, I graduated in August 2020.
*What are you currently working on*? Currently, I have a full-time job but continue to write poetry, short fiction stories, and nonfiction pieces in hopes of sharing my work and becoming a freelance writer. I am also currently learning how to play an acoustic guitar.

Deja is an emerging author. Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, she hopes to engage her boundless curiosity through her writing. She enjoys writing poetry, short stories, and nonfiction pieces. In her free time, she likes to take long walks in nature, exercise, eat, travel, and spend time with her family. Although she has no social media currently, be on the lookout for her name, which she aspires to be among collections of books or poetry on your bookshelves one day soon.

Thank you to everyone who supports these women and all writers who toil away day after day. Please show them some love in the comments below or on Yellow Arrow’s Facebook or Instagram. If interested in joining us as an editorial associate or intern, email staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com.

Kapua Iao 3/13/21 Kapua Iao 3/13/21

Cherishing the Present: A Conversation with Ellen Dooling Reynard

From February 2021

Ellen Dooling Reynard sits in her kitchen nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains. Behind her, a black cat jumps onto the counter. She grins, “He wants to play with the keys.” Her warmth spills through the computer screen that connects us as Ellen mentions that he, along with her other cat, are sources of inspiration for her writing and laughter. Ellen, the author of the next Yellow Arrow Publishing chapbook, No Batteries Required, released April 2021, spoke to Yellow Arrow Editorial Associate, Siobhan McKenna, while taking a break from packing up her California home. This wonderful chapbook is now available for PRESALE. Information about a virtual reading at the end of April is forthcoming

No Batteries Required examines the world around Ellen from the perspective of her inner world. As a senior, she looks back on her life, its joys and sorrows, its loves and losses, while she navigates the unknown currents of old age and ponders about the journeys of life, death, and what lies beyond. Ellen spent her childhood on a cattle ranch in Jackson, Montana. Raised on myths and fairy tales, the sense of wonder has never left her. A one-time editor of Parabola Magazine, her poetry has been published by Lighten Up On Line, Current Magazine, Persimmon, Silver Blade, and The Muddy River Poetry Review. She is now retired and has relocated to Clarksville, Maryland, where she will continue to write fiction and poetry. She is currently working on a series of ekphrastic poems based on the work of her late husband, Paul Reynard (1927–2005).

In a week [from this interview], Ellen will be moving east to separate herself from the worsening wildfires and to be closer to family. Yet for someone who is moving across the country, she appears very at peace. “That’s life,” she says when asked how she is faring with the move. “Selling a house and packing a house and then dealing with something that’s wrong with the house. I can worry about all of that and then I realize that this is the second to last week that I’m going to be here—so that’s right now. What is going to happen is going to happen on the trip.” After a beat, she adds with a laugh, “I am a little nervous.” Siobhan asked Ellen to talk more about her appreciation for the mundane moments of life, her curiosity toward the natural world, and her ability to see aging as a gift—the themes of No Batteries Required.

YAP: The first section of your chapbook is called “moments and non moments” with even the non moments being full of meaning. How have you found your non moments to be “presents of presence”?

Because I’ve had a life-long spiritual direction that my mother was also involved in—the teachings of [G.I.] Gurdjieff . . . [a] middle eastern teacher of philosophy and knowledge. [His teaching] is a lot about being in the moment (before it [became] a buzzword in modern psychology) and living life right now; not yesterday and not tomorrow. What is in front of me right now? Who am I right now? These kinds of moments, the non moments, [are] what end up being “presents of presence.” [Presents of presence is about] finding yourself if you are really irritated because you are delayed by something. Maybe you are going to be late for an appointment. Or you may not even have a reason to be annoyed and you just don’t like slowing down. So, in the middle of a moment like that you have to realize that you are alive, and you are breathing and there are birds singing outside and interesting things to be feeling about one’s children and all of one’s loved ones. There is plenty of material in the present moment even if even if you are waiting at a broken traffic light.

YAP: How does it feel to look back at seemingly non moments: family breakfast, dishes, chores, Montana winters, and find meaning within them?

I learned deep down an appreciation for being where you are because we would be snowed in all winter. We were six children and my mother homeschooled us, because there was no way we could get anywhere. The nearest school was a [one-room schoolhouse in town], 10 miles away. We didn’t get down to town the whole winter. We would have to put away a lot of food and my mother had to figure out how to age the eggs in barrels. She had to cook and can, garden, milk cows, separate cream from milk, make butter . . . [having been gently raised back East, as a rancher’s wife], she learned how to do all that stuff—it was amazing.

YAP: Your second section called “Life’s Journey Home” centers on growing older. When referring to yourself in your bio you call yourself a “senior” and you call Fredrica a “senior” in the poem of the same name. Do you see yourself in Fredrica now as you have entered this older stage of life?

No, not Fredrica, but my mother and my aunt. My Aunt Peggy lived to be 103 and when she was in her 70s, she decided she was going to grow old gracefully. She was a very busy woman—did all kinds of project. . . . she kept chugging along all those years and always with a lot of laughter and a lot of good humor. And I’ve become the Aunt Peggy of my generation among my sisters’ children, and I don’t mind seeing myself that way. [Old age is] a kind of special time and a privileged time because you don’t have to prove anything anymore.

YAP: In “Old Age” you write, “these are the best years,” and talk about allowing the world’s youth to carry the burden of knowing “the unknowable” so you “old ones” can move “into a new world.” These words are beautiful and reminiscent of a future realm after this life. Paired with the title of this section, “Life’s Journey Home,” I’m curious as to what you believe our next life entails and if there is a spiritual aspect to your words?

There is a Native American belief that when you’re born you come through the Milky Way and there’s a person there called Blue Woman. [She] encourages the new life to go ahead and be born. Then, when somebody dies, they go back through the same portal and Blue Woman is there to welcome them back to the same world that they came from. That’s—in a way— my view: that after death of the body there’s some kind of life that goes on. It may not be angels with halos and sitting on white clouds, but there’s something that continues. . . . [Gurdjieff said] that depending on how we live there are various places where the spirit ends up. The ideal is to go back to the center of the universe—what you might call God; that original force that started everything.

YAP: In your poem “Montana,” I love the juxtaposition of the beauty of the natural world against the reality of the natural world. You talk about the mountains as “blue-shouldered and white peaked” but also “uncaring in their majesty” and the sun melting away snow that once again reveals the graves of your mom and your husband. Why are these contrasts important to you and how do you see the beauty and reality working together?

I think that was part of growing up on a ranch. Seeing a lot of birth and death juxtaposed with animals on the ranch. [We lived on] a cattle ranch so we saw animals being born and I was interested in one being butchered, but my mother didn’t want me to watch. My father also had a very beloved dog who was a wonderful cow dog. My father accidentally killed him when he was backing up some huge machines and [ran over] the dog. . . . I saw a lot of extreme opposites in relation to nature. I think it happens within human beings also—there’s joy and there’s sorrow and they define each other.

YAP: Your final section is called “Seasoned with Humor.” How are you able to find humor within the trials of getting older?

I think my Aunt Peggy, who was a big influence in my life, was the one with the best sense of humor. . . . I went through a period of life where I was a sad person and being around my aunt was always a big help. Even when things were really hard, she had a sense of humor. At one point for instance, she fell and broke her back in her 90s, so she had to be in her room for a long time on a hospital bed. She asked if they could push her hospital bed around so she could look out the window because there was a squirrel feeder. There was one squirrel that would do all of this crazy stuff, and she would sit there and laugh—with a broken back. She was no sissy.

Also, with aging, I am lightening up. I don’t know exactly why. Because when you’re young and busy with a career and having children—there’s a lot that makes you go like this *Ellen furrows her brow and points to the space between her eyebrows* and it makes you get this crease. [With age] it seems more possible to just relax in front of something that is difficult. They say that things don’t hurt so much when you relax. It is when you tense that you make all your nerves jangle and relaxing feels better.

YAP: How long have you been writing?

I’ve been writing various things for a long time. I was an editor, and I wrote some [articles] for the magazine I was working for which was Parabola Magazine. I only started writing poetry a little more than a year ago. I took a memoir class and started to privately publish for my children the story of my life and their life. My [memoir] teacher was really good, and I found out that she was going to be teaching a poetry class at the local OLLI Institute—the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (it’s a non-for profit that makes it possible to have classes for senior citizens at very little cost). Anyway, [my teacher] was going to give a poetry class so I thought well, let me try writing poetry. [My teacher] was very encouraging and we became very good friends. Eventually, one thing led to another and she actually proofread this manuscript for me. Because of the classes, I’ve [joined] some writers groups mostly for people like me—not so young. It’s been very inspiring. I love it.

YAP: What does having your poems published for others to read mean to you?

It’s a real shot in the arm. I just started writing poetry and already to have something that other people can read; I love it. It really inspires me to keep on going and keep on writing.

YAP: What was the inspiration behind the cover with three pencils?

I was just fooling around with my camera, and I [visualized] pictures of pencils. I got different pencils and lined them up in different ways. And then, [Kapua Iao, Editor-in-Chief] got [Yellow Arrow’s Creative Director, Alexa Laharty] to draw it and I really loved it. It was just a little visual moment that I was having with my pencils and my camera—I was just doodling around. I’m so glad [they] wanted to run with that idea.

YAP: Why did you decide to publish your work with YAP?

Because you accepted me! I sent it out to lots of different places and didn’t get any other offers. I’m thrilled. I also noticed that [Yellow Arrow had] lots of workshops and events so I’m hoping that once we are allowed to go out and meet people that I would love to find some writing groups!

*****

Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling. Thank you Ellen and Siobhan for such an insightful conversation. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.

Kapua Iao 3/9/21 Kapua Iao 3/9/21

Glancing Back in Order to Move Forward: Where Women Stand in the Publishing World

By Siobhan McKenna, written February 2021

Throughout most of history, publishing was known as a gentlemen’s career where women served as secretaries, published under a pseudonym, or whose skills were doubted when they succeeded at holding high-ranking positions. Elizabeth Timothy has come to be known as one of the first woman publishers in America when in 1738 she inherited the South Carolina Gazette after her husband died. She continued to publish the Charleston-based newspaper under her 13-year-old son’s name as publishing as a woman was far from accepted in the pre-Revolutionary war era (1).

In addition to Timothy, Cornelia Walter was an early female publisher who became the editor of the Boston Transcript. Walter is most notably recognized for her reporting on a Philadelphia race riot that left many black citizens injured and homeless on August 3, 1842. When Walter left the newspaper in 1847 (because she was getting married), the newspaper’s owners printed that “the experiment of placing a lady as the responsible editor of a paper was a new and doubtful one . . . and her victory the more brilliant” (1).

By 1870, white women in publishing recognized growing gender discrimination against them and organized their own trade union in order to fight for better wages, as they were paid a third of a man’s salary (1). Nevertheless, while white women banded together, African American women were left out of the union but contributed to their own segregated journals. Ida B. Wells, an African American editor and journalist, wrote fiercely among a cohort of male colleagues. Throughout the late 1800s, Wells was the editor of several prominent newspapers with much of her work focusing on antilynching activism. In 1893, she coauthored an antilynching pamphlet with Frederick Douglass (2).

Today Timothy, Walter, and Wells would be surprised to learn that the world of publishing has become a female-dominated field albeit still white. A 2019 study conducted by Lee & Low Books reported that the industry is 74% cis-women and 76% white (3). This past summer two giants in the industry made strides to diversify their workforce by naming a woman of color as their senior vice president and publisher: Dana Canedy for Simon & Shuster and Lisa Lucas for Pantheon and Schocken Books, respectively.

The announcements of Canedy’s and Lucas’ positions came after a heavy few weeks, with the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor among other innocent Black lives as well as a resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. And yet, it is appalling that in interviews regarding her new position Canedy had to resolutely defend that her qualifications go beyond being Black. In talking about the events leading up to her appointment, Canedy said that Jonathan Karp, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster “should get credit for the fact that in an era of racial reckoning, when suddenly everybody is looking for people of color and women to add to their boards and to bring in to their companies—he started talking to me two years ago. . . . I wouldn’t be taking this job if I thought he just wanted a Black publisher” (4).

Yet, in order for more women of color to be represented in the publishing industry, diversifying the workforce cannot only occur at the executive level. Publishing houses will have to forgo the traditional ways of hiring from within and recruit BIPOC staff from outside current staff members because only when many, smaller-scale presses begin to evaluate their own companies can systemic change occur. It is the job of independent publishers—like our own Yellow Arrow Publishing—to take the initiative to include BIPOC voices within our company and its publications.

Over the summer, Yellow Arrow recommitted itself to examining how to include female-identifying voices of color and to promoting already established literary spaces such as Zora’s Den, which promotes Black women writers in the Baltimore area. Yellow Arrow, as a fierce woman-identifying platform, has the power to elevate the voices of color that have for far too long been underrepresented in society and in the publishing community. As a publishing company with a long-standing mission to listen to the beating heart behind every woman’s story, we can only move forward after internalizing the words of the writer and civil rights activist, Audre Lorde, who stated, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is anyone of you” (5).

Siobhan McKenna is a middle child and a lover of bikepacking and practicing yoga. She enjoys writing essays, poetry, and long-winded letters to friends. For the past nine years Siobhan has lived in the charming city of Baltimore but beginning in the spring (now!) she will start work as an ICU travel nurse—moving to a different city every three months to work, write, and explore all that this crazy, broken, and beautiful country holds. You can follow her on Instagram @sio_han.

******

Sources:

(1) “Women in Publishing.” History of American Women. https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2013/05/women-in-publishing.html

(2) McMurry, Linda. “Wells-Barnett, Ida Bell.” American National Biography, Feb 2000. https://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-1500924

(3) “Where is the Diversity in Publishing? The 2019 Diversity Baseline Survey Results.” Lee & Low Books, 28 Jan 2020. https://blog.leeandlow.com/2020/01/28/2019diversitybaselinesurvey/

(4) Harris, Elizabeth. “Simon & Schuster Names Dana Canedy New Publisher.” The New York Times, 17 Nov 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/books/dana-canedy-named-simon-schuster-publisher.html

(5) “(1981) Audre Lorde, ‘The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism.’” BlackPast.org. 12 Aug 2012. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1981-audre-lorde-uses-anger-women-responding-racism/

Kapua Iao 3/2/21 Kapua Iao 3/2/21

Meet a Board Member: Jennifer N. Shannon

We at Yellow Arrow Publishing are thrilled to introduce one of our newest board and staff members, Jennifer N. Shannon! She has joined the Yellow Arrow family as our Marketing Director. Jennifer has written and published three books and has had short stories and poems published in several literary magazines such as Deep South, The Auburn Avenue, and an essay forthcoming in North Dakota Quarterly. Jennifer’s work is also being featured in the Maryland State Arts Council 2021 Virtual Exhibition titled Identity.

Our Grants Manager, Sara Palmer, asked Jennifer a few questions to introduce her to the rest of our community. You can also find a video of Jennifer on the Yellow Arrow Facebook page.

YAP: How did you get involved with Yellow Arrow?

I was introduced to Yellow Arrow by someone at the Maryland State Arts Council. I wanted to get more involved in the Baltimore writing community and I was able to speak with Gina Strauss, who is currently on the Yellow Arrow board. Our conversation was very honest and refreshing, and I felt that the mission and values of Yellow Arrow aligned well with my own. It’s been fun so far and I look forward to learning a ton while using my past experiences to help Yellow Arrow move forward.

YAP: What are you working on currently?

Well . . . the big thing is a novel. I’ve been working on this novel for almost two years now, but it’s moving along well, and I’m so excited about the story I’m telling. It’s set in Baltimore during the 1940s and explores the lives of Black women who are living and working in a brothel. I’m also writing essays and poems. I’m in two writers groups which keep me consistent and I’m always looking for opportunities to submit my work. I write often even if it’s not something that ever makes it to a broader audience. I love exploring photography and when the mood hits, I draw and paint.

YAP: Who is your favorite writer and why?

Toni Morrison is my favorite because her book The Bluest Eye changed my life. I read it in a Women’s Study Class at the University of South Carolina my freshman year in college. Our analysis of the book and everything it symbolized spoke to me in a way that was indescribable. That book gave me the confidence to write exactly what I felt, how I felt it. It also showed me the power of words and the complexity of characters. I am eternally grateful for Toni Morrison and other writers who I admire such as Gloria Naylor, Zora Neale Hurston, and Lucille Clifton (just to name a few).

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

That’s a good question. More and more I’ve been inspired by other writers. Listening to the perspectives, styles, and brilliance of my fellow poets, essayists, and fiction writers has been amazing. I am in awe of beautiful writing. But my mom is probably the person who has inspired and supported me most. I mean, all of my family and friends have a belief in me that I sometimes haven’t had in myself, but my mom has always been my number one fan. She probably unknowingly put it in my mind to write because she was a great writer and talked about writing in a way that intrigued me. She always has and still does read all of my work, she gives me feedback, and she constantly encourages me. She’s the best! I love you Mom!

YAP: What about your writing do you think is most unique?

I guess the most unique thing would be my dialogue. Mainly because I write as I hear it or would say it. The dialect I use is southern since I’m originally from South Carolina.

YAP: What advice do you have for new writers?

Keep writing—you'll only get better. Get involved with critique groups. Submit your work. Don’t let rejection discourage you, it happens to all of us. And the only reason to write is because you love it. As Whoopi Goldberg said in Sister Act 2: “If when you wake up in the morning all you want to do is sing, then girl you s’posed to be a singer.” Same goes for writing . . .

Visit Jennifer’s website, www.jennifernshannon.com, and follow her @writerjns on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

*****

We are so fortunate to have Jennifer join our team and look forward to working with her and reading her work. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. Thank you for supporting independent publishing.

Kapua Iao 3/1/21 Kapua Iao 3/1/21

Yellow Arrow Journal Submissions are Now Open!

Yellow Arrow Publishing is excited to announce that submissions for our next issue of Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. VI, No.1 (spring 2021) are open March 1–31 addressing the topic of Cultural Resurrections: the act of bringing a culture back from extinction or near extinction.

For too long history has been written by victors, resulting in a narrative absent of the tales of colonized cultures. If by ink and paper an entire people can be erased, then by ink and paper they can be resurrected. This issue’s theme will be:

Renascence

reviving something that was once dormant

How does your culture shape your personal identity? What part of your culture has been lost, or nearly lost? How was it lost? Why?
How have cultural absences affected your life? Strengthened it? Made it more difficult? What do you wish you had learned in school about your cultural identity?
What parts of your personal identity have been awakened/reawakened by your cultural identity? How?

Share the lost stories of your culture, write your histories back into existence. EMERGE.

Yellow Arrow Journal is looking for creative nonfiction, poetry, and cover art submissions by writers/artists that identify as women, on the theme of Renascence. 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 2021.

We would also like to welcome our first guest editor for Yellow Arrow Journal: Taína, a proud Higuayagua Taíno writer on a mission to reclaim her indigenous Taíno culture and write her people back into existence with the same tools colonizers used to erase them. Taína was one of our incredible Yellow Arrow Journal RESILIENCE writers as well as one of our 2021 Pushcart Prize nominees. Connect with her at tainawrites.com or on Instagram @tainaconcurls. You can also learn more about Taína from her recent Yellow Arrow blog post on rewriting traditions.

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. 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.

You can be a part of this mission and amazing experience by submitting to Yellow Arrow Journal, joining our virtual poetry workshop, volunteering, and/or donating today. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram to learn more about future publishing and workshop opportunities. Publications are available at our bookstore, on Amazon, or from most distributors.

*****

Kapua Iao 2/23/21 Kapua Iao 2/23/21

Discovering the Publication World Through Towson University

By Brenna Ebner

The internship program at Towson University has helped me, many other graduates, and current students find not only experience in the field we plan to enter but help in building our resumes in interesting and fulfilling ways. This speaks to the many options and great freedom given to students who participate in the program. For example, many internships can take you abroad if you choose to go that route, and the final report for English majors, specifically, can be a mix of creativity and data on a topic of your choice rather than just a tedious research paper. All this goes to show that Towson wants their students to enjoy their experience while keeping an emphasis on learning and growing academically and professionally. Towson welcomes these opportunities for a student to not only help their college career but beyond as well, as they enter the full-time working world.

Some majors require you to participate in an internship while others may let you substitute an internship for a capstone course—an option I found offered to me as an English major. I took advantage of the opportunity and used my internship time to finish up my last year and semester as Editor-in-Chief of Towson’s literary magazine, Grub Street, in 2020. Constant guidance was offered to me by the Grub Street faculty advisor, Jeannie Vanasco, as well by my internship coordinator, Dr. Zosha Stuckey. This is often how Towson students find their ways to presses and publishers like Yellow Arrow Publishing! Stuckey and many other faculty members always go above and beyond to get students in touch with possible employers they know that could help during or after our college careers.

For English majors interested in working in the Baltimore area specifically, advisors have found students internships with Yellow Arrow, Mason Jar Press, BrickHouse Books, Baltimore Review, Baltimore Magazine, and Bancroft Press. While I spent my official internship with Grub Street, the unofficial internships I participated in after graduation with Yellow Arrow Publishing and Mason Jar Press also helped me pursue my career and brought me closer to my goals. Everyone has been so welcoming and helpful to get me started down my career path and gain knowledge about the editing field. My internship with Grub Street was also a significant jumping-off point; the experience I gathered there easily translated over to my future work. With all of them combined, I’ve learned so much about not only the editing process but the importance of independent publishers and presses and how they provide support and community to up-and-coming authors. It’s given me direction, opportunity, and motivation to become part of the editing and publishing process after such engaging experiences with them. I greatly appreciate being welcomed so warmly, supported so generously, and guided so carefully by Towson and the internships as I get started toward my new goal.

Brenna Ebner is a recent Towson University graduate and Editor-in-Chief of Grub Street Literary Magazine, volume 69. She has interned at both Mason Jar Press and Yellow Arrow Publishing and is looking forward to continuing to grow as an editor and establish herself in the publishing world.

******

Kapua Iao 2/16/21 Kapua Iao 2/16/21

Rewriting Tradition

Yellow Arrow Publishing is excited to announce our first guest editor for Yellow Arrow Journal, Taína, who will be overseeing the creation of our Vol. VI, No. I issue on cultural resurrections. Taína is a proud Higuayagua Taíno writer on a mission to reclaim her indigenous Taíno culture and write her people back into existence with the same tools colonizers used to erase them. Connect with her at www.tainawrites.com or on Instagram @tainaconcurls.

Please follow us on Facebook and Instagram for the theme announcement at the end of this month. Below, you can read Taína’s perspectives on rewriting traditions.

By Taína

Originally written November 2020, updated February 2021

Our first Thanksgiving in our new home was in 2019, down the block from my brother. My family of four’s geographical shift tipped the family balance 5:2 in Baltimore’s favor, beginning what we thought would be a new tradition of having my parents over for Thanksgiving at our house. This year (2020) only proved us partly wrong.

For most of us, 2020 has been downright dystopic. A pandemic has taken over 400,000 Americans and has rewritten every aspect of life down to our most time-honored traditions. Bridal gowns are now designed with coordinating face masks. Birthday songs are sung through Zoom. Hugging now expresses a deeper intimacy, while avoidance has become a love language. Halloween was hollow and Thanksgiving thinner than ever, all to the tune of being gaslighted by those who insisted their right to celebrate supersedes life itself.

If I’m being honest, I’ve never really liked Thanksgiving. It’s always been more of a day built on resentment than gratitude. As a child, before I knew the Pilgrim and Indian story was a fabrication, I resented the long boring day of tortuous aromas that would fill me up long before they were tasted, so I could never eat as much as I wanted. As a teenager, I resented Mount Saint Dishmore waiting to be handwashed after the meal. These resentments were only aggravated when I discovered the first Thanksgiving was really a post-victory celebration of the massacre of 700 Pequots right in the middle of their Green Corn Festival. The year I found out about how Lincoln decreed the first official Thanksgiving should be scheduled one month to the day before the anniversary of the hanging of 38 Dakota warriors—the largest one-day mass execution in American history, I skipped it altogether.

I chose a man whose indifference toward the day was so synchronous with mine, he agreed to get married on Thanksgiving. We intended to rebrand it all together and secure a perpetual excused absence from having to celebrate at all, though we missed the fine print that said the pass didn’t apply to young children missing their parents on a day most people spend with their families.

As a person who has experienced the extreme erasure of being forced in school to memorize the names of the ships, but never once being taught the name of the people those ships carried into slavery (except that Columbus accidentally called them “Indians” and it stuck), despite being named after those people, I couldn’t understand why my family wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving at all. Along with the knowledge that Indigenous people don’t celebrate anything with gluttony and food waste, let alone following it up with a hunger game of shopping on Black Friday, I have no shortage of reasons to despise this day. So the irony was not lost on me, when last year, after a lifetime of resisting and resenting this day, the torch was passed on, and to me—the most unlikely Thanksgiving host in our family.

My reaction was equally ironic. I was just as surprised as anyone else to discover myself researching how to fold cloth napkins into pumpkin shapes and cooking multiple dishes, but the realization that the days of default gathering at my childhood home were over, made me eager to impress my parents. Yes, I wanted to reassure them we would thrive here, so close to my brother, in our new city, but it was more than that. I wanted to let them see that they had shown me how to keep the torch lit.

I found myself wishing my grandmother could see her daughter relaxing with mulled wine, instead of her usual solo marathon of cooking, while her children and grandchildren collaborated to serve her. I imagined the room filling with my ancestors. I could almost hear the generations of grandmothers proudly boasting to one another, “She gets that from me.” My brother, by far the most superior meat smith in the family, made the Thanksgiving turkey and the pernil; my mother brought her arroz con gandules all the way from New Jersey. There was stuffing and cranberry sauce, potatoes, and desserts. I’d even incorporated an Indigenous dish. I couldn’t get over how proud my ancestors must have felt watching us, and all at once, realization struck. The story they might have told us about this day was a lie, but all of the sufferings my ancestors endured was the origin story of the meal we were sharing. Just by gathering, we were writing the sequel. The one where the Indigenous return and thrive.

My 2020 table has not escaped estrangement. My parents are too high risk to travel, especially as out-of-state visitors. Still, I found myself surprisingly more grateful than I’ve ever been before. Despite the year’s trials, the torch is still burning and our story continues.

I am grateful that the empty spaces at my table are by choice and not by tragedy. My parents have already received the first dose of the vaccine, and I am grateful for the advancements in medical science without which we would be experiencing devastation at bubonic proportions. I am so excited by the promise of what reunions will feel like after such long separations, that the quiet winter holiday celebrations felt more precious than any of their predecessors.

I am grateful for the voices of the Indigenous who recently made themselves heard more loudly than ever. This next Congress will see more Native representatives than ever before in history, and there has even been an Indigenous appointment to our new Presidential Cabinet.

Most of all, I’m grateful to share this story in this space, because as a Taíno woman, I wasn’t even expected to exist, let alone write about it.

*****

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

Kapua Iao 2/9/21 Kapua Iao 2/9/21

Evoking Provocations from Patti Ross: A Conversation

Overwhelmed by the gentrification occurring from 2010 to 2013 in the areas around North Avenue and St. Paul Street in Baltimore, Maryland, Patti Ross recognized that the people from the neighborhood were being slighted by their own city. While the tenants preached their woes of displacement and fear of homelessness, Patti listened, wrote, and became an activist for their concerns in order to let them be heard. From this, St. Paul Street Provocations, Patti’s debut chapbook with Yellow Arrow Publishing, now available for PRESALE and ready for release in July 2021, was born.

Patti Ross graduated from Washington, D.C.’s Duke Ellington School for the Performing Arts and The American University. After graduation, several of her journalist pieces were published in the Washington Times and the Rural America newspapers. Retiring from a career in technology, Patti has rediscovered her love of writing and shares her voice as the spoken-word artist “little pi.” Her poems are published in the Pen In Hand Journal, PoetryXHunger website, and Oyster River Pages: Composite Dreams Issue, among others. You can find Patti at littlepisuniverse.com or on Facebook and Instagram.

A Yellow Arrow editorial associate, Bailey Drumm, recently interviewed Patti about her upcoming chapbook and what her home on St. Paul Street meant (and means) to her. You can also hear more about St. Paul Street Provocations and Patti tonight (February 9) at 7:00 p.m. with the Wilde Reading Series, also featuring Yellow Arrow’s very own Gwen Van Velsor.

YAP: What was the catalyst for the creation of St. Paul Street Provocations?

I am an advocate for the homeless and marginalized. I have long considered myself an advocate and am a member of the Poor People’s Campaign. I wanted some of those [people] that I met when I lived one block off North Avenue, in a somewhat blighted neighborhood, [I wanted their] voices to be heard, for them to be seen in some way—recognized. When I would chat with my homeless or economically and mentally challenged friends, they would all reveal a feeling of invisibility to society’s majority class.

YAP: What does Baltimore, especially St. Paul Street, mean to you?

Baltimore is my adopted city. Once I learned its history—I understood it better. I understood why there were streets that appear to be allies. I understood what Penn Ave and North Ave meant to the community. St. Paul Street and its community allowed me to rediscover and shape who I am. I often go back to the area and just sit and reflect. I can see evolution and the lack of progress at the same time. There is romance there for me.

YAP: This collection seems incredibly personal, genuine, and emotion-provoking. How would you describe the feeling of seeing the pieces put together in one place?

It is exciting and surrendering at the same time. The collection is very personal. Most of the poems were written out of experience—either my own sights or the stories of others.

YAP: Why ‘Provocations,’ specifically? What does that word mean to you in the context of the title?

[Provocations] is important in the title because the poems are about frustrations, irritations. The poems speak to injustices and the affronts that those who are marginalized deal with daily.

YAP: Along with writing, I hear you are part of the spoken-word community, sharing your voice as the spoken-word artist “little pi.” How did you originally get involved with the spoken-word community?

I just jumped in. I went to the high school of performing arts in D.C., so I have known about performance poetry for quite some time. However, when I moved to Baltimore, I was looking for a way to share my thoughts and I started attending open mics. I was too scared to read at the time—I think I let my [age], being much older than those on stage, create a lack of confidence. Once I moved back to Ellicott City, an area I had lived for over 15 years, I felt comfortable performing and reading in front of an audience. Root Studio owned by Karen Isailovic was my first stage, and they held an open mic every Friday, so I started there. Once I built up my confidence I started going to Red Emma’s and that is where I saw and communed with some phenomenal slam champions and spoken-word artists.

YAP: How has spoken word helped you creatively, therapeutically, etc.?

Creatively it has helped [me] to discover and define my public persona. I am clear on what I want to advocate for and who. I also see it as a path to advocate and remind society of those on the fringes. Therapeutically? I’m glad you asked this. I get so much joy out of not just presenting my work but listening and sharing the work of others. I believe in a higher power and the stars of the universe. I think much of what we do as individuals is kismet.

YAP: What would you consider to be the heart or heat of this chapbook?

It is all about recognition of what is happening in the streets or our cities and the things we choose to ignore. It is about a haunting that we need to rectify. For example, the poem “Indemnity,” or sometimes I call it “Football,” is all about remuneration. In that poem, the idea of a football game—played by men whose ancestors fought in the Civil War and by men whose ancestors were former slaves prior to that war—the lineage of one group can be easily dismissed. In “Ghosting” families of color have accepted permanent separation for hopes of heritable betterment, right? Slave families were forcibly separated for the betterment of the slave owner and here we have post-slavery families willingly separating themselves.

YAP: Was there any particular piece that was hard to tackle and get to its final form?

“History Month” was tough. I was trying to say a lot in that piece, and I had a hard time finding a way to get it all in without sound preachy. I also understand the need for the naming of the month, but I do not like it. I would prefer the history of this country be told correctly without the revisions. I had conversations with elders who understood what I was saying but did not agree that the recognition month should be eliminated.

YAP: What does the featured mural (on the cover) mean to you, and to this collection? Were there any particular emotions it evoked, or direction of words it inspired?

The mural is the creation of Jessie Unterhalter and Katey Truhn of jessie and katey; they are Baltimore-based muralists. They created the mural on the grounds of the dilapidated park across the street from my former apartment. (A side story is someone [once] planted rose bushes in the park and nurtured them until they grew beautiful blooms. I never saw anyone doing the work, but one day the roses were all in bloom and the park looked beautiful even with the trash and drug needles strewn between the grasses. The very next day, sometime in the early morning, when we woke up, the heads or blooms of all the bushes had been cut off and left on the ground. It was a sad and frightening sight.) I watched them daily create something beautiful out of something blighted. The mural is called “Walk the Line,” and in that neighborhood at that time, you very much had to walk a certain line. You had to be an insider. You had to know your way around. For me, the mural evoked a way out of whatever situation you [might] find yourself in.

YAP: Will you be including any other artwork of your own in the collection? If so, is it inspired by any particular poem or the collection as a whole?

I hope to have at least one piece of my artwork in the book and it is a bleeding or beating heart. In honor of George Perry Floyd, Jr.

YAP: Why did you choose Yellow Arrow to publish St. Paul Street Provocations?

I love the concept of a woman[-run] publishing company. As a feminist, I am always seeking opportunities to collaborate with like minds. I was elated when they decided to publish the book. I had been trying to figure out a home for the collection. In many ways, I had shifted in my writing, but the experiences still clung to me and I needed to find a place for the words to rest. I will never stop performing the poems until the injustices are corrected.

Something special though about [Yellow Arrow] is Ann Quinn—the poetry editor at [Yellow Arrow and] an elegant poet. I fell in love with a poem I heard her read from her book Final Deployment. The poem is called “Ma,” and it is about the ‘in between spaces’ the cracks, the voids where there is nothing. This resonated with me and my life on St. Paul Street. My apartment was in the front of the building on the first floor so I would sit in my very tall windows and watch people walk past and never look up. On the north side of North Avenue, was the beginning of Charles Village and daily, people were on a trek to get there—to Charles Village, not here, one block south of North Avenue. When I read Ann’s story of being a poetry ‘late bloomer,’ and I was even later than her (LOL), I thought perhaps [this] could be it. So, I sent the manuscript and prayed. I also loved the work that [Yellow Arrow] was doing in Highlandtown, creating [an] artistic community around writing. I regret I never made it to the house.

YAP: Though the chapbook is to be released in July, the prerelease coincides with tonight’s (February 9) Wilde Readings. Is there anything you would like to note in preparing for this event, especially given the current state of the world?

I think it is sad that [some of] these poems were written about a time roughly 10 years ago and, sadly, the [same] social justice points are still relevant today. We have made little progress in the way of providing for our sidelined brothers and sisters.

*****

Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling. Thank you Patti and Bailey for such an insightful conversation. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. If you are a journalist/writer/bookstagrammer and interested in writing a review of St. Paul Street Provocations or any of our other publications, please email editor@yellowarrowpublishing.com.

Kapua Iao 2/2/21 Kapua Iao 2/2/21

Emerge into the Light: Reflections on Yellow Arrow’s 2021 Yearly Value

“Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.” Helen Keller

By Brenna Ebner

Board and staff at Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to share with you our recently voted on, 2021 yearly value: EMERGE.

You may have several questions about what a yearly value is and why we feel EMERGE supports Yellow Arrow’s mission. As an organization, EMERGE embodies the hopes and plans we have for 2021, and is the next step in our journey after last year’s theme of REFUGE.

To us, a yearly value is another way to unify our organization. It should be a term or a phrase that helps form everything we do to uplift the voices of women writers, from publications we choose to publish, themes we choose for the journal as well as the authors that we accept, and workshops we schedule, to non-Yellow Arrow authors/organizations/events we promote. Everything.

REFUGE was chosen because it reflected the goal we set for 2020, to create a place, a shelter, for our organization and our authors. REFUGE was embodied by Yellow Arrow House, and while the physical dream did not last, we were able to find a REFUGE within our organization. And we survived. We EMERGED.

Looking back at our overall mission and goals as a publisher, we are reminded of the rigidity writers face as they work hard to put themselves on paper, how they are told to be a certain way and say certain things. While university courses, universal style guides, and other publishers tell writers what is right and wrong, we work to bend the norms, where finding one’s own way is acceptable and celebrated. We welcome the voices marginalized by old systems to step forward and EMERGE. And with this new value, we focus on and continue to maintain our mission to grow and develop as a publishing company.

In 2021, Yellow Arrow will continue to expand in many different ways, such as moving our presence more online with our blog posts or by broadening our communication and support of authors and staff. And we are thrilled to welcome new staff members and authors as we continue to grow and evolve. We hope to find more prosperity personally and as part of a larger community with the changing of the year and all the answers it brings to the uncertainty of 2020. This new year will be an opportunity for all of us to EMERGE after relying on the REFUGE we found in our friends, family, neighbors, and communities. After dealing with so much, from a pandemic to a global movement for racial justice, we are ready to no longer focus on finding sanctuary but becoming something more from it while still appreciating the role REFUGE played for us when we needed it.

And this is exactly what we mean by EMERGE. We look onward to what comes next with optimism and courage and invite others to do the same. We will move forward with new voices, perspectives, thoughts, and understandings with anyone who also is ready to rise. We hope to host new conversations about what has been overlooked or ignored and appreciate being able to see what we didn’t before. Hopefully what EMERGES with us this year will educate and enlighten each of us.

*****

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

You can support us as we EMERGE in a variety of ways: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook and Instagram, or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (info@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@DonateYAP), or US mail (PO Box 12119, Baltimore, MD 21281). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels is greatly appreciated.

Kapua Iao 1/26/21 Kapua Iao 1/26/21

Submitting Poetry: Better the Second Time Around

From January 2021

By Sara Palmer

As a childhood and teenage poet, I dreamed of becoming a “real” writer. But as a young adult, I was not a risk-taker. Writing as a hobby was safe; writing as a profession, terrifying. I wanted a secure career, not one where I would have to struggle to make ends meet. So, in college, I majored in psychology and went on to get my PhD. As a researcher and psychotherapist, I was able to explore from another angle what I loved most in literature—the complexities of human character. And I did plenty of writing, albeit mostly professional articles and books.

I continued writing poetry on the side, inspired by my clients’ lives, my own experiences, and my love of nature. While taking an adult education poetry class, I had my first how-to lesson in submitting to journals. This was back in the pre-Internet age. There were fewer journals, and the competition was fierce. Submissions had to be typed and mailed with a formal cover letter and a stamped, self-addressed envelope (SSAE), for the return of poems not chosen for publication. Serious submitters kept stacks of envelopes addressed to multiple journals, with the cover letters and SSAEs already tucked inside; as each freshly rejected submission was returned, they would slip the poems into the next envelope in the stack and send it off again.

I lasted about a year at this game before buckling under the deluge of rejections. The silence of editors pushed my anxiety through the roof—there was no way to tell if my poems were simply not a good fit for a particular journal, or if they were total trash. With no external input, my mind raced around a groove of self-doubt and self-criticism, quashing my creativity. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I put away my envelopes and called it quits.

I didn’t take another poetry class for many years, but I never stopped writing. I charmed my friends and family with personalized rhyming poems, which were read aloud at parties to oohs and ahs and treasured by their recipients. And I wrote “serious” poems about love, loss, nature, family, and illness, which were read aloud once to my husband or a close friend, then shoved into a file cabinet, never to be seen again.

But in recent years, after retiring from my psychology career, I’ve reinvested myself in my poetry. I’ve discovered some forgotten gems in my neglected file cabinet, dusted them off and polished them up. And I’ve written many new ones. I’ve taken poetry classes, joined a writers’ group, and participated in a poetry reading. Through these experiences I’ve learned that my poems can stimulate memories, elicit emotions, and offer novel viewpoints—they are effective and worthy. Am I Emily Dickinson? No way. Sylvia Plath? Not hardly. But that’s OK, because as a 60-something, still-emerging poet, I no longer want to let perfection stand in the way of goodness—my goodness. And so, many years after quitting the submissions game, I’ve picked up my virtual envelopes and started over.

In my youth, I measured success by the kudos I received from experts and authority figures. Acceptance by an editor was as—or maybe more—important to me than whether ordinary readers would read and enjoy my work. Self-publishing was not an option—though I knew of remarkable self-published chapbooks, deep down in my approval-seeking soul, I saw this as a last resort for losers. Looking back, I’m ashamed of my addiction to external approval. I’m ashamed of my cowardice, letting fears of rejection keep me from submitting my work. Thankfully, I’ve matured now, and grown a tougher hide. I don’t worry about the judgment of editors. I don’t agonize over whether my poetry meets an elusive standard of artistic worth. My goals are simply to hone my craft, try my best, and get my poems out into the world for people to hear and read. And that’s incredibly liberating.

So, how do I do it? Well, electronic submission has simplified the process these days, but the number of journals is overwhelming. Since my primary goal is to get my poems out to readers, I’ve devised a simple starter strategy: find journals with an issue theme (I use Duotrope’s calendar for this), find poems in my collection (or write new ones) that fit the theme, edit or rework as needed, and hit submit! Then sit back, relax, and wait for the rejections to roll in!

Over the past year, I’ve submitted 19 poems to 11 journals and poetry contests. I’ve had 12 rejections and one publication—and six poems are still out for review. The joy of seeing one of my poems printed in a journal was indescribable. As for the rejections—let’s call them nonacceptances—I felt no pain. I’ve adjusted my expectations and changed my labels. I know that at most journals, most of the time, it’s most likely that the editors will not accept my poems. But this is not the same as rejecting them. And it’s certainly not the same as rejecting me.

Now I imagine the editor like the judge in a baking contest. She tastes hundreds of treats; each is unique, all are sweet. She can only give a prize to the one most pleasing to her palate. I submit poems of many flavors and trust that a few will be so delicious to the taster that she’ll grant them a place on her table. My inbox will no doubt remain filled with rejected confections. But I will be filled with the sweetness of (self-)acceptance, with the joy of sharing my work, and with pride in myself for sticking with it the second time around.

Sara Palmer wrote her first poem in second grade, and since then, poetry has been her vehicle for self-expression, healing, and enjoyment. During her career as a psychologist, Sara specialized in emotional and social aspects of disability, chronic illness, and caregiving. She published articles and chapters for professionals and several books for patients and families, most recently Living with HHT: Understanding and Managing Your Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia (2017). Now retired from psychology, she devotes more time to creative writing and volunteer work. Sara is on the Boards of Cure HHT and Yellow Arrow Publishing. She lives in Baltimore with her husband and dog and enjoys close ties with her adult children, two young grandchildren, and numerous friends.

******

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

Kapua Iao 1/19/21 Kapua Iao 1/19/21

An Expedition into the Nature of Our Hearts

Read Siobhan McKenna’s book review of World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, published in Yellow Arrow Journal’s Vol. V, No. 3 (Re)Formation issue (fall 2020). Information about where to find World of Wonders and (Re)Formation is below.

Catalpa trees or catalpa speciosa can grow to be almost 60 ft tall, have “foot-long leaves,” and “can give two brown girls in western Kansas a green umbrella from the sun.” So begins Aimee Nezhukumatathil in the first essay of World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments. This book of 28 lyrical essays weaves together fascinating tidbits about species in our natural world with Nezhukumatathil’s own journey of finding self-acceptance and the meaning of living in a country where being ‘other’ must be navigated on a daily basis. Through the essays, characteristics found within nature reflect Nezhukumatathil’s own qualities as she moves through everyday life.

In her included essays—most titled after a natural wonder and its scientific name—Nezhukumatathil acts as the narrator of a National Geographic documentary. As our guide, she begins in the landscape of her youth where she realized that growing up with a Filipina mother and Indian father set her apart from other children and would color nearly every aspect of her life in the years to come. From there, she whisks the reader from the sweet fields of love as she knew her husband was the one when he “didn’t blanch” at her adoration for the corpse flower (whose scent is reminiscent of “a used diaper pail left out in the late August sun” (70)) to the depths of motherhood where in swimming with a whale shark, she realized that she was “unprepared to submit [herself] so completely to nature” (89) with the implications of the worst occurring: a motherless son.

Nezhukumatathil, an author of four other collections of poetry, spellbinds the reader with her sensory imagery. She compares the petals of a touch-me-not to something that “look[s] as if someone crossed a My Little Pony doll with a tiny firework” (25) and envelops the reader in the smell of a monsoon: like the “wind off the wings of an ecstatic teeny bat” mixed with “banana leaves drooping low,” and “clouds whirring so fast across the sky” (58–59). In fact, every essay is saturated in lush prose that transports the reader alongside Nezhukumatathil as she is slowly sipping a dragon fruit cocktail in “Mississippi when the air outside is like a napping dragon’s exhalations” (115).

But the beauty found in her lyricism does not detract from the gravitas of the messages that underlie her essays. As a daughter of immigrant parents, Nezhukumatathil calls us to be better to one another when faced with diversity and to not succumb to tropes where racism can be chalked up as a sign of older times or the ignorance of children.

In her essay “Monodon monoceros,” she speaks of channeling the narwhal’s preference for swimming through “chunky ice rather than open seas” (35–36) when a boy on her school bus “flipped his eyelids inside out” (38) after she explained to him that her mom was in fact Filipino and not Chinese. And in “Ambystoma mexicanum,” she presents that remembering the smile of an axolotl (thin and tough) “can help you smile as an adult even if someone on your tenure committee puts his palms together as if in prayer every time he sees you off-campus, and does a quick, short bow, and calls out, Namaste!” (45) despite telling him repeatedly that she’s Methodist. Nezhukumatathil demands that we alter what we teach our children about those different from ourselves and how we internalize these differences as adults. By illustrating these cringeworthy and far too common microaggressions, she cries for us to be curious, not assumptive about the questions to which we do not know the answers.

Yet, instead of seeking pity, Nezhukumatathil burns with a firm resolve to find home wherever her feet seep into the soil by calling on the natural world around her. Similar to a red-spotted newt, which takes time “wandering the forest floor before it decides which pond to call home” (139), Nezhukumatathil moved from places such as Arizona, Iowa, and Western New York, before settling in Mississippi with her husband. And although her move from Western New York was precipitated after she became weary “of acquaintances at the post office asking about ‘my people,’” she wonders what would have happened if she saw a red-spotted newt in the midst of a bleak New York winter “skittering under the surface of the ice” (142) as they often do. Like the perseverant newt, Nezhukumatathil thinks she might have stayed, calling to mind that “all this time, my immigrant parents had been preparing me to find solace in multiple terrains and hoping to create a feeling of home wherever I needed to be in this country” (143).

Nezhukumatathil’s disposition toward finding goodness in the face of adversity and using the natural world as a guiding light is what ultimately defines her work and seems especially timely in light of our country’s current social and ecological climate. To me, Nezhukumatathil’s essays serve as a call to action as unmatched wildfires continue to ravage the west coast and racial discrimination is brought to the front of a long-overdue national conversation. Her skillful synthesis of these intense topics into short digestible anecdotes—while still channeling hope—is the precise writing we need right now for us to feel stirred to work toward the daunting tasks of preserving our earth and dismantling racial injustice in our country.

As the compilation winds down, Nezhukumatathil introduces the reader to a Casuarius casuarius or southern cassowary. These flightless birds are native to New Guinea and Australia and are relied upon to preserve biodiversity as a keystone species. Most interestingly, Nezhukumatathil teaches us, in her colorful, rhythmic prose, cassowaries have a call that can’t be heard by humans, but only felt—a “rumble” (148) deep in our bones. She ponders on this feeling: “suppose that boom shaking in our body can be a physical reminder that we are all connected” (149). This musing echoes again and again as the reader encounters each creature and sees a reflection of themselves staring back. Because, Nezhukumatathil warns, in order to reform how we commune with human beings—nature—we must remember that all that is precious in our world will be lost if we do not slow down and feel the vibrations of the earth; feel the beat of each other’s hearts.

Paperback and pdf copies of (Re)Formation are available in the Yellow Arrow bookstore or through most online bookstores. Book of Wonders was published by Milkweed Editions (2020; 184 pages). For more information, visit milkweed.org/book/world-of-wonders.

Siobhan McKenna is a middle child and a lover of bike-packing and practicing yoga. She enjoys writing essays, poetry, and long-winded letters to friends. For the past nine years Siobhan has lived in the charming city of Baltimore, but beginning in the spring she will start work as an ICU travel nurse—moving to a different city every three months to work, write, and explore all that this crazy, broken, and beautiful country holds. You can follow her on Instagram @sio_han.

******

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

Kapua Iao 1/12/21 Kapua Iao 1/12/21

Allow Women to Be Strong

By Linda M. Crate

I happen to deeply love the Avatar series. I started by watching Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. What I’ve noticed, however, is that some of those in the fandom are really sexist. They call Korra weak and they point out all of her flaws while giving male characters the benefit of the doubt, excusing their bad behavior.

Korra is a girl who is powerful and faces not only tough battles against tough adversaries but she has to fight against PTSD, depression, and other traumas. Yet she does so. She thinks it is weak to ask for help (which is honestly a trait of hers that I relate to) despite having friends that are willing and able to help her. She learns, in the end, to lean on her friends for strength, and becomes even stronger for it.

It is rather disheartening to me that women, strong women, are often seen as weak or hated simply because they are not men. People act as if we’re not all flawed, imperfect beings trying to live our best lives. They will try to pick away at our strength and our power because the fact that we can still go on despite all the situations in life that try to break us is terrifying to them.

I’ve experienced this as a woman writer—I sometimes am not taken seriously because of the subject matter I write about. When I do write about serious or heavy topics in some poems and about love in other ones, the love poems are sometimes the ones that are picked up.

I once wrote about the man who attempted to assault me, only to have a male editor tell me that it made him feel nothing. I cannot tell you how angry that made me—like the suffering of another person doesn’t make you feel anything? The editor then proceeded to tell me to send him more writing when I could write well. If that’s not insult to injury, I don’t know what it is.

Women aren’t all whimsical and romantic creatures that can only write about sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes talking about the dark things that have happened to me actually helps heal me, and strong people need places where they can be vulnerable. In society, I think this is a huge problem. Emotions are seen as weaknesses. They are not. Women should be able to express themselves, men should be able to express themselves; we should all be respected for the things that we feel. I feel like people let men publish things that are just mediocre or don’t make me feel anything, but a woman sometimes is expected to be completely flawless and exquisite to even get noticed as a writer.

Women should be able to write about the things that they want to write about and still be respected.

I want to write about things other than love because love isn’t the only thing I’ve experienced in life.

We deserve to be seen as something other than lovers. Women deserve to be seen for our strength, our fight, our ferocity, and our ability to stand tall despite everything that tried to break us.

Women are strong, they are powerful, and our voices deserve to be heard no matter what we’re talking about. We need to stop discriminating against people based on their gender. We all have talents and abilities that can be strengthened and become better with time, and we all deserve that chance.

I am not weak because I am a woman, but you might be weak if you believe someone is weak for being a woman.

Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian born in Pittsburgh but raised in Conneautville. Her work has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, both online and in print. She is the author of six poetry chapbooks, the latest two which are the samurai (October 2020) and More Than Bone Music (March 2019). She also is the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (June 2018) and two micropoetry collections. Recently, she has published two full-length poetry collections, Vampire Daughter (February 2020) and The Sweetest Blood (February 2020). Follow her on Facebook, Instagram @authorlindamcrate, or Twitter @thysilverdoe.

*****

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

Kapua Iao 1/5/21 Kapua Iao 1/5/21

Rejection\Acceptance

By Courtney Essary Messenbaugh

Originally written November 2020

This is not a story about 2020 and its discontents; at least not in the way we’re all so accustomed at this point. However, it does start in January of 2020, when I wrote down the following goal: I would submit at least three poems a month to literary publications. Small, but achievable, exactly how I like my goals.

Prior to that moment, I’d spent years jotting down disheveled words in scattered notebooks, hoping they’d someday morph into complete literary pieces that sang. I had taken one formal poetry class and being a writer had long been an aspiration that I dared not even utter because it involved risk and possible, even probable, failure. My life had theretofore been the result of a series of actions based on what I felt was expected of me and what would provide income and consistency. I had gotten a good education and followed a path of sensibility and safety, but had never taken the time to think about what really made me tick or what would truly sustain me.

Adulthood has a knack for kidnapping dreams sometimes and I had let it take off with several of mine. But, as I inched toward middle age, I began to contemplate the value of my time and knew that I needed to make some changes. I had spent much of my adult life with Stockholm syndrome, entranced by the gleam of superficial expectations and status, but never fulfilled, and knew it was time to try to rescue my dreams that still lingered.

Writing was scary because it was new. I was unproven, a total novice. Comfort and perceived expertise were not crutches on which I could rely. It was humbling and incredibly uncomfortable, but I began to reject the notion that failure was not an option. Failure was exactly the option I needed to start breaking free of the captors that had held me hostage for so long. I decided to reject my old way of looking at the world and start writing. In this sense, my writing was born of rejection.

Although the rejection of my own stale worldview felt like a triumphant way to leap into a writing career, the rejection of my actual writing was something altogether different. As I began to submit poems, I became intimately involved with this other sort of rejection. My poetry—those carefully honed pieces of me that I had put onto the page—were being denied left and right. For example, I’ve so far submitted a total of 94 poems this year and received exactly two acceptances. That’s about a 98% rejection rate. If I were in school, I’d have an A+ in Rejection.

Initially, all of this rejection felt personal. It felt like a referendum on the validity of my innermost thoughts and ideas. It even felt like a referendum on who I am as a person. It roused that lifelong voice that’s always casually simmering with “Am I enough? Am I good enough?” and turned it into a loud and consistent chorus. That voice really starts to bellow when I read other poets’ work. There are some poets writing today whose work is miraculous, whose work I will never match.

And that’s OK. The more I read of them, the more I want to create.

As time has gone on this year (and my goodness, time has gone on and on and on!), I have begun to meet my rejections with acceptance. The very thing I want—external acceptance—is the very thing I need to internally embrace. Now, all of these rejected poems later, I remember the buoyancy of the two acceptances and even have held on to several of the more personal and kind rejections. I’m living a duality of rejections: the kind it took for me to start writing and the kind I get about my writing.

As I move into this rejection\acceptance mindset, I have come to rely on two virtues: patience + persistence. Both have turned out to be quite useful in 2020 (for all kinds of reasons, you might relate . . .), and I know I will need them just as much, maybe even more, in 2021. I recently walked away from the safe, income-giving job I had been clinging to for the past 13 years and am going to throw more of myself and my time into writing this new year. I’m terrified. But I’m open. Rejection will be the proof that I’m trying. Persistence will be the way I tell myself to keep writing, keep rewriting, keep reading, keep learning, keep submitting, keep expanding. Persistence will be the muscle memory that every rejection is a tiny step toward possibility.

Not getting rejections, would mean that I’m not trying. And if I’m not trying, then there doesn’t seem to be much point of anything. Trying is enough. I am enough. And some days, I’m even starting to believe that.

Courtney Essary Messenbaugh currently lives in Colorado and delights in the blanket of neon blue sky there. Her work has appeared in the Yellow Arrow Journal and FERAL: A Journal of Poetry and Art. You can find her on Instagram @courtneyessary and Twitter @courtney_essary.

*****

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

Kapua Iao 12/22/20 Kapua Iao 12/22/20

The Light is on its Way: A Thank You to Family and Friends

Dear supporters, authors, readers, and staff,

We began the year with the theme of RESILIENCE for Yellow Arrow Journal. Little did we know at that time how important the quality of resilience would be to all of us this year. The last two issues of Yellow Arrow Journal—HOME and (Re)Formation—were also timely, as well as cathartic, for our staff. And we hope each issue, each piece of writing, provides the same sense of hope to our supporters, authors, and readers, now and in the future. This year has pushed us to accept change and work even harder to ensure that women writers are heard and valued. With change comes growth and with growth comes a new version of the self. As Bailey Drumm points out in her review of Michelle Obama’s Becoming in (Re)Formation, “You must own your story. No one else can for you. Approach the world as it should be, rather than complain about the world as it is. That’s how change is created. We learn from each other, and in learning we transform.”

Despite everything thrown at us this year, we have reformed and reshaped ourselves and are proud of all that we have accomplished over the past 12 months. And it is all thanks to you. We would like to send a huge thank you to everyone who began this journey with us, joined this journey with us, and have yet to find their way to Yellow Arrow. We appreciate all the volunteers, submitters, authors, readers, and donors who have found their way to our (now virtual) doors.

If you haven’t had a chance to watch A Reformative (Re)Formation Reading, please do. Put a face to the words you read. Hear from the authors themselves, about the duality of formation and reformation. Champion our four incredible 2020 Writers-in-Residence, who faced a mountain of obstacles themselves but still managed to create their insightful publication and reading launched earlier this month. Pick up a copy of Smoke the Peace Pipe and the samurai from the Yellow Arrow bookstore today. Learn more about the strengths of these authors and how putting pen to paper can be part of the healing process. And finally, congratulate our 2021 Pushcart nominees who did all the hard work; we are happy to support them, now and in the future.

Look for Ellen Reynard’s upcoming chapbook No Batteries Required to be released in April 2021 and our next journal issue, a special topic issue we are extremely proud of, in May 2021, as well as several other publications slated for release throughout the year. And please keep an eye out for upcoming publication opportunities on the horizon that have yet to be announced. In the short term, workshops continue to be on pause, except for the excellent “A Year in Poetry” with Ann Quinn. Be sure to reserve your spot for the final two sessions on January 2 and February 6. Stay tuned for workshop announcements for 2021.

Yellow Arrow depends on the emotional and financial support of those who value our work; your continued support means everything to us. Donations are appreciated via Paypal (info@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@DonateYAP), or US mail (PO Box 12119, Baltimore, MD 21281). You can further support us by purchasing one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore (check out our Overstock SALE!), joining our newsletter, following us on Facebook or Instagram, or subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Once again, thank you for supporting independent publishing and women writers.

Sincerely,

Yellow Arrow Publishing

Yellow Arrow 12/15/20 Yellow Arrow 12/15/20

An Interview with Eva Niessner

Interview from fall 2020

Our fall 2020 marketing intern, Elaine Batty, recently interviewed author Eva Niessner. Eva is a writer living in Timonium, Maryland. Her work has been featured in Baltimore Magazine, Grub Street Literary Magazine, Phemme, and Crepe & Penn. She teaches English at the Community College of Baltimore County.

Huge thank you to Eva for sharing her insights with Elaine and for sharing her story as a writer.

EB: How did you get started as a writer? Do you have any favorite writers or any you draw inspiration from?

I know this is going to sound pretentious, but I don’t really ever feel like I ‘got started.’ I just was. Writing is as much an aspect of my identity as it is something that I do. That doesn’t mean I was naturally a fantastic writer with no practice and never had to learn or put in any effort, of course. It just means that learning and growing felt completely natural. I think of a baby just learning to walk. The baby isn’t born walking, and it takes a lot of stumbling and plopping over and whacking its head on the coffee table to go from crawling to running. But the baby never worries or wonders, “Wouldn’t it be great to be a walker?” It just happens. That’s kind of how I feel about developing as a writer. I had to smack my head on a lot of metaphorical coffee tables, but I always knew that’s what I would be. Even when I feel doubt or angst about a specific piece, I have very rarely doubted that I am a writer.

I think Mary Roach of Stiff fame might be one of my biggest inspirations, period. She really did set the tone for balancing the funny and the weird and the informative, and the qualities that I want people to associate with me are funny, weird, and informative. So she’s quite an idol of mine. If I could write any creative nonfiction piece half as entertaining as her stuff, I’d die happy. I’ve also been a huge fan of David Sedaris for many years, though ‘fan’ has sort of shifted into a Deadhead-ish follower (I’ve been to readings in three states) and then into a loose friendship.

EB: What do you think the implications of being a woman writer/woman in the literary world are and what does this mean to you?

For a long time, I didn’t really think about this. I spent my youth reading female authors like Joyce Carol Oates, Madeleine L’Engle, Margaret Atwood, Sylvia Plath, and Judy Blume, and so it took me a long time to recognize that there was really anything distinctive or unique about making it as a woman writer. That’s a privilege of my age, I think, being a child of the girl-power 90s. I grew up in a household where my ambitions to write were deeply and loudly encouraged, and then I had a lot of fantastic female writing teachers and professors. But as I grew up I realized how much intersectionality mattered and how necessary it was to go looking for more [women-created] works. A woman of color writing about her experiences, or an immigrant woman writing about her experiences, or a queer woman writing about her experiences—these are not really taught in schools as frequently. Maybe you’ll read Zora Neale Hurston in high school, or maybe you’ll read Amy Tan. That’s often it. It usually takes having a special teacher who will encourage you to go further and seek out the kind of books that aren’t part of the curriculum. I never saw my own queerness in anything I read in high school, only in books I was guided toward or that I discovered on my own. And I still got far more representation than many. As a white woman, I know it’s so easy to get complacent and think, “Oh, I read plenty of women writers.” Sure, but if you’re leaving out works by women of color, or queer women, or trans women, or women from other religions or cultures or backgrounds, you’re only broadening your horizons slightly.

One of the areas I’ve seen more debate over the role of women writers is in fan fiction. I write quite a bit of that, and often there’s a weird stigma given to adult women who choose to do it. You sometimes see criticism that’s essentially, “Don’t you have kids to take care of?” when an adult woman wants to write, like, erotic fan stuff. I’d love to see a shift in that thinking that says women are either homemakers or deviants. I certainly don’t think of myself as either of those.

EB: What are your favorite things to write and why?

For a long time I pretty much only wrote fiction. Then in college and graduate school I was reading a lot of memoirs and creative nonfiction pieces, and that just clicked perfectly. I love talking about myself, but I am also wildly intrigued by trivia facts. My whole family is like this. We’ll just sit around and quiz each other. Creative nonfiction is a great way to just muse about trivia for me. You can take your obsession du jour and expand on your thoughts. Somewhere along the way, that blob of rambling and opinion can be shaped, like potter’s clay, into something that’s actually interesting and cohesive. That’s so rewarding to me—seeing all of my random thoughts and bits and lines that I was proud of actually connect and become a full and vibrant work. It’s almost like . . . the good version of [the] imposter syndrome, the feeling that only you know how rough and random it started out. Someone can read it and say, “Oh this is so well-done,” and you can sit there and think, heh, this used to just be a bunch of facts about birds that I taped together and now look at it.

EB: What is your writing process like and what do you do to get motivated?

When I took writing classes, I would always feel like a real loser when I’d learn about how, I don’t know, Ernest Hemingway would get up at 5 a.m. and write until noon every day and then go sport fishing or punch someone in the face over and over until it was dinnertime. I never had the kind of discipline to get up early and write, and I suspect I never will. It took a long time for me to realize that you don’t have to do things a certain way to get results. I’m not a morning person, and I do almost all of my writing in the evening, after I’m finished working for the day and I don’t have that stuff hanging over me.

I usually get ideas when I’m driving to a very familiar place or washing dishes or when I’m in the middle of any fairly mindless task. There’s something great about being in that mode, with your body on autopilot and then your brain allowed to wander. I usually let an idea simmer for a long time. The story I wrote for this newest issue of Grub Street, for instance, “Ballad of the Weird Girl,” that was maybe a year and a half in the making. Originally, I was just going to write about how weirdly connected I felt to true crime podcast hosts because I would listen to them talk all night and their voices became so familiar to me. But I started working backward and thinking about, well, why would that kind of thing be so appealing to me in the first place? So that was how that came about.

EB: In what ways do you think writers, specifically female writers, can change the world?

Something that I think is a huge problem in the world of writing in general, though it also applies to movies and TV shows and things like that, is the idea that men are the default and that anyone can project their own hopes and dreams and fears onto a male character, while female characters are somehow only for women. I don’t disagree with the idea that a person who doesn’t identify as a man can connect to and love and empathize with a male character. I do all the time! But there’s an assumption that starts when kids are little, that boys will not like stories about girls because they can’t relate. Well, we can’t relate to anything we’re not exposed to.

To the actual question, then—I think female writers specifically can change the world by not compromising their vision or experience or their stories because they’re ‘girl stories.’ The more ‘girl stories’ that get put out into the world, the more readers will realize how rich and different and worthwhile they are.

EB: Where can our readers find your work?

I’ve been published in Grub Street twice as well as several online journals and zines—Crepe & Penn and Phemme. Right now, I’m hoping to wrangle some short pieces of nonfiction into a collection.

Elaine Batty is a student at Towson University graduating with a BS in English on the literature track. Her poetry has been featured in the College of Southern Maryland’s Connections literary magazine. In her free time, she enjoys reading all genres of fiction, writing poetry, and playing with her two cats, Catlynn and Cleocatra. Elaine’s two real passions are literature and travel, and she plans to look for a job following graduation that will allow her to pursue both full time. We at Yellow Arrow want to send a huge thank you to her for all her hard work over the past few months. Mahalo nui loa!

You can follow Eva Niessner on Instagram @asongoficeandeva.

*****

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

Yellow Arrow 12/10/20 Yellow Arrow 12/10/20

Meet the 2021 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 2021 Yellow Arrow Pushcart Prize Nominees!

Crate 3x3.jpg — Linda M. Crate

“i will never give this up,” *the samurai*
~when i first recalled her, i remembered who i truly was; a fierce, courageous fighter~

Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian born in Pittsburgh but raised in Conneautville. Her work has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, both online and in print. She is the author of six poetry chapbooks, the latest two which are the samurai (October 2020) and More Than Bone Music (March 2019). She also is the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (June 2018) and two micropoetry collections. Recently, she has published two full-length poetry collections, Vampire Daughter (February 2020) and The Sweetest Blood (February 2020). Linda is also a past Pushcart nominee. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

You can learn more about Linda from her July 2019 Yellow Arrow Journal .W.o.W. or by reading her written words in Yellow Arrow Journal’s COURAGE and FREEDOM, or in the samurai.

Courtney Essary Messenbaugh, “Our Hearth,” Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. V, No. 2 HOME — Courtney Essary Messenbaugh

“Our Hearth,” *Yellow Arrow Journal*, Vol. V, No. 2 **HOME**
~Engorging itself to inspire / Howling monsters, thick with legend, while / Awaiting its next set of footprints.~

Courtney Essary Messenbaugh is a practiced dilettante and has been everything from a waitress to a political fundraiser to a bond analyst. She has climbed a big mountain in Tanzania, lived in Switzerland, New York, and Chicago, and loves to laugh and try new things. She currently lives in Colorado and delights in the blanket of neon blue sky there. She is mother to three wildling children, wife to one husband, and best friend to one Muppet-looking dog. Her work has appeared in FERAL: A Journal of Poetry and Art, at Motherwell, and of course, Yellow Arrow Journal.

Deja Ryland

“Sand,” *Yellow Arrow Journal* Vol. V, No. 3 **(Re)Formation**
~The sand reminds me that there are compositions—imperishable histories—that will always align our stories together.~

Deja Ryland is an emerging writer who has recently graduated with her BS in English from Towson University. With boundless curiosity, she writes to ask questions, reflect on experiences, and start conversations. She loves adventure which sparks her love for reading, writing, traveling, and eating. She currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland.

Taina (1).jpeg — Taína

“Killing Ty,” *Yellow Arrow Journal* Vol. V, No. 1 **RESILIENCE**
~I’m killing her. Right here. Right now. This string of words is her final dagger. The Smithsonian calls it Paper Genocide, the destruction of my name.~

Taína is a Baltimore-based Higuaygua Taíno writer, on a mission to write the Taíno culture into existence the same way the colonizers have attempted to erase it: one word, one Taíno at a time. Find out more at TainaWrites.com.

You can learn more about Taína in her May 2020 Yellow Arrow Journal .W.o.W. or through VIRTUAL Voces Latinas.

Weaver, Roz_bw.jpg — Roz Weaver

“Smoke the Peace Pipe,” *Smoke the Peace Pipe*
~We, wild spirits, being all at once / in this one lifetime, / found here like some long lost siblings, / our everything alive.~

Roz Weaver is a spoken-word performer and internationally published poet living in West Yorkshire, England. She has been published in a number of journals, zines, and anthologies, including most recently with The Resilience of Being, Disquiet Arts, and Token Magazine. Her work has been on exhibit with Chicago based Awakenings Art Gallery and London Design Festival, and she has performed at Leeds International Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her first poetry collection, Smoke the Peace Pipe, was released by Yellow Arrow in August 2020.

You can learn more about Roz by reading her written words in Yellow Arrow Journal’s COURAGE, DOUBT, and FREEDOM, or in Smoke the Peace Pipe. Roz also taught a sold-out class for Yellow Arrow called Poetry as Therapy.

Thank you to everyone who supports these women and all writers who toil away day after day. Please show them some love in the comments below or on Yellow Arrow’s Facebook or Instagram.

Elaine Batty

Lives in Baltimore, Maryland

YA position: marketing intern, Aug-Dec 2020

What did you do? I did a lot of fun things while working with Yellow Arrow, but some of my favorites were making the press releases and promo images. I also really enjoyed making my blog posts (see Elaine’s latest here).

Did you go to Towson University? Yes! I will be graduating in May 2021.

What are you currently working on? I am currently working on a winter class and gearing up to start my final semester at Towson. I am also actively trying to spend as much time in nature and as much time reading as possible!

Bailey Drumm

Lives in Fallston, Maryland

YA position: editorial associate, Aug 2019-present

What have you done so far? I’ve edited two editions of the journal, written a book review for the last edition, assisted in binding last January, and participated in the First Friday Art Walk Reading series.

Did you go to Towson University? Yes (though this is not how I became associated with Yellow Arrow), May 2014.

Did you work for Towson’s Grub Street Literary Magazine? Sure did! I was the nonfiction editor.

What are you currently working on? I review pieces submitted to JMWW and work for the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I have just recently taken a position with Baltimore Fishbowl reviewing books and interviewing authors.

Brenna Ebner

Lives in Baltimore/Towson, Maryland

YA position: publications intern, Sept-Dec 2020; CNF Managing Editor, Feb 2021-present

Did you go to Towson University? Yes, May 2020.

Did you work for Towson’s Grub Street Literary Magazine? Yes, online nonfiction editor of volume 68 and Editor-in-Chief of volume 69.

What are you currently working on? Learning how to format eBooks with Mason Jar Press, walking dogs and pet sitting part-time, and trying to finish a memoir reading list.

Kierstin Kessler

Lives in Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania

YA position: editorial associate, Jan 2019-present

What do you do? I’ve proofread/edited multiple chapbooks, read through submissions, and contributed edits to the final versions of two Yellow Arrow literary journal issues.

Did you go to Towson University? Yes, I graduated in December 2019.

Did you work for Towson’s Grub Street Literary Magazine? Yes! In one semester I was an assistant fiction editor, and in the other, I was the online creative nonfiction editor.

What are you currently working on? I am currently working on a few of my own projects, including a fiction book and a memoir.

Alexa Laharty

Lives in Olympia, Washington

YA position: editorial associate, July 2019-Jan 2021, Creative Director, Jan 2021-present

What do you do? I edit creative nonfiction pieces for Yellow Arrow Journal and have recently begun to help with graphic design and layout for Yellow Arrow publications.

Did you go to Towson University? No.

What are you currently working on? I am currently writing my dissertation for my masters in Bioarchaeology.

Michelle Lin

Lives in Lutherville – Timonium, Maryland

YA position: marketing intern, Jan 2021-present

What do you do? I help Yellow Arrow with marketing. Some of these tasks include creating newsletters, updating Yellow Arrow’s website and calendar, creating Facebook events, writing and editing press releases, and creating weekly posts on Yellow Arrow’s social media platforms.

Did you go to Towson University? I am currently attending Towson University and will be graduating in Spring 2021.

Did you work for Towson’s Grub Street Literary Magazine? I did take part in Towson’s Grub Street Literary Magazine course. I was their online poetry editor for volume 69.

What are you currently working on? Outside of Yellow Arrow I am currently working on graduating from Towson University with a B.A. in English on the writing track.

Siobhan McKenna

Currently living in Jacksonville, Florida

YA position: editorial associate, Dec 2019-present

Did you go to Towson University? No.

Madison Miller

Lives in Logan, Utah

YA position: editorial associate, Feb 2021-present

Did you go to Towson University? No.

What are you currently working on? I am currently a senior at Utah State University, and I am double majoring in English and Political Science.

Deja Ryland

Lives in Baltimore, Maryland

YA position: grant writing intern, May-July 2020

Did you go to Towson University? Yes, I graduated in August 2020.

What are you currently working on? Currently, I have a full-time job but continue to write poetry, short fiction stories, and nonfiction pieces in hopes of sharing my work and becoming a freelance writer. I am also currently learning how to play an acoustic guitar.

Renascence

reviving something that was once dormant

Linda M. Crate

“i will never give this up,” the samurai

~when i first recalled her, i remembered who i truly was; a fierce, courageous fighter~

Courtney Essary Messenbaugh

“Our Hearth,” Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. V, No. 2 HOME

~Engorging itself to inspire / Howling monsters, thick with legend, while / Awaiting its next set of footprints.~

Deja Ryland

“Sand,” Yellow Arrow Journal Vol. V, No. 3 (Re)Formation

~The sand reminds me that there are compositions—imperishable histories—that will always align our stories together.~

Taína

“Killing Ty,” Yellow Arrow Journal Vol. V, No. 1 RESILIENCE

~I’m killing her. Right here. Right now. This string of words is her final dagger. The Smithsonian calls it Paper Genocide, the destruction of my name.~

Roz Weaver

“Smoke the Peace Pipe,” Smoke the Peace Pipe

~We, wild spirits, being all at once / in this one lifetime, / found here like some long lost siblings, / our everything alive.~

Subscribe to the Yellow Arrow Newsletter!