Yellow Arrow Publishing Blog

Yellow Arrow 8/25/23 Yellow Arrow 8/25/23

Her View Friday

Yellow Arrow Publishing supports women-identifying writers from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes us stronger. Women’s voices have historically been underrepresented in literature, and we aim to elevate those voices and stories through our programs, publications, and support.

Part of our mission in supporting and uplifting women writers is to promote the Yellow Arrow community’s individual accomplishments. We’d like to further expand that support and promotion outside of our Yellow Arrow publications. Twice a month, we’d like to give a shout out to those within the Yellow Arrow community who recently published:

single-author publications
single pieces in journals, anthologies, etc. as well as prizes/awards

You can support our authors by reading this blog and their work, sharing their news, and commenting below or on the blog. Congratulations to all the included authors. We are so proud of you!

Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling

“the becoming” by lucy M. Logsdon from illinois

Genre: poetry

Name of publication: Rogue Agent

Date published: August 1, 2023

Type of publication: online

rogueagentjournal.com/llogsdon

Find Lucy on Facebook @LucyLog64.

Yellow Arrow (past and present) board, staff, interns, authors, residents, and instructors alike! Got a publication coming out? Let us help celebrate for you in Her View Friday.

Single-author publications: here.

Single pieces and awards/prizes: here.

Please read the instructions on each form carefully; we look forward to congratulating you!

*****

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we SPARK and sparkle this year: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 65185, Baltimore, Maryland 21209). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Kapua Iao 8/22/23 Kapua Iao 8/22/23

Meet a Staff Member: Beck Snyder

Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to introduce editorial associate Beck Snyder (she/they). Beck, a Yellow Arrow intern in fall 2022 and spring 2023, is a recent graduate of Towson University and is currently figuring out where they’re going in life. When they’re not knee-deep in their own writing endeavors, you can usually find them playing video games, reading, or making stupid jokes with their friends. You can find them in the tiny town of Clear Spring, Maryland, on Instagram @real_possiblyawesome or on Twitter @PossiblyAwesom if you’d like to hear the thoughts that pop into their head at three in the morning.

Beck says, “I am super excited to read all the submissions that come in for the journals and other publications. The pieces we get at Yellow Arrow are always incredible and it’s so much fun to read them all (even if it gets pretty hard deciding who to [publish])!”

Tell us a little something about yourself:

The first award I ever won for writing was in first grade where I wrote a spin on The Cat in the Hat for a Dr. Seuss week contest. I still have the Fox-in-Socks plushie that was the prize.

What do you love most where you live?

I live in a small town in Washington County, and I love the fact that it’s a very walkable place and that I know so many people within the community. It feels much more tight knit than other places I’ve visited before.

How did you get involved with Yellow Arrow and what do you do?

I got involved with Yellow Arrow through their internship program and then loved the mission so much that I wanted to stick around and help them put together their amazing publications. I’m really glad to have the opportunity to read and edit the fantastic submissions all of the amazing writers send in!

What are you working on currently?

I’ve currently got a fiction novel of my own in the works, and aside from that, I’m looking into getting a job and moving out since I just graduated college in May of 2023. Real life’s coming at me fast, and I’m doing my best to meet it head on!

What genre do you write (or read) the most and why?

I adore fiction. Something about getting to create your own entire world, put a spin on this one, or dive into the worlds [that] others have created is so fascinating and exciting to me. I love character writing especially, and getting to explore different situations through the eyes of people who are very different from me but also relatable.

What book is on the top of your to-be-read pile?

Right now, I have my eye on Six of Crows, as many of my friends have read and loved it and also have been watching/loving the show!

Who is your favorite writer and why?

Rick Riordan. I think his comedic style of writing and well-paced adventures are incredibly entertaining, and he has incredibly strong character writing that makes every character memorable, no matter how small. I also admire his drive to constantly add more diversity to his books, and his dedication to make sure that all representation is well-thought-out and well researched, instead of just attempting to throw in minority characters haphazardly for diversity points.

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

There are countless people who have supported and inspired me on my writing journey, but the one who comes to mind most often is my fourth grade teacher, Ms. Thomas. She encouraged me to submit my writing to competitions and was the first person in my life who made me feel like this whole writing thing could be something I was really good at. I’m honestly not sure if I would have recognized writing as a passion of mine if it hadn’t been for her.

What do you love most about writing?

It can often be the hardest part, but taking something that exists only in your mind and putting it on the page to where other people can read it and see what you’re seeing is something I love about writing. I love being able to share all the crazy adventures in my mind with the people around me.

What advice do you have for new writers?

Do not fear the terrible first draft! First drafts are made specifically to just get ideas on the page to be refined later. I’m a perfectionist myself and often struggle with the temptation to try and make everything I write perfect the first time around, but that’s an impossible task that will no doubt turn you off of writing forever. Also: don’t be afraid to have fun! Writing something weird just because you want to. There’s no such thing as the correct way to write.

What’s your vision for Yellow Arrow in 2023?

I think that with Yellow Arrow’s missions, publications, workshops, and other programs, there’s so many opportunities to inspire women-identifying authors and give them the confidence they need to nurture the passion they have for writing.

*****

Beck, we are so excited to continue to work with you this year. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we SPARK and sparkle this year: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 65185, Baltimore, Maryland 21209). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Kapua Iao 8/15/23 Kapua Iao 8/15/23

Where to Submit: Fall Edition

Part of our mission in supporting and uplifting women writers is to promote those around the Yellow Arrow community with like-minded missions. We’d like to show our support by highlighting submissions open by sister presses throughout the year. This blog will list fall submissions from September to December, 2023, for:

journals/anthologies
chapbooks/zines
full-length manuscripts
online publications

We searched for submissions that have similar beliefs about inclusivity and diversity; they don’t necessarily only publish women but advocate for women-identifying authors in their own way. All listed include submissions for poetry, creative nonfiction, and/or hybrid work.

We hope you find the list useful and good luck!

Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling. If you know of a publication or publisher that we missed, please send an email to editor@yellowarrowpublishing.com. This is the first time we put this list together so we’re sure we missed a few!

Journals/Anthologies/Zines

Abandon Journal: theme Abandon Earth; accepts flash, short stories, CNF, graphic novels, poetry, craft essays, book reviews; submissions open August 1 to September 30; no reading fee; payment $15

CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women: accepts poetry, short fiction, visual art, essays, reviews, interviews; submissions open October 1 to December 31; $5 general fee & $3 student/low income fee; payment copy of issue & one volume subscription

Decolonial Passage Literary Magazine: accepts essays, CNF, short stories, flash fiction, poetry; submissions rolling for fiction & CNF, open for poetry January, March, May, July, September, or November; no reading fee; no payment

diode poetry journal: accepts poetry (and book reviews, interviews, essays about poetry); submissions open year round; no reading fee; payment unknown

Five South: accepts poetry, fiction, flash, humor, nonfiction; submissions open year round; fees range $0 to $4.50; payment unknown

Literary Mama: accepts CNF, fiction, poetry, essays, book reviews, profiles; submissions open year round; no reading fee; no payment

Raising Mothers: accepts experimental and traditional fiction, flash fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, interviews, book reviews, photo essays, comic/graphic narratives; submissions open year round; no reading fee; no payment

Chapbooks/Zines

Alabaster Leaves Publishing: accepts poetry chapbooks; submissions open year round; reading fee $12

backbone press: accepts poetry chapbooks (haiku only); submissions open October to December; reading fee $20; payment $100 + 20 copies

Full-length manuscripts

3 Mile Harbor Press: accepts poetry manuscripts; submissions open through January 2024; reading fee $30; payment $500 & publication

Alice James Books: accepts poetry manuscripts; submissions open from March 1 to October 16; reading fee $30; payment $2,000 plus publication & distribution

Apprentice House Press: accepts all genres except poetry and children’s; submissions open through February 2024

BlazeVOX: accepts poetry & fiction manuscripts; submissions open year round; payment unknown; payment 10% royalties

she writes press: accepts all genres except children’s; submissions currently open for spring 2025 publication; reading fee $35, payment unknown

Online Publication

Black Sun Lit digital vestiges: accepts poetry, prose, essays, translations; submissions open year round

Scarlet: accepts poetry, fiction, nonfiction; reading fee unknown; payment $80

*****

Kapua Iao 8/8/23 Kapua Iao 8/8/23

Embers Glowing Hope in a Very Dark Time: The Spark that Began Swimming in Gilead

By Cassie Premo Steele, written in February 2023

I love fire.

As an Aries, the first sign in the Zodiac, I am a fire starter, a lead taker, a fast beginner.

I love the spark.

The kindling of wood in the mind that means a new idea, a new poem, a new book is on the way.

And I especially love the way that when I’m writing, the fire begins to feed on itself, as page after page is lit by word after word.

Some people call it flow.

That’s too watery for me.

It’s a conflagration.

During the collective quarantine portion of the pandemic, I began taking a writing course with Natalie Goldberg that included sitting and writing and listening sessions by Zoom with people from all around the world who were attending the course.

Hundreds of people, strangers, ordinary humans in their homes, connecting through the light of video conferencing.

Like embers glowing hope in a very dark time.

I attended the first large group meeting on a Wednesday afternoon. We started out by sitting together, silently meditating with hundreds of people from all over the world. Then we were given a writing prompt and we wrote for 10 minutes in our journals.

After silently writing, we were divided randomly into small groups of six or seven people, where we were supposed to read our writing to each other, and more importantly, listen.

Natalie Goldberg says 90% of being a writer is listening.

I mentioned this little lit coal of wisdom in my book Earth Joy Writing, which I’d published years before, but I never really felt its blaze in my belly before listening to strangers from around the world during a pandemic.

During that first small group session, there was a woman who listened so hard to what I was reading from my journal that she cried.

I wasn’t saying anything out of the ordinary. Just talking about the virus and how my wife and I had both been sick in March after our daughter came back from visiting New York City and how cases were spiking in our very red and southern state and how Trump wanted to take our marriage away and our grief and anger at the death of George Floyd and how we cut out brown and black letters spelling Black Lives Matter and taped it up in our front window and what it means to live as married lesbians in the south.

Ordinary topics to me.

The prompt had been, “I don’t know . . .”

The woman, a few seconds later, reached out to me in the chat and told me she was very moved by my writing. I wrote back, giving her my email address to contact me, and as soon as the class was over, she did. Something was kindled.

It turned out that we were both lesbian mothers of daughters and that our daughters were around the same age, and that she was an American, but she was living in Canada.

“I just feel so sorry for you there,” she said. “It’s horrible what is happening.”

I had not had anyone from outside the United States express this to me: how sorry they were.

It fired up something deep inside me.

She then asked if I wanted to be part of a small listening group with a few other members of the class. She said she could post something on the course board (which I’d visited once but felt overwhelmed) to see if others wanted to join us.

I said yes.

She asked if I thought it would be a good idea to focus the invitation on LGBTQIA people.

I said yes.

In addition to being a lesbian and a mom and a writer, she was a teacher and a leader, too, and I was able to sit back and allow her to do this.

Her listening fire had started all this.

A couple of weeks later, the two of us met with four other women by Zoom. We used the same structure as Natalie did in her classes. After checking in briefly, introducing ourselves and saying where we were geographically, we sat for five minutes, wrote for 10 minutes, and then read what we wrote.

No comments. No evaluations. Just listening.

And as Natalie said in that initial large group meeting, “Listen without judgment so you can allow the other to be free. And in so doing, you can gain the courage to be free yourself.”

Ironically, three of the women were in Canada and three in the United States.

A few weeks into our meetings, one of the women in Canada started crying during her check-in, saying she’d been watching what was happening in Portland, protestors being rounded up in unmarked vans by an unmarked, and violent, police force.

The three of us in the United States were not crying about this. We knew about it. Two of us were even women of color. We were concerned, of course.

But it took someone from the outside to bring the ignition we needed to see and feel what was happening.

When you’re inside something, it can be hard to see clearly until someone else brings in a light.

We started calling ourselves Sisters of Gilead.

Gilead is the name of the nation that the United States becomes after it is taken over by a misogynistic, totalitarian regime in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale, which became well-known in the years of the Trump administration because it aired on streaming services and was watched around the world.

I first read the novel when I was in graduate school. It wasn’t assigned for a course. I don’t remember many books by women ever having been assigned when I was doing my undergraduate and master’s degrees.

I read it the summer between my two years of getting my master’s degree, and I remember feeling like my mind was on fire.

The woman’s body, I realized, is a powerful thing. So powerful that men fear it and hate it and want to control it.

Because it has a power that they can never possess.

The power to give birth.

But as I began reflecting on the power of women throughout history, and the power of that one novel to ignite women from all over the world to their own present condition, and the power of our tiny group of women and the deep compassion that we were sparking for each other and in ourselves, I also became curious about the word Gilead itself.

And I learned that in Hebrew, it means “a heap of stones of testimony.”

It is an actual geographical space, yes, but it is also about what happens when we testify, when we speak and write and read and listen and tell the truth about the stories of our lives.

What we know. What we don’t know.

What we feel. What we cannot feel because the heat is too great, and we must wear protective gear.

Gilead first appears in the Bible in the Book of Genesis when Jacob and Rachel seek refuge there: “Thus he made his escape with all he had. Once he was across the Euphrates, he headed for the highlands of Gilead.” (Genesis 31: 21)*

It was there that Rachel hid the images that were sacred to her faith, now being overtaken by a new faith: “Now Rachel had taken the images, and put them inside a camel cushion, and seated herself upon them. When Laban had rummaged through the rest of her tent without finding them, Rachel said to her father, ‘Let not my lord feel offended that I cannot rise in your presence; a woman’s period is upon me.’ So, despite his search, he did not find his idols.” (Genesis 31: 34–35)

The woman’s role in Gilead is to keep safe what is under threat.

And she uses her body and reproductive power to do this.

“A woman’s period is upon me.”

She was menstruating.

It meant she could isolate.

Stay safe.

It was the red fire of blood within her that saved her.

And the stories of it survive.

This is how we survive during times of fire: isolation, deep connection with the body, adherence to a women’s custom, gathering with other women, speaking our truths, and listening so deeply that our tears water the ground so we can plant seeds and start over.

*Both quotes from the Book of Genesis come from the Catholic Bible, Oxford University Press (1995).

Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D., is a lesbian ecofeminist poet and novelist and the author of 18 books. Swimming in Gilead is her seventh book of poetry and is being prepped for release by Yellow Arrow in October 2023. Her poetry has won numerous awards, including the Archibald Rutledge Prize named after the first Poet Laureate of South Carolina, where she lives with her wife. Find out more at cassiepremosteele.com.

*****

Kapua Iao 8/1/23 Kapua Iao 8/1/23

Yellow Arrow Journal (VIII/02) EMBLAZON Submissions are Now Open!

Yellow Arrow Publishing is excited to announce that submissions for our next issue of Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 2 (fall 2023) is open August 1–31 exploring the power and ephemerality of life’s fleeting moments. Guest editor Leticia Priebe Rocha states,

“As we navigate the turmoil of daily life and the heaviness of what lies beyond our control, it takes an intentional effort to nurture [life’s fleeting] moments into existence and to sustain the life they bring us. For me, this effort is often driven by introspection: What makes you feel alive? What connections have shaped your being? How do you tap into the well of love and hope within you? The act of creation through poetry and art has been a blessing toward answering these questions, empowering me with an openness to receive the ephemeral and inscribe it not only in memory but on the page.”

This issue’s theme will be EMBLAZON

: to conspicuously inscribe or display
: to depict (a heraldic device) on something
: to celebrate or extol publicly

And here are some questions to consider when choosing or writing for this issue:

What are the experiences that inscribed themselves onto your being and made you who are? Who are the people who adorn your life? Whose lives do you adorn in return? What are the places and contexts that you inevitably herald in all of your interactions?
Of the ephemeral instants that have embellished your existence, what marks and stays with you? What are the sensations, emotions, and images that anchor you in your own aliveness?
What is your relationship with time? How do you view its nature, particularly in relation to the fleeting moments that make up the human experience?
What are the sparks that you strive to ignite during your time on this Earth? How do you hope to illuminate the world when your time comes to an end?

Yellow Arrow Journal is looking for creative nonfiction, poetry, and cover art submissions by writers/artists who identify as women, on the theme of EMBLAZON. Submissions can be in any language as long as an English translation accompanies it. For more information regarding journal submission guidelines, please visit yellowarrowpublishing.com/submissions. Please read our guidelines carefully before submitting. To learn more about our editorial views and how important your voice is in your story, read About the Journal. This issue will be released in November 2023.

EMBLAZON’s guest editor, Leticia Priebe Rocha, earned her bachelor’s from Tufts University, where she was awarded the 2020 Academy of American Poets University and College Poetry Prize. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, she immigrated to Miami, Florida, at the age of nine and currently resides in the Greater Boston area. For more information, visit her website at leticiaprieberocha.com. Leticia’s poem “Lost In” was part of Yellow Arrow Journal PEREGRINE, and she was our .W.o.W. #46 (March 2023). We are excited to work with Leticia over the next few months.

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 advocating for writers who identify as women. Yellow Arrow proudly represents the voices of women from around the globe. Creating diversity in the literary world and providing a safe space is deeply important. Every writer has a story to tell, every story is worth telling.

*****

Annie Marhefka 7/31/23 Annie Marhefka 7/31/23

Meet the 2023 Yellow Arrow Publishing Writers-in-Residence

Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling. Since 2019, Yellow Arrow Publishing has been proud to offer a residency program that enables us to support, uplift, and amplify the voices of women-identifying writers residing in the Baltimore area. We continue to evolve the program and are delighted to share our 2023 writers-in-residence with our community.

First, a note of thanks. As our programs and community continue to grow, we consider our team tremendously fortunate to have received such a diverse and talented group of applicants. We are reminded again of the passion and storytelling that surrounds and charms us. Our deepest gratitude to all those who applied or took this opportunity to learn more about Yellow Arrow.

For 2023, we are thrilled that Bird in Hand café and bookstore is partnering with us to provide an inspiring location from which our writers can work at their craft! Bird in Hand has provided Baltimore’s Charles Village neighborhood the perfect blend of coffee, books, and community since 2016.

Please join us in congratulating our 2023 writers-in-residence: Kat Scott and Tramaine Suubi.

Kat Scott is an MFA student at the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and holds a Master of Arts from Indiana University. As a writer, Kat likes to explore the places where meetings occur, between humans, animals, nature, etc. In some small way, she hopes to open a questioning of the boundaries we place that lead to othering, embracing instead the idea of a congeries. Kat lives in Remington and works as an assistant editor for The Hopkins Review.

Kat will be the Writer-in-Residence for August and September.

Tramaine Suubi is a multilingual Bantu artist who was born by the Nile River and raised by the Potomac River. They earned an MFA in creative writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Their poems live in Solstice Literary Magazine, Prompt Press, Protest Through Poetry, Plantin Magazine, Kiwi Collective Magazine, and other spaces. They were a contributor at the Tin House Summer Workshop and they are officially represented by the Creative Arts Agency. Their forthcoming book debut will be published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins. Tramaine is in love with all things water.

Tramaine will be the writer-in-residence for October and November.

*****

Yellow Arrow 7/28/23 Yellow Arrow 7/28/23

Her View Friday

single-author publications
single pieces in journals, anthologies, etc. as well as prizes/awards

You can support our authors by reading this blog and their work, sharing their news, and commenting below or on the blog. Congratulations to all the included authors. We are so proud of you!

Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling

“gray” by Sara Palmer from baltimore, maryland

Genre: poetry

Name of publication: Ekphrastic Review

Date published: June 2023

Type of publication: online

ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/gray-by-sara-palmer

Find Sara on Facebook @sara.p5455 and @sara.palmer.5455.

“Tamales on Mars, The Optics of Space Travel, Regarding the Memory of Earth: Speculative poems” by angela acosta from Gainesville, Florida

Genre: poetry

Name of publication: 2023 Rhysling Award Anthology

Date published: July 1, 2023

Type of publication: print

sfpoetry.com/ra/pages/23rhysling.html

Find Angela on Instagram @aaperiquito.

“No Whimpering” by Ute carson from Austin, texas

Genre: hybrid

Name of publication: SAGE-ING

Date published: summer 2023

Type of publication: online

sage-ing.com/Sage-ing45.pdf

PRIZES/AWARDS

“Tamales on Mars, The Optics of Space Travel, Regarding the Memory of Earth: Speculative poems” by angela acosta from Gainesville, Florida

Genre: poetry

Name of publication: 2023 Utopia Awards finalist

Date published: July 2023

clificon.com/nominees-voting

Find Angela on Instagram @aaperiquito.

Yellow Arrow (past and present) board, staff, interns, authors, residents, and instructors alike! Got a publication coming out? Let us help celebrate for you in Her View Friday.

Single-author publications: here.

Single pieces and awards/prizes: here.

Please read the instructions on each form carefully; we look forward to congratulating you!

*****

Kapua Iao 7/25/23 Kapua Iao 7/25/23

Gratitude is a Divine Emotion: Yellow Arrow 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/intern 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 simple connections (see our growing list of partners here).

As Editor-in-Chief, it would be impossible to organize, create, and publish without the incredible help of our volunteer staff 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; the process of forming something for publication is thoughtfully long but fulfilling, nonetheless.

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 staff members 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 company, they focus on copyediting and proofreading as well as writing blogs and press releases. They create promotional material and images for our authors and create marketing campaigns. They help at live and virtual events and readings. 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.

So let’s introduce the summer 2023 interns. Each has my appreciation.

Cecelia (Cece) Caldwell

From Pittsfield, Massachusetts
*What do you do*? I do all sorts of things. Often, I work with the submissions we receive. I format, proofread, and copyedit chapbooks and short pieces. Additionally, I help work on social media campaigns, blog posts, and chapbook promotions.
*Where do you go to school?* I go to Middlebury College, a small liberal arts college in Vermont. I’m a rising junior!
*What are you currently working on*? I’m back home in Massachusetts for the summer and am enjoying spending time with my family. Aside from interning with Yellow Arrow, I’m working at a gift shop at a local historical museum, tending to my garden, and planning my upcoming semester abroad in Spain.

Cecelia Caldwell (she/her) is a rising junior at Middlebury College majoring in English and minoring in anthropology and Spanish. An avid reader and lover of words, Cecelia is passionate about publishing, editing, storytelling, literacy, and the diversification of all of these fields. In her free time, Cecelia enjoys writing satire, working out, cooking, and tending to her garden. She lives in western Massachusetts with her mom and two dogs, Ollie and Ernie. Find her on Instagram @ceceliacaldwelll.

Why did you choose an internship with Yellow Arrow?

I knew that I wanted to work in the publishing/editing industry to some extent, as those are the areas I’m interested in exploring after I graduate. After lots of searching, I came across Yellow Arrow, which fulfilled both my desire to gain practical experience in a field I loved, and my desire to work with an organization whose mission I supported. To be able to support a small, independent house dedicated to uplifting the voices of women is something truly special.

Vickie Tu

Lives in Silver Spring, Maryland
*What do you do*? I assist Yellow Arrow with various editorial, marketing, and publishing responsibilities. I serve as a reader and proofreader of manuscripts and produce social media content for publishing events and promotions. I also compose book reviews and author interviews for the Yellow Arrow blog and create monthly newsletters.
*Where do you go to school?* I go to University of Maryland, College Park and plan to graduate Spring 2024.
*What are you currently working on*? Outside of Yellow Arrow, I work two part time jobs and attend school. Additionally, I am working on creating my own literary blog and website where I can share my adoration for literature with fellow bookworms.

Vickie Tu is a rising senior at University of Maryland, College Park, studying English with a minor in Classics. She was born and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, and plans to move to New York City after graduation to start her career in the publishing industry. When she is not reading or working in her campus’ bookstore, she enjoys attending hockey games for her favorite team the Washington Capitals. You can find her on Instagram @vickie.tuuu.

After graduating, she plan on finding entry level jobs in publishing and working her way up to be an editor or literary agent.

Why did you choose a second internship with Yellow Arrow?

I chose an internship with Yellow Arrow because the morals and values that the company upholds are very similar to mine and the publications interested me. Yellow Arrow presented itself to be a strong company that aims to empower and inspire women identifying creators and that was something that intrigued me the most. Additionally, I was particularly fond of the publications that Yellow Arrow produced and it was a genre that I desired more knowledge and experience in.

*****

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, fill out an application at yellowarrowpublishing.com/internships.

Kapua Iao 7/18/23 Kapua Iao 7/18/23

Embracing the Ephemeral Nature of the Human Experience

Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to announce the next guest editor for Yellow Arrow Journal, Leticia Priebe Rocha. Leticia will oversee the creation of our Vol. VIII, No. 2 issue.

This next issue of Yellow Arrow Journal will explore the fleeting moments in life that anchor the human experience. Think about the flash after a spark is lit, before a fire burns big and bright . . . the flashes, the sparks, are ephemeral, just like life’s fleeting moments. They make us who we are. To learn more about this idea, read Leticia’s words below. And mark your calendars: the theme will be announced next week, submissions open August 1, and the issue will be released in November.

Leticia earned her bachelor’s from Tufts University, where she was awarded the 2020 Academy of American Poets University and College Poetry Prize. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, she immigrated to Miami, Florida, at the age of nine and currently resides in the Greater Boston area. For more information, visit her website at leticiaprieberocha.com. Leticia’s poem “Lost In” was part of Yellow Arrow Journal PEREGRINE, and she was our .W.o.W. #46 (March 2023).

Please follow Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram for the theme and submissions announcement. Below, you can read more about Leticia’s perspectives on the ephemerality if life. We look forward to working with Leticia over the next few months.

By Leticia Priebe Rocha

“Nothing is more difficult than surrendering to the instant.”
Clarice Lispector

I was born in the fourth most populous city in the world, São Paulo, Brazil—a beautiful, bustling place rich in culture and architecture. I have few but precious memories of the grand metropolis that raised me. The São Paulo Museum of Art, for example, fostered a lifelong love of art museums that compels me to add these institutions to my itinerary in any place I travel, no matter how brief my stay.

A particular memory that I have held dear since I was seven years old unfolded a few hours away from my city, in the countryside town of Santo Antonio do Pinhal. My little family (mom, dad, baby sister who was a few months old) and I were spending a weekend in the midst of greenery and waterfalls, a lushness that is profuse in many regions of Brazil. As we were winding down for bed on our first night there, my mom called me to step outside with her for a minute. I was struck immediately by the symphony of crickets that enveloped us, my body blanketed in an awe intensified as I looked up and witnessed the unwavering glow of the cosmos pulsing above in every direction. The sheer abundance of stars unknown in my typical urban setting cradled my seven-year-old frame with an acute awareness of my own smallness for the first time. It was at once terrifying and thrilling—I felt myself blossoming alongside the universe, an inseverable connection that I ground myself in to this day.

A few years later, when I was nine years old, we immigrated to another major city, this one on an entirely different continent—Miami, Florida, United States of America. I remember nothing of packing decades of my parent’s lives or my sister and I’s brief time on Earth in a few suitcases. I have no recollection of stepping onto the plane that would bring us to a new reality, and inevitably, new versions of ourselves. The only piece of the journey that I remember is walking through Miami International Airport and being entirely dazzled by the sky visible outside. There was not a cloud in sight, only a blueness punctuated by the relentless sunlight that is signature to Miami in the middle of June. A fleeting image that I still carry with me as a remnant of the child that I was and a beacon of who I would become.

I spent nearly a decade in Miami before parting ways with my first home in this country. I landed in Medford, Massachusetts, to attend university and stuck around ever since. I often joke that I knew Massachusetts was my new home when I flew to a conference in San Francisco and my primary preoccupation while getting off the plane was where I could find the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts (the answer was a definitive “not on every street corner” like you’d find in Boston). It was in an Uber navigating the streets of Boston at 2:00 a.m. that I realized I was in love for the first time. I had just said goodbye to my beloved, the feeling of being held like their one and only anchor to this world lingering over me as I hopped in the car. As I greeted the driver, Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” started playing on the radio, a gorgeous sonic accompaniment to the surrender of my heart. Though I had no certainty of what would come next, a door had been unlocked inside me to a fundamental, profoundly, and exquisitely human experience.

The fleeting moments I described here are inextricable from the person I am today, each instant a spark in forging the fire of the self. As we navigate the turmoil of daily life and the heaviness of what lies beyond our control, it takes an intentional effort to nurture these moments into existence and to sustain the life they bring us. For me, this effort is often driven by introspection: What makes you feel alive? What connections have shaped your being? How do you tap into the well of love and hope within you? The act of creation through poetry and art has been a blessing toward answering these questions, empowering me with an openness to receive the ephemeral and inscribe it not only in memory but on the page.

As Clarice Lispector so eloquently put it, “Nothing is more difficult than surrendering to the instant. That difficulty is human pain. It is ours. I surrender in words and surrender when I paint.” Being alive is a messy, heartbreaking, and beautiful thing. I hold a deep gratitude for the people and places that have inscribed themselves into my essence and for every moment of grace that has granted me the space to grow into myself. I cherish the thought that I have done the same for others in this existence where we are so deeply entangled. May we all find the strength to embrace the transience of this life and adorn the world with sparks far beyond our time here.

*****

Thank you, Leticia, for your beautiful words. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we SPARK and sparkle this year: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 65185, Baltimore, Maryland 21209). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

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

Magic in the Air: Black girl magic & other elixirs by shantell hinton hill

Yellow Arrow Publishing announces the release of our latest chapbook, Black girl magic & other elixirs, by shantell hinton hill. Since its establishment in 2016, Yellow Arrow has devoted its efforts to advocate for all women writers through inclusion in the biannual Yellow Arrow Journal as well as single-author publications and Yellow Arrow Vignette, and by providing strong author support, writing workshops, and volunteering opportunities. We at Yellow Arrow are excited to continue our mission by supporting shantell in all her writing and publishing endeavors.

Black girl magic & other elixirs is an important poetry collection about the embodied experiences of a ‘90s Black girl growing up in the American South and how those experiences shaped her becoming a Black woman. Within, shantell recalls moments of playing hide and seek as a means of survival, trauma attached to bologna, the essence of her mother embodied in a fragrance, and even a favorite moment with her first and forever homegirl, her grandma. She weaves together stories from her childhood with current events, juxtaposing the cultural term ‘Black girl magic’ with her personal struggles to show how she became the ultimate Renaissance woman who embraces both the magic and the mundane of her surroundings.

An engineer turned pastor, shantell, a native of Conway, Arkansas, situates her work at the intersections of social justice, public theology, and Black feminism/womanism. shantell builds upon and pays homage to the revolutionary work of Black women authors, poets, leaders, and culture bearers. This collection bears witness to the often unspoken truths about the survival, wit, and skill Black girls and Black women develop in a world dominated by a myriad of interlocking oppressions. For shantell and Black girls everywhere, Black girl magic & other elixirs illustrates how justice, storytelling, ethics, and Black women’s spirituality weave together on the page to show how we can find ourselves “truly in love with who we’d become.”

Cover design was by Alexa Laharty, Yellow Arrow Creative Director. According to shantell, “The roller skates, cassette tape, and perfume all communicate a certain essence of ‘being’ that one can feel, smell, and hear. Likewise, the pictures of my younger self and my present-day self represent much of my journey of becoming and self-possession—signifying the power in reclaiming the little girls that live inside of us while empowering the women we have fought tooth and nail to belong to ourselves.

Paperback and PDF versions of Black girl magic & other elixirs 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 Black girl magic & other elixirs wherever you purchase your books including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. To learn more about shantell and Black girl magic & other elixirs, check out our recent interview with her.

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

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Kapua Iao 7/4/23 Kapua Iao 7/4/23

Meet a Staff Member: Meagan Gamble

Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to introduce editorial associate Meagan Gamble. Meg (she/her) is a writer and bookseller living in Boulder, Colorado, for some reason, despite the fact that she is terrified of heights. She graduated from City University of London with an MA in creative writing and publishing in 2016 and now works in academic publishing. She is an editor, writing tutor, and her dad says she’s “Amazing, Beautiful, and Smart.” She hopes to keep working in books in some capacity for the rest of her career, either behind the scenes or as a novelist herself. You can find her on Instagram at @mgnface or on Twitter at @megelissag.

Meg says, “I’m excited to be involved with a creative community that values women’s voices and to help produce some interesting work!”

Tell us a little something about yourself:

Well, usually the first thing I tell people is that I love to read, but I feel like that’s pretty obvious here (naturally)! I’m the eldest of four, so my siblings’ habits have migrated over the years into mine: I love art (art history especially), music, going to watch movies alone in an empty theater, painting, long circular walks (preferably with a dog), Sunday Morning on CBS, redoing my hair a million times before ultimately settling on the same hairstyle I wear every day, etc. I’ve been lucky enough to live in a lot of different places, both here and abroad, and so one thing I do value about myself is my ability to adapt quickly and find meaning in anxious or scary experiences. Good for writing! I also love tattoos. (Don’t tell my grandma.)

What do you love most about where you live?

I live in Boulder, Colorado, at the moment, which is a very strange, vibrant, eclectic little mountain town. Yesterday I saw someone giving a tarot reading at the bus stop outside my office if that gives you idea. (I know her, actually—she charges a fair price!) It’s a college town and a tech hub for the Western slope, so there’s a real eclectic mix of people from all walks of life, most of which are pretty weird. I like it a lot, honestly—there’s a real character to this town that I hope they’re able to preserve and defend against the incoming onslaught of gentrification because it would be a real loss to Colorado to turn this funky little place into your typical slick, expensive suburb. (#KeepBoulderWeird is the slogan if you’re so inclined.)

How did you get involved with Yellow Arrow and what do you do?

I was looking for opportunities to keep me connected with creative writing (as opposed to academic writing, which is what I deal with in my current job), and I was attracted to Yellow Arrow’s mission of amplifying women/women-identifying creatives! I will admit to the somewhat uncool trait of being really into weird grammar questions, so I was also looking for something where I could practice and develop my formal copyediting skills. So that’s what I’ll be doing, for the most part—proofreading and copyediting as well as voting on submissions to certain publications! Exciting stuff. :)

What are you working on currently?

Right now, I am primarily working on some creative nonfiction attempts. It’s been a difficult year with a lot of changes for me! Writing is a good way to work through stuff, so it’s been very helpful. I would like to get back to fiction soon, but I’m in no rush. It will come when I’m ready for it, I think.

What genre do you write (or read) the most and why?

I do read prose primarily because that’s what I write, it’s what I’ve always loved, and it’s where I’m most comfortable. Most people would call my tastes “literary” (some would call them “pretentious,” others, “eclectic,” perhaps depending on which part of my bookshelf they’re looking at) so I suppose that’s what I would say in terms of genre. I do love reading poetry, but I think the disconnect is that I really cannot write it (my brain simply does not work that way) and so naturally I gravitate towards novels for the most part. There are just too many good ones, and I only have so many hours in my life to read them. It’s tragic.

What books are on the top of your to-be-read pile?

I’m having a moment with nonfiction, which may or may not be because of the 75% off sale at Princeton University Press back in February, but that’s between me and my bank account, thanks. I’m reading Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy by C. L. Barber, a somewhat famous piece of literary criticism about the influence of Elizabethan seasonal holidays on Shakespeare’s comedies. (I love a good social/cultural history of Shakespeare, man, I really do.) But that’s a book from 1959 so I suppose it doesn’t really count—as far as new releases go, I cannot describe to you my excitement about Lorrie Moore’s newest, I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, coming out at the end of June. And I’m also about to start my first Tessa Hadley novel, and I’m rather excited about it.

Who is your favorite writer and why?

Ruth Ozeki, all the way. I’m primarily a prose writer, and I grew up reading stuff I could actually get my hands on in my very small Iowan town (this was presmart phones, you see) so it was a pretty weird mix of “women’s fiction” (Alice Hoffman! Maeve Binchy!) and “stuff my grandpa gave us when he was cleaning out his house” (Tom Robbins! Kurt Vonnegut!). It was somewhat of a revelation to grow up and discover an entire wealth of fiction that was sort of a combination of both—grounded in a female perspective, engaging and readable, but stylistically experimental as well. Ozeki is such a pleasure to read, with a light touch to her prose that is so warm and inviting—but she deals with heavy subjects and takes big narrative swings, which I respect. I will forever remember sitting in a cafe reading A Tale for the Time Being in one sitting, while the very nice manager kept coming over to check on me and ask gently if I wanted a more comfortable chair to sit in. It was 2016, I was 26, and I’m pretty sure I was crying. (She was very nice about it.) Books like that only come along every once in awhile, and I treasure them for a long time when they do.

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

Forever my family, specifically my brother Taylor. He passed away recently, very suddenly, and we were very close, so everything I do is in his honor, really. He was absolutely my biggest hype man. He loved everything I read, and he didn’t even have to read it to love it. He’d just see me writing something and say some goofy thing like “oh, that’s GREAT! I can TELL!” (He usually could not see my screen. Sometimes what I was writing was an email.) I think everyone deserves a person like that, but specifically writers, who can sometimes get so buried in their own rooms that it’s difficult to step outside onto the balcony and look back in and say, “well yeah, I am cookin’ something in there.” He was wonderful and I miss him very much. Everything I’ve accomplished in life, and everything I will accomplish, will be because he made me believe it was possible.

What do you love most about writing?

What a gigantic question! I’ve been doing it for so long I suppose I haven’t thought about it indepth at any point because it’s always just been the way that I process myself and the world around me. It’s a natural instinct I have, and a compulsion also. I enjoy the way I can sink into it to the point where it becomes almost meditative. My brain goes smooth, and I stop thinking about my problems and I just coast on it—and that’s true for both writing and reading for me. I enjoy the way it connects people and infuriates people. And I love the feeling when you finish something and you’re mostly happy with it, and then you put it in the drawer and think, okay, what next? It’s beautiful, frustrating work. I could do nothing else with my life.

What advice do you have for new writers?

Read! Read widely. This is a cliché, but it’s true. Reading is a skill which is different from writing, but you still need both! From a practical angle, also, you need to know what’s being published! I cannot tell you how many writers I met as a bookseller who had never seriously considered their market: what it looks like, what people want to read, how they discover books, what similar titles already exist. It’s extremely valuable, both from a creative perspective and a very pragmatic perspective, especially if you’d like to publish your work eventually (traditionally or not).

Read bad things, too. Read things that challenge you. Read genres you know you won’t like, won’t write, or both. And try to read critically—when you finish something you didn’t like, ask yourself why. “Oh, I absolutely loved this, I couldn’t put it down” —great! Why? Be specific! Assign yourself book reports. But like, in a fun way. I swear it helps.

What’s your vision for Yellow Arrow in 2023?

I think it’s hard nowadays to keep your focus on your creative life, with the world being what it is, and real life getting increasingly harder. There’s a quote from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos that I love: “Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.” Art is what connects us and sustains us in a world that often can seem cold and hostile. Keeping that flame burning is an act of courage, and a necessary one, and whatever small part Yellow Arrow plays in that, I’m happy to be involved.

*****

Welcome to the team Meg! We are so excited to work with you this year. Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we SPARK and sparkle this year: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 65185, Baltimore, Maryland 21209). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.

Kapua Iao 7/3/23 Kapua Iao 7/3/23

What Ignites Your Spark? The Yellow Arrow Vignette SPARK Online Series Begins

By Siobhan McKenna

Welcome to the second annual release of Yellow Arrow Vignette, Yellow Arrow Publishing’s online creative nonfiction and poetry series. For this issue, we aligned with our 2023 yearly value and chose the theme of SPARK. We will publish the SPARK pieces on Mondays and Wednesdays from today through September 11, ending with a reading from our 2023 Vignette authors on September 13 at 8:00 p.m. EST.

yellowarrowpublishing.com/vignette/spark-2023

As writers it can be difficult to articulate the reasons for creating a word map to navigate the beauty, guilt, loss, and nuance in this world. There are writers who need to write even though it is a challenging, arduous process and there are writers who easily sit down in front of the page daily to unpack their thoughts. I fall somewhere in between . . . although more often on the scale of procrastination until the words burst through my sweaty and overly caffeinated fingertips in a large swell and then I edit and edit. And edit again.

Whichever writer you are, you are a writer.

This mantra was instilled in me by one of my favorite writers, Laurel Braitman. Over the last few years, I’ve participated in several of her writing workshops which she would often begin by reminding everyone that it didn’t matter if we had written last year or that morning. If we had shown up to write, we were writers.

This sentiment resonates with me as someone who doesn’t feel called to write every day and yet, when I do find myself needing to untangle my thoughts through words—everything else falls away. Laurel’s reminder also helps soften the nagging voice that says: you are not writing, submitting, editing enough.

These thoughts are exhausting and don’t help me write more. Don’t we already live with enough self-judgment? Let’s not add this judgment to our writing and instead simply bask in the pleasure of ideas that we weaved together and applaud those who spun an image depicting that feeling we could not communicate.

These past few months, I’ve been harnessing my SPARK for writing by taking in the words of other writers—mainly women (although David Sedaris did slip in quite often). I sped through memoir after memoir: Laurel Braitman, Ashley C. Ford, Brandi Carlile, and Stephanie Foo; and realized I was in a state of seeking. Seeking inspiration on how to write well, but mostly seeking to remember that these contemporary women had celebrated great joys and tremendous losses and survived; were still surviving.

Outside the page, I also found inspiration on my commute through New York City’s boroughs; from stumbling upon tulip laden pocket parks to watching in amazement as a little girl slumbered soundly against her father’s shoulder on the subway. The car lurched and screeched, still her eyes never fluttered. Even now, there’s a poem unfurling in my synapses about her. About that beautiful sleep, that trust.

During this time, I didn’t do as much writing as I wanted. Perhaps, that’s always the case? And yet, I don’t feel as guilty as I usually do when this happens. Instead, I feel like this phase of soaking in and seeking inspiration was exactly what I needed to write.

Since leaving New York City for my next travel nurse assignment, lines and ideas have been emerging in the quieter moments of my day. As I was walking home along the Puget Sound in my current city of Seattle, the sky pink and the leaves breathing, the hazy outline of a poem formed in my head. And yesterday, a glorious string of words sat next to each other in an email; I scribbled them on a sticky note as a title for an essay.

In this summer’s Vignette, the theme SPARK takes on a variety of forms from the literal to the meta. C.D. Jones’s poem “this time machine” recalls the tangible heat and heartache of young love while Veronica Wasson’s essay “On Clothing (Five Pieces)” ponders how clothes were the catalyst needed for her to explore her authentic self.

Some of the Vignette writers use the theme of SPARK to explore the influences in their lives that have ignited their creative pursuits. Angela Acosta praises poets Concha Urquiza and Ernestina de Champourcín among others as a guiding life force in her poem “A Centennial for Herstory,” and in “To be Frank (or Why I Write),” Laurel Maxwell invokes the sentiments of Maya Angelou and Virginia Woolf as she deliberates on why writing is her creative medium.

You’ll also discover meditations on the necessity (and struggle) to write from authors such as Marisa Victoria Gedgaudas in her poem “Colygraphia”:

I must try to find the words. I must keep this promise to myself. I must pay the debt even if there is no one coming to collect it.

And writers who discuss the “unseen cloud” and “electric current” that guides our writing such as in “Zeitgeist,” a poem by Elyse Welles that kickstarts our series:

It taps us on our shoulder

Zaps us in our dreams and waking thoughts

It asks us,

“does this fit?”

Fit what? It’s baseless needs and wants.”

Thank you to all the writers who followed that glimmer of inspiration and kept their promises to write. I am amazed by the breadth of our collection and hope that a SPARK ignites in you as you read each published piece.

Thank you, Kapua Iao, Editor-In-Chief, and Annie Marhefka, Executive Director, for supporting me throughout this series. Thank you also to the Yellow Arrow Publishing board for their continued support on this endeavor. Thank you also to our wonderful editorial associates, readers, and interns: Sydney Alexander, Cecilia Caldwell, Angela Firman, Meg Gamble, Melissa Nunez, Mickey Revenaugh, Beck Snyder, and Andrea Stennett. These folks diligently read through submissions, worked on edits, and contributed amazing feedback for every single submission we received! Finally, thank you to every writer who submitted to the series and gave us the opportunity to read a slice of your story. We are delighted. We are grateful.

Since January 2020, Siobhan McKenna has worked for Yellow Arrow as an editorial associate and interviewer, among many other roles. She is now the Vignette Managing Editor. Siobhan earned her bachelor’s degree in creative writing and biology from Loyola University Maryland and a master’s degree in nursing from Johns Hopkins University. In addition to her work at Yellow Arrow, Siobhan is a travel nurse and is currently located in Seattle, Washington. Her writing can be found in Canthius, Intima, throughout the Yellow Arrow blog, and with Next Level Nursing.

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Yellow Arrow 6/30/23 Yellow Arrow 6/30/23

Her View Friday

single-author publications
single pieces in journals, anthologies, etc. as well as prizes/awards

You can support our authors by reading this blog and their work, sharing their news, and commenting below or on the blog. Congratulations to all the included authors. We are so proud of you!

Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling

“rebirth” BY tess kay from minneapolis, minnesota

Genre: poetry

Name of publication: Flora Fiction

Date published: Spring 2023

Type of publication: print and online

florafiction.com/literary-magazine

Find Tess on Facebook @tess.dajc.

“I am, you are” BY Rebecca Brock from leesburg, virginia

Genre: poetry

Name of publication: Split Rock Review

Date published: Spring 2023

Type of publication: online

splitrockreview.org/rebecca-brock

“Poetry Translation Folios with Work by Chinese Poet Zhang Zhihao” BY Yuemin He from chengdu, china

Genre: poetry translation

Name of publication: Copper Nickel

Date published: March 2023

Type of publication: print and online

copper-nickel.org/journal

“How Can a Culturally Responsive Discussion of the Five-Paragraph Essay Help Asian American Students Write Well?” BY Yuemin He from Chengdu, China

Genre: nonfiction

Name of publication: Inquiry

Date published: April 18, 2023

Type of publication: print and online

commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/vol26/iss1/6

PRIZES/AWARDS

“Scientists Determine Time Perception Varies in Animals” by rebecca brock from leesburg, virginia

Genre: poetry

Name of publication: 2023 Sweet Lit Poetry Contest finalist

Date published: June 2023

Type of publication: online

sweetlit.org/rebecca-brock-2023-poetry-contest

Find Rebecca on Twitter @wordsbyRB and Instagram @rebecca_brock.writer.

Yellow Arrow (past and present) board, staff, interns, authors, residents, and instructors alike! Got a publication coming out? Let us help celebrate for you in Her View Friday.

Single-author publications: here.

Single pieces and awards/prizes: here.

Please read the instructions on each form carefully; we look forward to congratulating you!

*****

Kapua Iao 6/27/23 Kapua Iao 6/27/23

Crying in Great Wall: The Simplification of the Asian-American Experience in Asian-American Media

By Sydney Alexander, written May 2023

Recently, I sat down for lunch with one of my good friends at college, and she mentioned that her mom had said to her that Everything Everywhere All at Once and Turning Red were essentially the same movie in different fonts. Both movies are about Asian Americans wrestling with their two identities, which are invariably at odds with another—being too Asian for America and too American for Asia—as well as the typical tiger-mom/rebellious-daughter conflicts, which are explored through some fantastical element, whether it be through red panda magic or Marvel-movie type action scenes. As I thought about it, I realized my friend’s mom was right.

I realized that there seems to be a reservoir of Asian caricatures that frequently emerge in popular movies. The fierce and overbearing tiger mom is mitigated by a goofy, quiet father-figure. A rebellious daughter is balanced out by the softer momma’s boy, as depicted in the short film Bao by Domee Shi. Take any combination of those caricatures; that book or movie probably exists.

I want to differentiate Asian American literature from Asian Americans writing Mainland literature. When Asian Americans write genre fiction about Asians, it frequently takes place in Mainland Asia. Asian American Literature itself—stories about Asian Americans in America, I feel, are what fall prey to caricatures and tropes.

I also realized that this pattern isn’t just limited to the movie screen; it is also pervasive in popular books. In the short story “Crying in H-Mart,” Michelle Zauer and her mother have a less strenuous relationship than the mother-daughter pairs in movies, but still the story centers around Zauner’s feelings of inadequacy and disconnectedness: she is not Asian enough, and losing her mother exacerbated those feelings. This is not to say I fully dislike these Asian-American narratives. Of course, “Crying in H-Mart” resonated with me; I’m half Chinese, but I don’t speak Mandarin. I grew up eating Chinese food but could never order it for myself. I just think that these being the only narratives about Asian Americans that seem to “make it” in mainstream media is detrimental. Yes, the dual identity is something Asian Americans face, including myself. But at the same time, I believe that the Asian American experience is much broader and richer than it is made out to be in mainstream media. I wonder, are Asian American writers and creators pigeon-holed by these depictions? If these narratives are the ones that sell, why write anything else?

One of the issues with 5th Chinese Daughter by Jade Snow Wong was how it portrayed Chinese immigrants as the “model minority,” and I see today’s caricatures as just another box into which Asian American writers may package themselves for consumption by today’s society. In the 20th century, Asian Americans leveraged their being a “model-minority” to whites in pop culture; today, Asian Americans find purchase in mainstream media by writing about the same, tried and true narrative, pulling from the same toolbox of tropes and caricatures. More broadly, there is a market now in pop culture for media about marginalized identities, but I feel like it is reductive for the same Asian American story to be told, over and over, as my friend’s mother put it, “in different fonts.”

I wanted to create a reading list and added authors writing both Mainland and Asian-American literature. It was quite difficult for me to put this together.

Crossings (1968) by Chuang Hua
The Poppy War (2019) by R.F. Kuang
How Much of these Hills is Gold (2021) by C. Pam Zhang
Minor Feelings (2021) by Cathy Park Hong
Beasts of a Little Land (2022) by Juhea Kim (juheakim.com)
Various poems, fiction, and nonfiction by Grace Shuyi Liew, see graceshuyiliew.com

C Pam Zhang succeeds the most; her novel follows two Chinese siblings grappling to survive in America’s 19th century wild west. I included a couple of writers who have a lot of material published online, which I believe speaks to the Asian-American experience without subscribing to the traditional narrative discussed above. This includes Grace Shuyi Liew and Juhea Kim. The Poppy War is fantasy that pulls from Chinese history; I would classify it as mainland lit, but I still believe it’s worth a read. RF Kuang also released a new book recently that is thematically more related to this blog, titled Yellowface (see a March 2023 Yellow Arrow blog from Natasha Saar here). Cathy Park Hong’s book is a collection of essays in which she dissects the treatment and experience of Asian-Americans further.

Sydney Alexander is a sophomore at Middlebury College in Vermont studying English and geography. She grew up in Ellicott City, Maryland, but enjoys the fact that she has lived all over the country, including North Carolina, California, and Wisconsin. Her work has been published online in Hunger Mountain Review.

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Kapua Iao 6/20/23 Kapua Iao 6/20/23

Community Building–Community Love: Reflections on KINDLING by Matilda Young

By Matilda Young

For Yellow Arrow Journal Vol. VIII, No. 1, KINDLING, we asked our authors to share what the idea of “kindling” means to them, and how it’s reflected in their work. We posted some on our Facebook/Instagram stories in May, but here are a few of the amazing responses we received:

Kathleen McTigue: One of the core values of our immigration justice network here in Boston (BIJAN) is this: “We fight for one another as family, because we are.” Though my activism for justice has always been driven by strong convictions, what has sustained and inspired me all these years is the love I’ve received from others. We are family and how we treat each other matters more than we sometimes know.

Al Kelly: I was drawn to the idea of the beginning of something. The idea that, before the fire, there is a spark, a thought. It takes those initial steps of gathering the wood and putting it all in one place which allows the person that comes behind to start the fire.

Thomasin LaMay: What drew me to this is that I spend lots of time with people, especially women/teens in southwest Baltimore, who are such beautiful folks with a huge capacity to care and love. They are overlooked in so many ways, and one of [the ways] is that they are too messed up to care and be involved in community. Honestly I have met some of the most loving and good people in hard places. Kindling for me is a way to startle some (more empowered) folks into taking another look: at how they think, who they find lovable, who is worth helping. And really, as a poet, to just celebrate what love is in all its messy and beautiful ways.

Sarah Piper: “CALLING” came to me in a moment of self-determination, of realizing no one’s answers outside of myself could resolve the questions I had. And even if I didn’t have those answers yet, I could incubate the uncertainty into something beautiful and powerful. And when I saw the issue theme of KINDLING, it evoked that same awakening, a return to the self as a beginning, a new start to build communities of our own ideals from the raw materials we already have available within us. And to set loose a freeing fire in the world.

I love all these answers, and how each of us are drawn to our content and to this theme by connected yet disparate things. We each have our own take, and we each found our way to one another.

Kindling to me is recognizing that we are all capable of creating and sharing light. The light you give touches lives in ways you may never know. I know that my life has been touched by the work shared in KINDLING, by our authors and artists, and by everyone who shared their work with us. It has been touched by the incredible Yellow Arrow staff and volunteers working tirelessly behind the scenes to make this journal a success. And it has been touched by everyone who showed up in support of the creators and the work, whether by attending the reading, or buying a copy, or telling the people in their life they should give KINDLING a read (and you should!).

I hope that the writing and cover art provide shifts in perspective, discoveries and challenges, stories to hold on to, encouragement to go out and keep doing the good work—whatever that means to you.

This is my first time guest editing a journal and from what I’ve seen from all the individuals who made this issue possible, it is truly an act of community building. It is a collective labor of love by people who share a common passion for writing and giving that writing a home. I could not be more grateful to be part of this community, and I hope we can all find connections here for years to come.

Paperback and PDF versions are available from the Yellow Arrow bookstore. Discounts are also available (here) if you would like to purchase copies for friends and family (minimum purchase of five). You can also search for Yellow Arrow Journal on any e-book device or anywhere you purchase books, including Amazon and most other distribution channels. And with this blog, the reading—Scorching, Speaking: A KINDLING reading—is available on the Yellow Arrow YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/GEygfG8v2XI. Make sure to subscribe to our channel and show everyone who read some love in the comments.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to KINDLING, and to the many wonderful submitters whose pieces we couldn’t fit into this issue.

Matilda Young (she/they) is a poet with an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland. She has been published in several journals, including Anatolios Magazine, Angel City Review, and Entropy Magazine’s Blackcackle. She enjoys Edgar Allan Poe jokes, not being in their apartment, and being obnoxious about the benefits of stovetop popcorn. Matilda’s poem “This Yes, This” was part of Yellow Arrow Journal FREEDOM, and Matilda was our .W.o.W. #7.

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Kapua Iao 6/13/23 Kapua Iao 6/13/23

Hope Beyond Galaxies: A Conversation with shantell hinton hill about Black girl magic & other elixirs

i learned how to vanish
into thin air
when i was little.
a witch taught me—
made me do it
because she couldn’t stand
the sight of me.

“Black girl magic”

As a woman with vision, shantell hinton hill is a voice that conjures renovation and hope. She is a pastor, social justice advocate, and writer who makes her home in Arkansas. To speak with shantell is to encounter a professional yet powerful passion for positive change. She actively engages and encourages her community (and audiences beyond) through her social media platforms.

Black girl magic & other elixirs, shantell’s debut poetry chapbook, is and now available for preorder (click here for wholesale prices). The poetry chapbook delivers a dynamic message that uplifts and empowers Black girls, Black women, and all those in this world impeded by systems that still default to oppression. Within, shantell speaks to the strength garnered from her experiences and the faith she has in herself, her community, and those devoted to seeking a better way for this world.

Melissa Nunez, Yellow Arrow author and interviewer, met with shantell over Zoom to discuss the development of her poetic voice and the power of music and spirituality that spark the magic found in her collection.

Who are some women writers who have influenced you?

First and foremost, I need to name the writers who inspire me who have passed on. Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler are my absolute all-time favorites. They both have been so formative to who I am as a person and my literary tastes. I would add bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Zora Neale Hurston who have inspired and shaped me as well. Lucille Clifton is a powerful poet I admire who informs some of my own work as a poet. I also appreciate and enjoy the world-building found in N.K. Jemisin’s writing. I tend to lean toward Black women authors, Black feminist authors. They have spoken to my soul for a very long time, and I am excited to lean into the lineage of who they are as writers and as people.

Many of your poems touch on the invisibility of the power-less, be that a child, a female, a person of color. How did you step out and develop your own voice? What inspired you to start writing?

Once I started to understand that the White gaze was really just a figment of the imagination of people who do not want to see Black girls, Black women, Black people be in power, I started to release myself from really feeling like I was powerless. I realized that my truth and my experiences were powerful, and it was necessary to speak them out loud and have that agency. I could not allow anyone to try to speak for me. That is something that propelled me to put pen to paper and start this collection. I wanted other people, particularly other Black girls and women, to understand the power that happens when we just speak our truth and do so boldly.

Some people believe that religion and women’s rights are like oil and water, they do not mix. Can you speak to the intersection of faith and feminism in your work?

I love that you asked this question. For me faith and feminism are absolutely connected. I proclaim a Christian faith and have since I was about the age of five. When I think about Jesus and his ministry, women were the hallmarks of that ministry. Not just in the miracles he performed but at his resurrection. Who were the first people to proclaim that he had risen? It was women. There are so many ways that you can read biblical text that make you think that women should remain silent in the church, that they have no business being in a place of authority, and that women’s rights would not be important. However, if you allow yourself to approach the biblical text with a feminist lens, one that really asks how a Black woman would experience this in our present-day context, you can see that there are many ways that Jesus was always looking out for women. Whether it was the woman who was “caught in adultery,” or the woman with the issue of blood, or the woman who was trying to seek healing for her daughter, he absolutely surrounded himself with women and wanted to include their gifts in his ministry. I really feel like there is room for faith and feminism to coexist and that religion and women’s rights don’t have to be oil and water. You just have to have a willingness to be in community with people who are different than you.

God be
keeping us
like auntie ‘nem.
and God
stay freeing us
like that sistafriend.

so, as for me—
i’ma call God
what God is.

“God, our mother-auntie-sistafriend”

The power of song is prominent in your work, some of which creates its own kind of music on the page. Can you expand on why song has been important for you personally and in your writing journey?

I think songs and music are so powerful because they can be portals to different times and dimensions. I can remember the first time I heard Whitney Houston’s albums riding in my mother’s car, in her 1992 Honda Accord, and I can just envision the details so vividly—the sounds, the smells, everything about that time in my life—simply from hearing that Whitney song, “I’m Every Woman.” Songs have a unique ability to connect us to not just different times and space but to different people. Even people who don’t speak English as their native language can enjoy Whitney or Chaka Khan or Aretha Franklin because there is something about the way the music speaks to the soul. In the same way that the music I grew up listening to spoke to my soul and edified my soul, I was trying to capture that in some of my poetry and in my stories. Whether you grew up as a Black girl or not, there is something in this story, in what the poem is telling you that connects with your soul. Hopefully you can listen to the music, and it can enhance that message even more.

There are many strong themes covered in small packages in your collection including several pieces where opposing ideas meet or converse, one example being the intersection of oppression within one’s own community and the support found there. Can you speak to the importance of acknowledging this dichotomy and how it has played out in your experience?

We must speak to those dichotomies because I feel that a lot of times, we stay silent about the ugly parts that we are experiencing. We feel that somehow, we are betraying our people, our community, our family, ourselves when we speak to those realities. But I do feel like the beauty of intergenerational dialogue, which is something that I hope you can really get a sense for in [Black girl magic & other elixirs], is that there is nothing wrong with critiquing and constructively building upon ways to get better. I think that we in the younger generation don’t want to stay silent about the things that we were told were shameful or that we should never speak about publicly. We want to see those things changed and I believe that there is power, there is so much power, in pulling down the strongholds of silence and speaking to what has happened to us. This allows for room for healing. That is a big reason why the oppression continues to persist and exist, because we haven’t talked about it, and we have not healed from it. How can you heal from something until you start to name the harm? I believe that speaking about both the oppression we feel in our communities and the amazing opportunities for support really just gives us a way to experience the fullness of our humanity, to experience healing, and also look toward to what a better and brighter future can look like.

“starshine and clay” is a powerful poem. Why did this phrase speak to you, and can you expand on how “Won’t you celebrate with me” by Lucille Clifton inspired your own poem?

“Won’t you celebrate with me” is a poem I read almost daily. I feel like as a woman of color, as a Black woman who lives in the South, every day something is really trying to make me second guess myself. Something that wants to make me feel like I am not enough, or that I am too much, or too angry, or too something, while simultaneously making me feel like I am not enough something. It is very hard to live in this reality sometimes. This poem reminds me that there is nothing in this world that can stop me from having what belongs to me. There is nothing in this world that can keep me from what the creator has destined for me. Just reading her poem where it says “what did I see to be except myself” and she talks about “this bridge between starshine and clay.” That part, that bridge, inspired [my] poem, with that image I take a step further into my own personal experience. I have a daughter now who is 18 months. While I am fearful about some of the things that are happening right now in our world, like with reproductive rights and all sorts of things that are not going well, I still have so much hope that she is going to be among the leaders and the warriors and the voices of the next generation who will say, “No more.” The generation who will not allow for these kinds of things to keep happening. I may not get to see some of the freedoms that she will see in her lifetime for myself and so I really wanted to write that poem just as a head nod, as a thank you to Lucille, and also kind of like a future-casting for what I hope will be true for my daughter one day.

starshine is not afraid of darkness
and clay is not afraid of contortion
that’s why we know them well.

“starshine and clay”

I also wanted to talk about “get out the galaxy, Black girl.” I love its placement before “starshine and clay,” and I would love to hear more about its inspiration and its form.

I am a huge Afrofuturism and science fiction nerd. I love N.K. Jemisin, I love Black Panther, Wakanda, I love The Woman King (although it is not Afrofuturist but more like an alternate view of history). There is something about imagining new worlds and getting beyond what sometimes we get stuck in here on earth. I wrote this poem as a play on words, like a joke, but also an encouragement for us to think futuristically. It is a call to realize that what we experience here in the United States doesn’t have to be this way, honestly. It really doesn’t. If thinking about what an otherworldly experience would look like for you helps you imagine what changes need to be made here in this present time, then that is what I hope this poem can do for you.

What is Black girl magic? Can you define the concept for your reader and how it shaped the collection?

Black girl magic is so much more than words on a paper, and I don’t even know if I can do it justice by trying to articulate it with a definition. I will try to describe it in ways that readers in my audience may understand it better. Black girl magic is the way that you see young Black girls Double Dutching between two jump ropes as if they are just having a conversation. They make it look easy. Black girl magic is the ways that you see a young Black woman or teenager have a bit of sass; there’s an essence to her that you can’t describe that you know is absolutely a part of her Blackness. Black girl magic is the way we can look at somebody and that other person, particularly if it is another Black person or Black woman, knows exactly what we are saying. It is a way of being and a way of existing that invites others to be fully who they are. It also gives us space and agency to just be fabulous in every single way possible. I think Black girl magic defies stereotypes and defies subjugation and logic. A lot of times people like to make it seem like it is something that can be bottled up, but it cannot be coopted. It is cultivated within us and within this communal experience we are all having as Black people, particularly in America right now. I can see it already in my daughter and she is only 18 months. She has a little attitude, and I am like, “Yes, girl.” Even though I want her to do what I want her to do, she has her own ideas about how things should be already. It’s like, “Ok, alright, I’ll give you that.” It’s just this pureness of spirit that cannot be squashed. In its best form it gives people permission to be their best selves.

Has writing (this collection and in general) shaped your outlook as a parent, a mother, and vice versa?

Yes. It has been a mirror for me because that idea of being seen and not heard has been so ingrained in me that there are times where I have to catch myself from being so heavy-handed with my daughter. First of all, she is too young to fully understand. Secondly, I am super clear along with my husband that we do not want to break her spirit in the ways that, unfortunately, older generations did with us. Whether it was making us be silent, or giving whoopings all the time when we don’t know why we are getting whoopings, or just all the superstitions and the ways of being that we were brought up in, we are really careful to not do that with her. I do think that writing this collection allowed me to be way more conscious about how we are building her agency and how we are asking ourselves hard question about our willingness to say “I am sorry” for things. Or how early we want to share with her the truth about gender and racial oppression. What are the things we want her to know and what are the things that we want to keep her safe and protected from as long as we possibly can? The collection has absolutely been a mirror for me as a new mom and hopefully it is something we can have a conversation about when she is old enough to understand the contents.

What advice do you have for other women writers?

I recently watched a movie on Netflix called The Luckiest Girl Alive. It was such a good movie. Mila Kunis’ character is a writer and at the end of the film she is having a conversation with her editor. He tells her the least she can do in her writing is to be honest. Don’t think about how they want to read it. Don’t think about what they want to say. What you have to do is be completely honest with every single part of it and give the people that. It resonated with me so much and it actually is how I approached the collection. It was just bare, it was raw, it was vulnerable and uncomfortable in some of the poems, but it was honest. I give that advice to other women writers: just be honest. We have had enough people writing for us, creating characters that do not explore our fullness and the range of our identities, and we have had enough of men telling us who and how we should be. I want to encourage women to write and write honestly.

because we
know the sky
ain’t all there is
to see here.

so we’ll just
keep on walking
with our own secret
headed to another galaxy.

full
of worlds
where we are
already free.

“get out the galaxy, Black girl”

Tell us about your vision for the cover?

It was really important to me that the cover be representative of the nostalgia and nuances of Black girlhood in the ‘90s. The roller skates, cassette tape, and perfume all communicate a certain essence of “being” that one can feel, smell, and hear. Likewise, the pictures of my younger self and my present-day self represent much of my journey of becoming and self-possession—signifying the power in reclaiming the little girls that live inside of us while empowering the women we have fought tooth and nail to belong to ourselves.

How did you connect with Yellow Arrow and what did the process of submitting your work feel like to you?

My publishing journey has been long and filled with rejections. I’ve written so many manuscripts across varying genres and have not found a home nor an agent. I thought I’d take a break from the grind and try something new, so I began writing a few poems. When I realized how much I loved it and that there was a noticeable theme tracing girlhood to womanhood, I decided to research opportunities to publish the collection that would honor my voice and the fullness of the collection. I came across Yellow Arrow and was encouraged by the mission and vision of the organization. And I have not been disappointed by the publishing process with them at all . . . working with Yellow Arrow (after being selected) has been one of the most pleasant and supportive experiences I’ve ever had as it related to my writing. They truly do prioritize women’s voices and provide a care-filled approach to walking alongside writers. I am forever grateful for this experience.

We currently have open submissions for chapbooks we would like to publish in 2024. Do you have any advice for the women-identifying authors submitting their chapbooks?

Just be yourself, write your truth, and do it even if it’s scary. I found that vulnerability in my writing was both freeing and debilitating, but it became so beautiful to see the finished product. Trust your instincts. There is a still, small voice inside you that will guide your pen and give you power, if you let it.

Do you have any new projects or current projects you are working on that you would also like to share with Yellow Arrow readers?

I am in the middle of writing a proposal for a book called Love Auntie: Parables and Prayers for Abundant Whole Being. It is a nonfiction book for people of faith who want to explore decolonizing their spirituality and cultivate new disciplines for a faith that shifts and really wants to be more inclusive and open-minded to people. That is my next project, and I am hopeful a publisher will pick it up soon.

You can find more about shantell hinton hill and her work for radical good at shantelhhill.com and can preorder your copy of Black girl magic & other elixirs from Yellow Arrow Publishing. Thank you, shantell and Melissa, for sharing your conversation.

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Kapua Iao 6/6/23 Kapua Iao 6/6/23

Review of Becoming by Michelle Obama

Read Bailey Drumm’s review of Becoming by Michelle Obama, published in Yellow Arrow Journal’s Vol. V, No. 3 (Re)Formation issue (fall 2020). Information about where to find Becoming and (Re)Formation is below.

By Bailey Drumm

“Are you enough? Yes.” This mantra rings throughout Becoming by Michelle Obama, as she navigates the reader through the benefits of being truly, honestly one’s intended self. In order to address this, she chose to split her book into three sections: “Becoming Me,” which discusses her childhood leading up to her dating Barack Obama; “Becoming Us,” which encapsulates the beginning of their relationship up to President Obama’s inauguration in 2009; and “Becoming More,” which summarizes the Obama family’s time spent in the White House. She’s been a daughter, a mother, a wife, an attorney, a first lady, and an author, but what Obama assures readers is that being their genuine selves is their most attractive form. That’s what others want, and what they should want for themselves. A person will shine once their core being is defined.

Obama opens the book with “Becoming Me,” mentioning that she used to love when people would ask her, as a child, what she wanted to be when she grew up, because she had the perfectly constructed answer to impress adults. Now, as an adult, she hates the question, because growing up isn’t finite. Who we are, and what we are, are many things. We become different people as the world around us changes, and we form and reform ourselves around it.

After being stuck inside for months, I, as I’m sure many others have, became all too acquainted with my ‘alone’ self, versus who I became in a crowd. Currently, we are shedding our work masks and learning not to apologize for the inconveniences we have chosen to love. An essential part of being yourself according to Obama. We all have families to take care of and passions to support. Obama even brings up a time when her husband missed a flight back to Washington, D.C., to vote on a crime bill because of a sick child. Though professionally it may have been frowned upon, his family was (and is) his core value. And it is these small decisions and sacrifices explored in “Becoming Us,” that serve as a nice reminder that as humans, sometimes it’s okay to disappoint others, as long as we are following what we truly believe in.

Finally, in “Becoming More,” Obama discusses the lack of a guidebook to being the first lady, just as there is no guidebook to navigating life. Pointing this out is the first step to acknowledging that you have to make your own path. During her time as first lady, distributing information on nutrition, the process of food production, and general public health was Obama’s priority. Unfortunately, the world around her took more notice to what she was wearing than what she cared to address. To combat this, Obama made a point to present herself well—she even got a ‘glam squad’—in hopes that the public would notice the initiatives she was promoting as much as her image.

From a young age, Obama was encouraged to learn and advocate for herself. In fact, this mandate became another platform of hers, along with advocating for female role models, while in the White House. Over time, she came to realize not all children had the advantage of being helped at home. This lack of guidance caused some children to be devalued at school. She states, “Hearing them, I realized that [those with at-home guidance] weren’t at all smarter than the rest of us. They were simply emboldened, floating on an ancient tide of superiority, buoyed by the fact that history had never told them anything different.” A desire to impress (to emulate) can lead a child to accomplish things they may not have had the drive to do alone. Not only do her initiatives teach children the skills they are seeking out, but also the confidence to succeed in areas and situations they may feel intimidated by, rather than doubtful of their own worth. Obama wanted to make sure children who may have hidden potentials have the chance to speak and be heard through advocacy and mentoring programs.

In Becoming, she expresses that, growing up, her family was a group of planners, which made her an avid planner as well. Throughout the book though, she does not shy away from recalling difficult scenarios she was unable to plan around. In her mid 20s, she lost both a good friend and her father close together. Around the same time, she was assigned to be Barack’s mentor at a Chicago law firm, Sidley Austin LLP; at first she was less than impressed by him, but over time began to fall in love, changing the course of her career and the life she had originally planned. Though she studied her hardest, at one point, she even failed the Illinois bar on her first try. And, in her mid 30s, she even had to go through the heartbreak of a miscarriage.

Though these events are hard to read about, especially at a time like we are currently experiencing, and as a planner myself, it does offer a sense of comfort. There is a vast amount of ideas currently evolving around us, in our country and culture, that have to be taken in stride. But we can plan only day by day and take the unexpected on the chin. We aren’t perfect, we are just ourselves. These stories she presents, and Becoming itself, explore the fact that we need to get rid of the failing stigma in order to truly succeed. We can try to plan, but sometimes the universe has its own plan. People function better when honest, when we express our downfalls, rather than when we put up a front and go through trauma alone.

In owning your true self, you need to allow your mind to wander at night, be it thinking about a lost relative or income inequalities. 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. “Becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim,” Obama writes. “I see it instead as a forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.” In other words, never stop changing in order to continue being (becoming) true to your genuine self. Never stop reforming.

A PDF of (Re)Formation is available in the Yellow Arrow bookstore or you can find the issue as a paperback or ebook through most online distributors. Becoming was published by Crown Publishing (2018; 448 pages). For more information, visit Becomingmichelleobama.com.

Bailey Drumm is a fiction writer whose written work has been featured in Grub Street and Welter, and digital art displayed as the cover art for the 2017 edition of Welter. She is an MFA 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 and can be found at bailey-drumm.square.site.

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Kapua Iao 5/30/23 Kapua Iao 5/30/23

Show Us Your Spark: Chapbook Submissions Open at Yellow Arrow Publishing

At Yellow Arrow Publishing, we believe every woman has a story to tell and every story is worth telling. And with that sentiment, we are excited to reopen submissions for chapbooks to be published in 2024. From May 29 to June 30, Yellow Arrow will accept submissions of poetry chapbooks and, *new* this year, creative nonfiction chapbooks by authors who identify as women from around the world. Given this and changes to the process this year, we wanted to provide some details here. We can’t wait to see what you send to us.

Chapbook submissions may be poetry, creative nonfiction (e.g., personal narratives, essays, reflections, flash prose, and micro memoirs), or hybrid, no more than 50 pages long and written by authors who identify as women. In general, creative nonfiction should be between 15,000 and 25,000 words total (there is no minimum or maximum number of pieces to include, use your discretion) and poetry between 20 and 50 poems; hybrid can be any combination.

This year, we have also added a sliding scale fee to chapbook submissions. We aim to ensure that the journey to publication is accessible to all writers, but also want to have the ability to support and promote our authors throughout the year. When we publish an author, that writer becomes a member of the Yellow Arrow community, and we do all we can to promote their voice, share their story, and nurture their creative journey to publication.

$0: Reserved for BIWOC authors (by checking this box, you acknowledge that you are a BIWOC author and will not attach a receipt)

$5: Reserved for those experiencing financial hardship (financial hardship means this is what you can afford right now, no questions asked)

$10: Standard submission fee

As a small, independent press, our ability to compensate authors has been limited in the past, but with the addition of a small fee, we anticipate being able to provide our authors with a monetary incentive to go along with the editorial and promotional support we have always offered.

Finally, as our volume of submissions has grown over the past few years, we have decided to accept submissions through a Google form (here) rather than email. The form is simple with required and optional questions, including name, bio/personal introduction, and demographics. You will be asked to upload your submission as an attachment to the form along with your fee receipt (if required). By sending your completed submission you agree to the following statements:

You are a writer who identifies as a woman
You have read and submitted within the guidelines

Our writers and readers come from all walks of life and so do we. We are taking steps across our portfolio to increase representation and give greater visibility to the voices of underrepresented women-identifying storytellers and take much into consideration when creating our procedures and guidelines. When we review submissions we look for writing that tells your story. We love pieces that feel authentic, that give us a window into who a writer is and what has shaped them, and that connect us to them.

You can find our guidelines and some FAQs at yellowarrowpublishing.com/cbsubmissions along with the YAP Chapbook Submissions form. We can’t wait to see how your piece sparks our inspiration along with yours. If you have any questions, please contact us at submissions@yellowarrowpublishing.com.

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Yellow Arrow 5/26/23 Yellow Arrow 5/26/23

Her View Friday

single-author publications
single pieces in journals, anthologies, etc. as well as prizes/awards

You can support our authors by reading this blog and their work, sharing their news, and commenting below or on the blog. Congratulations to all the included authors. We are so proud of you!

Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling

“Girl on a Beach” BY Sara Palmer from Baltimore, maryland

Genre: poetry

Name of publication: The Ekphrastic Review

Date published: May 15, 2023

Type of publication: online

ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/girl-on-a-beach-by-sara-palmer

Find Sara on Facebook @sara.p5455 and @sara.palmer.5455.

“Finger Painting” BY Heather Brown Barrett from Virginia

Genre: poetry

Name of publication: Bubble Literary Magazine

Date published: May 19, 2023

Type of publication: online

bubblelitmag.wixsite.com/bubble/jobs-4/heather-brown-barrett

Find Heather on Instagram @heatherbrownbarrett.

Yellow Arrow (past and present) board, staff, interns, authors, residents, and instructors alike! Got a publication coming out? Let us help celebrate for you in Her View Friday.

Single-author publications: here.

Single pieces and awards/prizes: here.

Please read the instructions on each form carefully; we look forward to congratulating you!

*****

Kapua Iao 5/23/23 Kapua Iao 5/23/23

Art as Lifeline/Embracing Art: A Conversation with L.M. Cole

By Melissa Nunez, written March 2023

I am as polished as silver,

which is to say, only with great effort.

I am as folded as paper planes,

which is to say, carefully, carelessly creased. – “Which is to say”

Have you ever wondered what people from the Renaissance or Reformation era would look like with pastry for heads? Or decided red-winged butterflies are best suited bursting forth from anatomical hearts? What about creating a cento poem out of lines from a movie like Balto? These are just a few of the innovative works of artist, author, and editor L.M. Cole. Her work covers topics like self-discovery, the nature of relationships, and the defining moments of life. She balances weighty themes with a lighthearted flare in her hybrid works. Cole’s first chapbook SALT MOUTH MOSS QUEEN debuted in September 2022. We were also pleased to publish her work in Yellow Arrow Vignette AWAKEN, a Yellow Arrow online series. L.M. and I were able to connect over Zoom in March for an inspiring video chat where we bonded over a love of nature and the way writing helps us through the chaotic tides life can sling our way.

Who are some women-identified writers who inspire you?

I am really drawn to other nature writers. I didn’t intend to become one, but apparently, I am one. Mary Oliver and Edna St. Vincent Millay really inspire me. I love the work of Lucille Clifton. Ada Limón speaks to me as well. These are some powerful voices that have a lot of important things to tell us.

What would you pinpoint as the moment you knew you were a writer/artist?

I have had a nontraditional tumble into writing. I didn’t consider myself a writer at all until high school when I took a creative writing class. There was a poetry section at the end where we made a chapbook collection of different forms and my teacher wrote on the back page of it, “You should never stop writing.” That really touched me, but I was not in a place when I was younger to believe in myself at all. Like a lot of women, with my upbringing and sense of self, I didn’t have the confidence to really channel that into anything useful. I didn’t pursue writing until around 2021. My whole world exploded personally. My family was very low income and writing was a thing that my husband at the time felt wasn’t going to make money and so wasn’t worth doing. I had gotten older and wanted to get back into writing, but he felt it would not lead anywhere productive. After eight years of that, everything changed. He was out of the picture, and I had to learn to be the best me I could be for myself and my kids. It has been a rocky journey this past year. Learning and relearning how best to handle everything. Poetry during this time really was a lifesaver, a buoy in life’s storm. Poetry and writing kept me from drowning. Somewhere in that last year and a half is when I decided I needed this, writing, creating, for myself. That makes me better in all aspects of my life. I really embraced poetry, exploring it, and developing my craft from there.

I was bottled green and seasick

salted in the waves and you

have pulled me to shore

to say oh lovely thing – “Post-Vitrification”

What drives your visual art?

Visual art is new for me. I feel I have developed a recognizable style over the past year. I was playing with it for a few months before the start of my magazine, Bulb Culture Collective. When my coeditor Jared [Povanda] and I started this project, I decided I wanted to make custom art for promotion on Twitter. I make all those images myself and I feel that has really homed in on what I’m trying to do. For me, the aesthetic is bringing classic Old World into modern thinking. All my images are found from public access books. I don’t take images from things later than 1950. I will spend hours every week going through these sources. I clip whatever speaks to me and go back in later and start putting things together. The aesthetic is full of warm tones: oranges, reds, yellows. I like warm tones and classic 1950 style.

When do you feel a concept necessitates the hybrid form, both visual and textual?

Many times, if I am going to make a hybrid, I have a micro piece, a very short poem, or some page of text that I feel is going to make a good erasure. I think it can be compared to people who title their poems in a way to give you more insight into the text. That is what you are doing for those hybrid pieces. You are pulling images to give more context to the poem and the words, even if it is unexpected. I have some pieces that are from a physical textbook called Meat Through the Microscope. I have a bunch of erasure sourced from there. I found one phrase I really liked but it was very short so I started looking around to see what I could do with it. The phrase itself was something about time immemorial and this universal truth: absence. This made me think of things leaving and fading away. I ended up with images of leaves in the process of dying and drying out. It became a very autumnal poem. Without that, there are a lot of ways to read into it and it could be very heavy. Tying back into nature gives it more of a universal feeling and less of a mourning feeling. You can do that a lot with images when adding to small poems and snippets. You can take it in different directions and experiment. Sometimes it does not turn out how you imagined. I might not like these leaves and will instead find something like an empty doorway. There are a lot of things to explore with that. It opens more avenues for furthering poetry as well. You might start and find an image and in the process of tying it together you might become inspired to expand on it and then it is not a micro anymore. Art and poetry speak very well to each other. I love to experiment with it.

What advice do you have for those interested in creating hybrid works?

There are no hard and fast rules for it. The way it works for me is starting with an image or poem/phrase that I love. I think you need to have clear idea of one or the other before you can get going. I have a lot of drafts and messes in folders that aren’t quite right because I did not have that clear direction and it got all jumbled. What works for me is to have that direction from the start with at least one of the components.

What is it like to work at different magazines? How did you get involved? And how do you balance the work of editor/reader/creator?

I started with reading for Moss Puppy Magazine. That was my first foray into working with magazines. They were looking for readers during their last issue, Blades, and I had already submitted poems that were accepted into the issue. I worried that might be a problem, but it was not at all. It was a very natural transition into the team. They are all so welcoming and kind. The editor is great to work with and they have multiple readers to help balance things out. Life happens sometimes and things do slip through the cracks. I have three kids and five pets, and everyone has appointments and activities and sometimes I can’t get everything done. Everyone being so understanding is the amazing thing in this writing community we have. I think the same would be true of most places. We are all writers with our own lives, and we respect that.

I also read briefly for Tree and Stone which was a cool experience. I was reading fiction, which I don’t have a lot of experience writing. I made it clear that I was interested in the position and came with more of a lyrical poetry slant but would like to learn more. I think that is the key to getting into many of these opportunities. You must be open and willing to learn because things evolve, and you see so many different perspectives and work from so many writers. It is important to stay open to that.

I started Bulb Culture with Jared because we both had work that had lost their publication, were in magazines that had disappeared. What do people do then? What do we do because things like this do happen and keep happening? We saw this need for people losing the publication of their works, now technically previously published but the original magazine is gone so it’s in a weird limbo. We started [it] because we needed a place in the community to send previously published work that is no longer available to an audience, a place where writers know their work is going to have a good home. That is what we’ve been striving to do. At first, we were only taking work from places that had closed, gone dark, or appeared in print only. Recently we opened to any previously published work, regardless, as long as it is over two years old. We’ve had a good response, steady submissions, not huge by any means, but it has been nice. It can be hard with decision-making because Jared and I are both so accommodating of each other and can go back and forth at times, but we are also very encouraging, and we manage to get it all done.

It can be difficult to balance all of that and right now, but I’ve surrounded myself with very understanding people whom I consider my friends as well. Everyone is generous about giving me some slack when I’m scrambling to meet deadlines. We make it work.

I am what I am making myself

green brown gold in the wilderness

salt mouth moss queen

I am forest path

I am refracted shine

I am made

I am in the making. – “I Am”

Let’s talk about your debut chapbook. What inspired the title and order of collection?

Salt Mouth Moss Queen came from a poem in the chapbook that I had written for Messy Misfits Club. It was a way of writing about my transition and growth as a person and also my connection in nature. The poem itself travels along the same lines my life has. I grew up in the Midwest where everything is flat and gray, but I still consider it beautiful. Wheat fields and gravel roads are still very much a part of me. Then it transitions into now. I live in North Carolina, which is a recent change. I haven’t even lived here a year, but things are so different. It felt like a new beginning and a new me and I was learning these new things about myself.

“Salt mouth” is an idea that resonates and comes back and echoes in a few poems I’ve written. I have always been very drawn to the ocean, but I never lived close enough to it to see it. I had never visited the ocean until after my move last year. On my first visit, after climbing over the sand dunes, the first time I saw the water, heard it, and smelled it, I just started crying. My partner and kids were asking me if I was OK. I was like, “It’s everything.” It was such a transformational thing for me. I was always drawn to it even though I had never seen it and to have that affirming experience with it was huge.

“Moss queen” just encapsulates my desire to lay out in the grass all day, that connection to the earth. It came from trying to describe myself as a person in poem form and give people a glimpse into my identity. The pieces in this collection follow a trajectory of my move and the ups and downs of my life over the last year or two. There is loss and pain and a rediscovering of love and hope. It shows that even through all that very human experience the link with nature is still there. I wanted that connection very prominent throughout.

I love the way you laid out the significance of salt and the ocean. Can you expand a little on the meaning of moss for you?

I think moss for me is a symbol of resilience because it is always there. I was recently out at Sundress Farm for my residency, and everything is gray out there. It is still cold in Knoxville, but there is just moss everywhere. It is vibrant, green, constant. I feel like the last year I’ve really had to embrace resilience where I can find it, so I think moss really became a symbol for me for persisting.

Nature imagery in general is rich in your work. Why does it speak to you?

The reason nature always crops up in my poetry is because I am disabled. I suffer with chronic pain and mental illness so a lot of times nature, experiencing it, writing about it, works as kind of a grounding exercise for me to get out of my own pain. I can think about cardinals instead of how much my back hurts right now. It is very much distracting and also healing to interact with nature and converse so deeply with it.

I’ve been letting things slip

from behind my teeth, through

my clenched jaw, like ants

through crack in the concrete

trying to get to the flower bed

I’m holding onto for dear life. – “Ants in the Begonias”

In a piece like “Ants in the Begonias,” the metaphor is everything. How do you go about finding the metaphor? Is it something that just happens to do have to work at it at times?

Usually if there is going to be a strong metaphor in a poem that is the thing that comes to me first before I even start writing. I will think, “oh, that one is good,” and I’ll write around it. This poem holds a lot of my experience with healing and going to therapy after everything went down in my personal life in 2021. It has that connection with nature for grounding. I think you can see that here very prominently. This connection with nature is really the driving force of the healing and is intertwined with the emotion. It just happened, which is not always the case, but when I have a good metaphor, I start there.

How much of yourself do you think you can encapsulate in any one poem or collection?

That’s a good question. I think that there are a lot of parts of me that haven’t made it into poetry yet. I don’t know if it is because I am afraid of being that vulnerable or I feel it is not going to be relatable to anybody. I think that poetry is a very unique vehicle for putting yourself onto the page. There are so many ways that you can capture yourself through a thought, a word, an image, a memory. Looking at “Ants in the Begonias” again, it only happened because the house I grew up in when I was little had a stone deck and two begonias on each side of the stairs. I always thought they were so pretty but there were ants everywhere. That is why that became such a central image for that poem. There are so many ways you can put yourself into a poem that I feel are unique. I know you can do it with CNF and memoir, but poetry lets you kind of wink and nod at the part of yourself you are putting out there. There is always that mystery of the identity of the speaker. Is it the poet or just a persona? Are you the I? You can be a little more vulnerable. In September, I was flying back to North Dakota to see my dad for his birthday, and I was sitting next to someone on the plane who asked me what I do. We had some sort of sixth-degree connection to someone in my hometown, and then you have to make idle chitchat in this tiny tin can in the sky. She asked me what I do, and I told her I am a poet. She said, “That is so cool.” And my response was, “You just have to be really willing to embarrass yourself in public.” Which made her kind of back track on that. To put your writing out there is a very vulnerable act. People are so nuanced and complex it is hard to fit everything of yourself in one poem unless you are writing an epic. However, if you are in a certain headspace, you can definitely put 100% of that self in that moment into that piece. It is a matter of unlocking that space and staying open to the resulting vulnerability.

What is the best writing advice you can share with our readers?

Don’t be so demanding of yourself. For many women-identified creatives, we really want to be amazing at something or not do it at all. If it is not perfect, if it is not living up to a perceived standard that we have, we can get disheartened and be afraid to put ourselves out there. But we just have to. Writing and art are so important, and everyone has a different perspective. Don’t be so hard on yourself! Make your art and put it out there. You put yourself in it, your love in it, and it is going to resonate with somebody. I don’t think I will ever be poet laureate or anything, but I put my little poems out there. If three people read them, then I am good! Somebody read it. That’s great. Just don’t have such rigid expectations for yourself. I fall into that same trap of thinking I need to be X amount successful or else, but it is not true. Embrace the art for art’s sake.

What makes writing worth it? For L.M. Cole it is knowing she is being true to herself, her best self, and following the inner call to create. Connecting with people through art, however big or small the amount, is powerful. You can follow L.M. Cole as she continues her writing journey by connect with her on Twitter @_scoops_ or her website at poetlmcole.com. You can purchase a copy of her chapbook SALT MOUTH MOSS QUEEN on Amazon.

Melissa Nunez is a Latin@ writer and homeschooling mother of three from the Rio Grande Valley. Her essays have appeared in magazines like Hypertext and Scrawl Place. She has work forthcoming in Musing Publications, The Hooghly Review, and others. She writes an anime column for The Daily Drunk, interviews for Yellow Arrow Publishing, and is a staff writer for Alebrijes Review. You can follow her on Twitter @MelissaKNunez.

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“the becoming” by lucy M. Logsdon from illinois

Journals/Anthologies/Zines

Chapbooks/Zines

Full-length manuscripts

Online Publication

“gray” by Sara Palmer from baltimore, maryland

“Tamales on Mars, The Optics of Space Travel, Regarding the Memory of Earth: Speculative poems” by angela acosta from Gainesville, Florida

“No Whimpering” by Ute carson from Austin, texas

PRIZES/AWARDS

“Tamales on Mars, The Optics of Space Travel, Regarding the Memory of Earth: Speculative poems” by angela acosta from Gainesville, Florida

Cecelia (Cece) Caldwell

From Pittsfield, Massachusetts

What do you do? I do all sorts of things. Often, I work with the submissions we receive. I format, proofread, and copyedit chapbooks and short pieces. Additionally, I help work on social media campaigns, blog posts, and chapbook promotions.

Where do you go to school? I go to Middlebury College, a small liberal arts college in Vermont. I’m a rising junior!

Vickie Tu

Lives in Silver Spring, Maryland

Where do you go to school? I go to University of Maryland, College Park and plan to graduate Spring 2024.

What are you currently working on? Outside of Yellow Arrow, I work two part time jobs and attend school. Additionally, I am working on creating my own literary blog and website where I can share my adoration for literature with fellow bookworms.

“rebirth” BY tess kay from minneapolis, minnesota

“I am, you are” BY Rebecca Brock from leesburg, virginia

“Poetry Translation Folios with Work by Chinese Poet Zhang Zhihao” BY Yuemin He from chengdu, china

“How Can a Culturally Responsive Discussion of the Five-Paragraph Essay Help Asian American Students Write Well?” BY Yuemin He from Chengdu, China

PRIZES/AWARDS

“Scientists Determine Time Perception Varies in Animals” by rebecca brock from leesburg, virginia

“Girl on a Beach” BY Sara Palmer from Baltimore, maryland

“Finger Painting” BY Heather Brown Barrett from Virginia

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