Yellow Arrow Vignette | Blaze 2025
Welcome to the Yellow Arrow Publishing online series, Yellow Arrow Vignette BLAZE.
yellowarrowpublishing.com/news/vignette-release-follow-spark-ember-blaze-2025
For our fourth issue we chose the theme of BLAZE, our 2025 yearly value. We asked submitters to send in work that exemplifies BLAZE. The heat of passion. The beginning of a flame. The way the wind takes a spark or an ember and carries it, igniting more fire (or change) elsewhere. The changing of seasons. Transformation. The concept of being in heat and the way our sexual desires can send out their own strong signals—a blaze of pheromones. A blaze of glory. Or, of course, the temptation to burn it all down.
With Vignette BLAZE, we wanted to return to some of the earliest goals of Yellow Arrow: circulating and augmenting the creative work of voices and themes that aren’t heard loudly enough. And as part of the return to our roots, we wanted to showcase writers who live in or are otherwise connected to our home base of Baltimore. We want our readers to experience the spectrum of voices that Charm City offers. Enjoy the issue!
Listen to the author-curated BLAZE playlist on Spotify while you read
The cover art for Vignette BLAZE is called “Manchada” by Clara Longo de Freitas. The artist’s statement follows.
“The theme BLAZE suggested a release, the expansion of something ‘conspicuously brilliant.’ What happens after that initial spark? The one that leads to combustion, that jolts you and your surroundings into movement. BLAZE also suggests shedding light. I painted a woman radiating her insides out, revealing herself, albeit not completely graceful. She is burnt and hurt and bruised. But I doubt she regrets it. Because BLAZE is also about direction, and it doesn’t look like she will be going back.”
Longo de Freitas is an illustrator and writer. Her editorial artwork has been published at The Washington Post, The Hill, and NPR. She enjoys painting with acrylic and drawing with ink in her free time, especially rats and bats. She is open for commissions. Discover more of her work at claralongodefreitas.com. Originally from Brazil, she has called Baltimore, Maryland, her home for three years, where she lives with her 9-year-old Brittany Spaniel.
We hope you see the same burning for the future in “Manchada” that you see in the poetry and creative nonfiction in BLAZE. Click on the images below to weave your way through this issue. Thank you to our Yellow Arrow staff and the Yellow Arrow community for support and for helping to share the creative voices on the issue’s pages.
Learn more about the conception of BLAZE and Yellow Arrow Vignette:
Yellow Arrow Vignette BLAZE 2025 by Vignette Managing Editor Catharine Robertson
BLAZE-ing the Path: The Importance of Yellow Arrow Publishing and Yellow Arrow Vignette by Vignette Intern Sophia Graney
