The Pushcart Prize represents an incredible opportunity for Yellow Arrow to further showcase and support our authors. Our staff is committed to letting our authors shine. Every writer has a story to tell and every story is worth telling. We are so proud of everyone we publish at Yellow Arrow. Without further ado, let’s meet the Yellow Arrow 2026 Pushcart Prize Nominees!
Emily Decker is a writer in Baltimore, Maryland. Her poems have appeared in Yellow Arrow Journal, Full Bleed, Hole in the Head Review, and Campfire Stories: Chesapeake Bay. Her debut collection Homing: Poems is available through Yellow Arrow. She holds a bachelor’s degree in literature and a master’s degree in secondary English education from Georgia State University. When she’s not writing or reading, she is usually out on the Chesapeake Bay, on or behind a stage, or plotting her next adventure. Follow Emily on Instagram @emadeck or at emilydeckerpoetry.com. We nominated “Finding Home in a Villanelle” from Homing: Poems.
Johanna Elattar is a writer from Brooklyn whose work explores memory, faith, and resilience through intimate, character-driven storytelling. Influenced by early childhood experiences in Alexandria and a life shaped by displacement, survival, and devotion to truth, she writes toward quiet revelations and the subtle moments that define a life. Her writing has appeared in Yellow Arrow Journal, Lunch Ticket, Muslim Matters, and other publications, and she was recently featured in an Oxford University Press anthology. Elattar believes in the dignity of ordinary lives, the endurance of the human spirit, and the duty to bear witness. She currently lives in upstate New York with her rescue animals and is at work on a novella. Her CNF “Under the Siren: Alexandria, 1973” from Yellow Arrow Journal KAIROS was nominated for the Pushcart.
Ann marie Houghtailing has a graduate’s degree (ALM) in American literature from Harvard University Extension. She has delivered a TEDx Talk entitled Raising Humans, and performed her critically acclaimed one woman show, Renegade Princess, in New York, Chicago, Santa Fe, San Francisco, and San Diego. Houghtailing is a visual artist and cofounder of the firm Story Imprinting. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Huffington Post, Daily Worth, XO Jane, San Diego Business Journal, Yahoo! Finance, and Thought Catalog. Ann marie’s chapbook Little by Little was released in April 2025 and can be found in the Yellow Arrow bookstore. Yellow Arrow nominated “Little by Little” from Little by Little.
Majiq Vu Mai (magic/they/he/we) is a multiplicity of madness, writing themselves alive. An alchemist of flesh and memory, they write whatever burns inside of them like a searing ache and find relief in giving voice to their truths through language. For Majiq—we write to collect the pieces of ourselves we have lost along the way and to remember our possibilities through the creative act of storytelling. We nominated Majiq’s CNF “The Metamorphosis” from Yellow Arrow Journal UNFURL for the Pushcart.
Vic Nogay is a Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction nominated writer from Ohio. Her work has been published in Gone Lawn, Tiny Molecules, Fractured Lit, Lost Balloon, and other journals. She is the author of the micropoetry chapbook under fire under water (tiny wren, 2022) and is the microeditor of Identity Theory. Find her online @vicnogaywrites or haunting rural roadsides where the wildflowers grow. Vic’s chapbook Naming a Dying Thing was released in October 2025 and can be found in the Yellow Arrow bookstore. We nominated “Appalachians” from Naming a Dying Thing.
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.
Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts. To learn more about publishing, volunteering, or donating, visit yellowarrowpublishing.com.