Yellow Arrow Publishing Blog

Kapua Iao 6/9/26 Kapua Iao 6/9/26

Spotlighting Indigenous Independent Press

By Avery Wood, written December 2025

At Yellow Arrow, we believe in uplifting marginalized voices and supporting the intersection of womanhood. In this blog, I focus on giving a spotlight to independent presses and publishers that support or are run by Indigenous peoples, with a focus on poetry and prose, as well as history, heritage, and children’s books. As an organization dedicated to womanhood in all its forms, Yellow Arrow wants to use its platform to highlight incredible Indigenous-led presses whose work we admire.

Abalone Mountain Press

In a recent blog, I spotlighted Abalone Mountain Press, a women-owned independent publishing house created by Amber McCrary, a Diné woman. McCrary is a Red House Clan born for Mexican people who was originally from Shonto, Arizona and raised in Flagstaff, Arizona. Through various multimedia works such as chapbooks, zines, anthologies, coloring books, their blog and podcast, and their Abalone Writing Circle, Abalone Mountain Press supports and uplifts Indigenous voices in the Phoenix area and beyond. Their work includes themes like Indigenous culture, mental health, queerness, spirituality, the natural world, Native masculinity, and more. Find Abalone Mountain Press at abalonemountainpress.com or on Instagram and Facebook @abalonemountainpress.

Chickasaw Press

If you are interested in more history and heritage nonfiction, you can support Chickasaw Press, operated by Chickasaw natives. Housed in Ada, Oklahoma, it publishes about Chickasaw history, culture, and language. Their imprint, White Dog Press, established in 2013, explores popular genres and creative projects and includes children’s literature, historical fiction, young adult, poetry, and other creative works. In 2023, they further expanded with another imprint, Leaning Pole Press, that acts as an outlet for Chickasaw authors and scholars in a variety of genres and subjects beyond the Chickasaw historical and cultural experience. You can find countless Chickasaw Press resources available on their website at aachompa.com/pages/chickasawpress, including an app (Choctaw Hymns App), a Chickasaw dictionary, a national curriculum, a Chickasaw Nation Culture and Humanities YouTube, and a language learning software called Rosetta Stone. You can also find them on Instagram and Facebook @chicksawpress.

Kamehameha Publishing

Another nonfiction and education-focused Indigenous publishing company is Kamehameha Publishing, a Hawaiian-owned and operated publisher setting out to amplify ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, ʻike Hawaiʻi, and kuanaʻike Hawaiʻi and deliver engaging content on Hawaiian culture for all ages. Originally known as Kamehameha School Press, established in 1888, Kamehameha Publishing currently works to publish and distribute Hawaiian language, culture, and community-based materials. One noteworthy title is Lurline Wailana McGregor’s Between the Deep Blue Sea, winner of the American Indian Library Association’s 2010 American Indian Youth Literature Award for Best Young Adult Book. Find and support them at kamehamehapublishing.org or on Facebook and Instagram @kamehamehapublishing.

Native Voices Books

Native Voices Books from Tennessee is dedicated to celebrating and promoting Indigenous cultures, publishing children’s books, craft books, coloring books, and both Cherokee and Iroquois history and cultural books. One notable title is Sisters in Spirit by Sally Roesch Wagner about the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) influence on early American feminists, an example of their mission to illuminate intersectionality and Native feminism in the Indigenous community. Other powerful themes in their publications include health and wellness, spirituality, warrior culture, and family. You can find Native Voices at their website, bookpubco.com/native-voices, or on Instagram and Facebook @nativevoicesbooks.

Salina Bookshelf, Inc.

Independent publisher Salina Bookshelf, Inc., founded in 1994 in Arizona, specifically focuses on publishing Navajo (Diné) and southwest tribal content. They publish textbooks, children’s picture books, children’s chapter books, informational texts, reference books, audio books, and language learning materials, and they specialize in dual Navajo-/English- and Hopi-/English-language books along with textbooks used to teach Navajo language in schools. Saad Lá Tah Hózhóón: A Collection of Diné Poetry is a collection they published in 2019 about author Rex Lee Jim’s relationship to his land, his people, and his language, Diné Bizaad (Navajo Language), translated into English. You can find Salina Bookshelf, Inc., at their website, salinabookshelf.com, or follow them on Instagram and Facebook @salinabookshelf.

Honorary Mention: Milkweed Editions

Milkweed Editions, although not Indigenous owned, is another independent press I want to highlight. They are one of the most prestigious independent publishers in the U.S., and one of the most successful at amplifying voices of Indigenous peoples and other marginalized communities. Some of their world-renowned titles include Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World by Ada Limón. They are a beautiful organization that prides itself on taking risks on debut and experimental writers, and they operate entirely as a nonprofit. Founded in 1980 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, they’ve successfully published over 350 books of literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Their slogan is “Because reading should be life-changing,” which is perfectly encapsulated by their revolutionary works that encompass themes like love, mental health, intersectionality, childhood, climate change, kinship, music, time, and more. They continue to support authors from a variety of backgrounds: Indigenous, LGBTQ+, Asian American, Pacific Islander, African American, Palestinian, Hispanic, Latinx, the climate activist community, and those writing in non-English languages. You can find and support them on their website at milkweed.org, at book and poetry readings around the world, through their Minnesota book clubs, membership opportunities, and on Instagram @milkweed_books and Facebook @milkweed.books.

In researching all the presses I mention, I was moved by the sheer breadth of stories being told, whether through language preservation apps or online zine poetry projects. All these unique forms of storytelling work to challenge the status quo and bring both positivity and perspective to Indigenous culture. Join me in celebrating all these amazing publications as they continue to amplify the voices of Indigenous peoples across the United States and work to preserve their vibrant and essential cultures. Indigenous stories are vital, and those who work to publish these incredible authors are truly doing fantastic work.

Avery Wood (she/her) is a rising senior at North Carolina State University, pursuing a BA in English with a focus on creative writing and a BS in business administration. Born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, Avery’s love for literature began with her work as lead editor for her high school literary magazine and continues to be a central part of her life through her involvement with her college’s literary journals. Following graduation, she intends to bring her passion for business and creative writing to the publishing industry.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women-identifying writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we LUMINATE a path for women-identifying creatives this year by purchasing one of our publications or a workshop from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, for yourself or as a gift, joining our newsletter, following us on Facebook and Instagram, or subscribing 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 6/2/26 Kapua Iao 6/2/26

Thriving with Curiosity: Reflecting on the WONDER Issue

‍By Heather Brown Barrett

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When Yellow Arrow Journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Kapua Iao, invited me to be the next guest editor, I thought her email was a mistake, sent to the wrong person. After several long and confused minutes and rereads, I realized she meant me. I emailed her back to say YES and thank her before I could talk myself out of it! I felt incredibly nervous, but excited and grateful for the opportunity.

I suggested an issue grounded in curiosity and creativity, because I am compelled by curiosity and curious what fuels other creatives. Together with the other issue’s team members, we chose the theme WONDER. When all was said and done, we had almost 300 submissions for the issue! Wado/ᏩᏙ (thank you) to our submitters for trusting us with their delightful poems, prose, and works of art. Seeing each cover art submission and reading every written submission was a joy and an experience I will never forget. I am in awe of the talent and vulnerability of submitters. There was a variety of interpretations, and pieces delighted, inspired, and surprised me. One of my favorite aspects of the process was going through all the submissions with the reading team and seeing how pieces landed for them, reading their thoughts on individual written works and artworks.

I always knew editors have a tough job, but I now have an even deeper appreciation for how hard this process is. Declining a submission is very difficult. Having been on the receiving end of many declines in my writing journey, I know it stings. But I also know editors are telling the truth when they say they must decline good writing because of lack of space or thematic reasons, or when they encourage a writer to submit again, or when they say that they enjoyed a piece of writing. Choosing the final works was a tough process because we received so many beautiful and interesting and worthy pieces.

For WONDER, pieces with a strong sense of the author and voice stood out to me. Our contributors experience the self in relation to nature, writing, autism, mental illness, childhood, playfulness, aging, friendship, love, motherhood, loneliness, longing, and more. As I said in my introduction within the issue, each intriguing piece from WONDER’s 28 poets and writers sings with the strength of voice, and the whole is a brilliant chorus. Anita Grace Brown’s thought-provoking and colorful artwork, Twin Heathers, adorns our volume, affirming the depth within. It’s an honor to lift up our writers and our cover artist!

The Yellow Arrow Journal team is amazing, and their care and respect for each submission and its author is evident in every step of the process. Despite our different cities and time zones, the team could connect through email and Google and virtual meetings, to work together on decisions. Creating an issue is a labor of love. All the work the other team members did behind the scenes did not go unnoticed by me. There are so many tasks, big and small, that have to be done, and clear communication is key. Everyone has done an amazing job, and I am so grateful to Yellow Arrow Publishing for their part in this process, and for gifting me this opportunity to join them on the journey.

I’ve enjoyed every step of this process and am proud to be a part of the Yellow Arrow community and its amazing literary citizenship. I’m filled with gratitude, humbled, and honored by this experience. Wado/ᏩᏙ (thank you), Yellow Arrow Journal, for offering a space for women authors to shine.

Wado/ᏩᏙ (thank you), too, dear readers, and I hope you enjoy the words you read in WONDER. I am beyond thrilled to share these amazing voices with you!

Paperback and PDF versions are now 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 print and electronic books, including Amazon and most other distribution channels. Discounted bundles of both our 2026 issues are also available from our bookstore.

And join us for the reading of WONDER, An Ever Burning Fire: WONDER, on June 9 at 7:00 p.m. You can find the RSVP and Zoom link here.

Heather Brown Barrett is an award-winning poet in southeastern Virginia. She mothers her young son and contemplates life, the universe, and everything with her writer husband. She is a Cherokee Nation citizen, the membership chair of The Poetry Society of Virginia, a member of The Muse Writers Center, and a former board member of Hampton Roads Writers. Her work has appeared in Literary Mama, The Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, formidable Woman sanctuary, Black Bough Poetry, OyeDrum Magazine, and elsewhere and has been nominated for Best of the Net. Her poetry is featured in the global TELEPHONE exhibition and was previously featured on the Dahlgren Railroad Heritage Trail as part of The Poetry Society of Virginia’s Poetry on the Trail project and in the Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts Everyone Has a Story exhibit. Much of her work is influenced by themes and dualities of motherhood, modes of forgiveness and grace, and the types of subjects that plague most poets, like death, grocery stores, and birds. She’s the author of Water in Every Room (Kelsay Books, 2025), a collection of poems embodying the fluctuations of emotion and form in new motherhood.

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women-identifying writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we LUMINATE a path for women-identifying creatives this year by purchasing one of our publications or a workshop from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, for yourself or as a gift, joining our newsletter, following us on Facebook or Instagram, or subscribing 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 5/26/26 Kapua Iao 5/26/26

Meet a Board Member: Lindsay A. Chudzik

Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to introduce Lindsay A. Chudzik, a board member. Lindsay has been a community-engaged professor and practitioner for over 15 years, currently serving as the coordinator of engagement and service-learning at the University of Baltimore. Her debut novel, The Most Cake, is forthcoming from Wildling Press. Lindsay’s short stories and essays have appeared in several journals, including The Chiron Review, Defenestration, Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, Ghost Town, Haunted Waters Press, Magnolia Review, Map Literary, Parhelion, Pembroke Magazine, and more. Additionally, she was the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Feels Blind Literary and serves as a peer editor for articles related to service-learning for the Journal for the Study of Cooperative and Experiential Education. Lindsay is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of several awards for excellence in community-engaged teaching and leadership. In her free time, she loves pizza, pupusas, politics, pop culture, and punk rock, as well as every dog she’s ever met.

Lindsay wanted to say this about working with Yellow Arrow:

“When I lived in Richmond, Virginia, for 15 years, I was immersed in the literary community there. This started when I earned my MFA in fiction and playwrighting from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), but my involvement deepened post-graduation through my work as a board member for James River Writers and as the assistant director of RVA LitWalk. I was an associate professor at VCU, where I taught research and creative writing, but I also facilitated many community-based writing courses as well. This included creative nonfiction courses for returning citizens at Opportunity. Alliance. Reentry. (OAR) and Grove House, the latter a residential program for women who were recently released from incarceration, as well as creative writing courses for girls living in public housing.
I met some of the staff for Yellow Arrow at CityLit Fest last spring, and I was immediately drawn to their mission, as most of the creative and scholarly work I’ve done has centered around elevating the voices of women and girls. I also knew I needed to get involved in the literary community in Baltimore. Though relatively new here, I consider Baltimore my soulmate city. The key piece missing was a connection to other writers, but Yellow Arrow felt like a natural fit.”

Tell us a little something about yourself:

My short stories and essays have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and have appeared in several journals (see above). I took a bit of a break from writing short stories to work on my debut novel, The Most Cake, which is slated to launch later this year with Wildling Press. This novel is the first piece I’ve written that’s Young Adult, but since writing it, I’ve become obsessed with all things Young Adult to the point that I’m pretty sure the folks at Netflix think I’m 13. The Most Cake is set over five days in 1996 and explores the ways we do and don’t talk about intergenerational trauma, addiction, and sexual assault, though it’s also a punk rock love story and a tribute to Courtney Love, a musician who I wanted to reclaim as the feminist hero I believe she is.

What do you love most about Baltimore?

I’ve lived in Wilmington, Delaware, Philadelphia, New York City, Richmond, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia, but I currently live in Baltimore, and I’m confident this will be my forever home. As I mentioned above, I consider it my soulmate city. There is so much creativity and quirk—I hate that word, but it’s hard to think of another that captures what I’m trying to say—and every day here feels like a new adventure. What impresses me most, however, is how warm, kind, and connected residents of Baltimore are. Aside from the neighborhood where I grew up in Wilmington, I’ve never known so many of my neighbors. A few here and there, sure, but I know so many people in Ridgeley’s Delight! We have monthly happy hours, an annual gala, and more. We also live just beside Camden Yards, so Orioles season feels particularly special. I can’t imagine living anywhere else!

What are you working on currently?

Now that most of the work on my debut novel is behind me, I’m finishing my short story collection, Check ‘Yes’ If You Like Us. Some of these stories were previously published, while others are brand new, though some of the characters appear in multiple stories. I hope to be ready to query the collection by mid-summer. I’ve also started my second novel, a dark comedy about a neighborhood association gone awry. My roots are in playwrighting, however. Given that Baltimore has such a vibrant theater community, my goal is to get back into playwrighting over the next year as well.

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

I mostly write fiction that could be categorized as dark comedy, though my debut novel is Young Adult. It’s also apparently historical fiction because it’s set in the 1990s (this was hard for me to hear). I write creative nonfiction as well.

I love reading one-act plays, short stories, novels (especially Young Adult and magical realism), and memoirs. Bonus is if any of these are funny. My favorite recent book is More Strange Than True by CJ Spatro, the perfect book for anyone who loves dogs, humor, magic, and Philadelphia. I happen to love all four.

Can you recall an early memory that might have sparked your love of writing/reading?

There are so many! I loved reading from an early age. Whenever I had to go to the doctor as a child, my mom would bribe me with new Bernstein Bears books. I also preferred reading to people over having them read to me. This is embarrassing, but when I saw my first Broadway show in elementary school, Cats, that was the moment I knew I wanted to be involved in theater in some way. In middle school, we read a theatrical adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank that I found abysmal, so I tried to rewrite it in a way that better captured the original work. I don’t think any writer could do this project justice other than Anne Frank, of course, but this was the first time I realized I wanted to be a writer in a concrete way.

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

Well, I just purchased six books this morning [that I write this]! I think I’m going to start with The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett.

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

My mom inspired me to pursue all my dreams, including writing. She taught me to always be my authentic self and to be unapologetic about this, no matter who it made uncomfortable. This landed me in a lot of trouble in my Catholic high school, but this has served me well throughout the rest of my life. My mom was also the funniest person I ever met, and I hope I at least capture a tenth of her humor in my writing.

My mom’s passing in October 2023 was the most difficult experience I’ve navigated, but I also met my absolute soulmate during that time (we’re getting hitched in October 2026 at the site where Edgar Allan Poe is buried in Baltimore). Bobby has since become my biggest supporter, feeling genuine excitement when I succeed and making it possible for me to consistently carve out time for writing and all the other things I care about.

If you could have a workspace anywhere, where would it be and why? What would it look like?

I honestly prefer a noisy workspace with a lot going on around me, so a bar or café in Baltimore is perfect. Being able to eavesdrop on others’ conversations always inspires me. If I’m at home or in a quiet office, I’ll get distracted by dogs, making snacks, and basically every other thing other than writing.

What advice do you have for new writers or anyone starting a new adventure?

Connect with other writers! This does not mean you need to be in an MFA program to do so. There are so many opportunities to meet and, more importantly, learn from other writers. Find those opportunities and dive in! While every case is different, I learned far more about writing and publishing post-MFA.

Also, if you are writing anything at all, you are a writer! You don’t need to be published. You don’t need to write for hours each day. Do make time for yourself to write and be consistent about it, though. No one else will do that for you!

What’s your vision for Yellow Arrow in 2026?

I would love to help plan Baltimore-based events to engage more writers in the city. I’m also interested in leading writing workshops for community members, particularly those who have been historically marginalized or overlooked by literary circles.

*****

Kapua Iao 5/19/26 Kapua Iao 5/19/26

Weaving Curiosity and Creativity: Yellow Arrow Journal (Vol. XI, No. 1), WONDER

‍ ‍I am safe

in the cocoon I’ve grown from my own sweet skin,

carrying scars like a thrash

of poison ivy—

“A Close and Ugly Thing” by Samantha J. Pomerantz

WONDER, the just-released issue of Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. XI, No. 1, guest edited by Heather Brown Barret, explores the interplay between curiosity and creativity and how it informs discovery in the personal creative process and encourages artistry and fulfillment for women-identifying writers. We are grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the team, the authors, and the cover artist on this issue, and privileged to be able to share it (and them) with you. Heather says about the creatives and their work within and on the cover of the issue, “Their rich interiorities surface. Each intriguing piece sings with the strength of voice, and the whole is a brilliant chorus. . . . I’m honored to witness the talent and resilience of our WONDER authors and to share this collection with you.”

WONDER features Rebecca A. Adelman, Clara Akagi, Malaika King Albrecht, Elizabeth Birch, Ute Carson, Roxanne Christiana, Erin Edinger, Johanna Elattar, Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt, Rozalija Grace, Erica Monique Graham, Maya Klauber, Annie Rachele Lanzillotto, Elsie SQ LEE, Lynda Madison, Cheryl Martone, Amelia Napiorkowski, Diane Wilbon Parks, Emily Patterson, Mandira Pattnaik, Kathryn Petruccelli, Samantha J. Pomerantz, Argelia Salmon, Ciana Socias, Bethany Tap, Dana Trick, Jody Wallace, and Tanya K. Young.

The cover art is called Twin Heathers and was created by Anita Grace Brown. You can learn more about Anita in a recent Q&A at yellowarrowpublishing.com/news/spotlight-anita-grace-brown-yaj-wonder.

A huge thanks to the Yellow Arrow team for helping to shape this issue: guest Heather Brown Barrett, creative director Alexa Laharty, and executive director Annie Marhefka, along with the WONDER editorial team, Sydney Alexander,Camille Leah (Cam) Barrón, Rita Collins, Arrieonna Derricoatte, Jill Earl, Jen M. Eyre, Barbara Frey, Meg Gamble, Kapua Iao, Acacia Markel Justice, Siobhan McKenna, Sara Palmer, Mickey Revenaugh, Nicky Ruddell, Mel Silberger, and Taylor Trotta.

We hope you enjoy reading WONDER as much as we enjoyed creating it. Thank you for your continued encouragement of Yellow Arrow Publishing and the creatives involved in WONDER.

*****

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women-identifying writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we LUMINATE a path for women-identifying creatives this year by purchasing one of our publications or a workshop from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, for yourself or as a gift, joining our newsletter, following us on Facebook or Instagram, or subscribing 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 5/15/26 Kapua Iao 5/15/26

Yellow Arrow Vignette Luminate 2026 Submissions are Now Open!

Welcome to the first day of open submissions for Yellow Arrow Vignette LUMINATE! Now in its fifth season, Yellow Arrow Vignette is an online series developed to better feature women-identifying creatives and share their voices beyond Yellow Arrow Journal and our single-author publications. This year, submissions for Vignette are open from May 15 to June 15 and will align with the 2026 Yellow Arrow yearly value Luminate.

If you currently live, grew up in, or recently lived in the Baltimore area and are a creative who identifies as a woman, read the guidelines at yellowarrowpublishing.com/vignette/submissions and submit through our Yellow Arrow Vignette LUMINATE form.

This year, we are excited to work with a new team on Vignette. Sydney Alexander, publications fellow, will be our Vignette Managing Editor, working directly with this year’s guest editor, Zoë Huettl (she/her). Sydney grew up in the Baltimore area and graduated from Middlebury College with a joint degree in English and geography. At Yellow Arrow Publishing, she previously served as an intern, an editorial associate, and a reader. She has also worked at New England Review and Galiot Press. Zoë is a poet and educator from Chicago, Illinois, and a current MFA student at the University of Baltimore. When not crafting or writing, she can be found haunting local alleys with her dog, Harper.

LUMINATE is elemental, existential. Without a light source, there is only darkness. This is why we want to shine a neon light onto Baltimore creatives this year.

: to be shaken, electrified into vivid color

: to blare with welcome

: to embrace and celebrate the self that has been contained for too long

: to buzz with audacity

: to seep into darkness

: to call others like you to find their home

Below, you can read more about Zoë’s interpretation of LUMINATE and how she is excited to see what other Baltimore creatives are welcoming and celebrating in their artistic lives.

I moved to Baltimore in August of 2025, itching to belong to a new place, anxious to see who I could become here. The heat shocked me and fogged my glasses, curling my hair further and further. As I settled in, I was looking for where to belong, and I found the bright, infectious welcome of the queer and artistic communities.

As I begin my work as the guest editor of Yellow Arrow Vignette LUMINATE, I am inspired by the places, people, and events that shone under their own vibrant power and beckoned me. I think of my classmates and colleagues and their warm conversations, of the coffee shop around the corner where I pour over thin poetry volumes, of the spell-binding tension of a crowd waiting for the band’s entrance. I think of my first, tender friendships, chatting over metal water bottles and scattered notebooks. The people I’ve met in Baltimore glow with their passions, their identities, their experiences, and their joy. In their light, I have found my own spark.

I ask you, creatives, to consider how you burn:

What do you show others that invites them to express themselves?

How do you create a community that is vibrant, resilient, and resisting the dark?

How do you celebrate the aspects of self that are luminous in yourself and in those around you?

If there was a neon sign above you, what would it say? To what are you open to, and do you stay open late?

We are writing in a political climate that is increasingly divisive, hostile, and antihuman. In our work and in our communities, we can embody our values brightly and show others that they belong. We can resist the encroaching forces that tell us to shrink, to hide, to dim ourselves. I can’t wait to read what you send in.

For Yellow Arrow Vignette LUMINATE, we’re looking for creative nonfiction, poetry, and cover art by creatives who identify as women and have a connection to the Baltimore area. For more about what this means and for information on how to submit, please visit yellowarrowpublishing.com/vignette/submissions and submit your piece using our Yellow Arrow Vignette LUMINATE form. If you have any questions, send them to submissions@yellowarrowpublishing.com. The online issue will be released in August.

We look forward to reading the submissions for Yellow Arrow Vignette LUMINATE and sharing stories with you. 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 and every story is worth telling.

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Kapua Iao 5/12/26 Kapua Iao 5/12/26

When Opportunity Presents Itself: What Yellow Arrow Interns Do and Why it is So Important

By Hannah Bishoff, written December 2025

Over the years, Yellow Arrow Publishing has taken on many great interns to help support and fulfill its mission of uplifting women’s voices through publication and access to the literary arts. Not only is it important to provide each and every intern, each young woman in college, with the necessary experiences and skills learned throughout their internship, but it is also essential to bring on as many helping hands as possible to be able to continue doing great work. Being a part of a small press like Yellow Arrow, one that focuses on uplifting women writers and creatives and providing opportunities for women publishers, is also inherently unique and even more so significant for the functioning and diversity of the publishing world and the individual female experience.

Going back in time, you will find that women were never regarded as an important aspect of the publishing industry. In fact, publishing came to be known as a gentlemen’s career where women largely served as secretaries or published under a pseudonym, as their skills were always doubted when compared to higher-ranking positions. One of the first woman publishers in American history has collectively been named as Elizabeth Timothy, who inherited the South Carolina Gazette in the 1730s and 1740s after her husband’s death. Yet she still did not even publish under her own name, but the name of her teenage son who had legally taken over his father’s business. There are plenty of other examples of early American female publishers who followed this same path as Elizabeth Timothy—inheriting the business from a father or husband who died, making all the decisions, but using the name of a male relative to publish the work under. A specifically rare instance of a woman who did not hide behind a male pseudonym was Mary Katherine Goddard—the second printer for the Declaration of Independence, whose name appears just below John Hancock’s as the printer of the document.

Throughout this time, female authors were able to break through the literary industry. Works from authors like Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, and the Bronte sisters, dating all the way back to 1818, began to show proof that women could indeed write “compelling literature with complex themes and important social commentary.” But while light began to be shed onto female authors in the industry, female publishers still had work to be done. As women started to edit and publish under their true identities, they were only able to work on areas deemed as “female”—those of fashion magazines or related to domestic life.

Flashing forward to the present, this so-called “gentleman’s career” is now overwhelmingly dominated by women. A report from 2024 done by The Publishers Association shows that 68% of their respondents identify as female, which was even a slight increase from two years prior in 2022. This was also based only on responses from 9,707 people from 52 publishing companies. So the work from women before us seemed to have paid off. As more and more of these women in the 20th century graduated from college with humanities degrees, a career in publishing just became more attractive. Women would be hired for lower-level, secretarial positions, but this did not deter them from pursuing a true career in publishing. A 20th-century shift led to an opening of editorial positions that were previously dominated by men. But even though women today make up most of the publishing industry, it is true that these female-dominated roles are mainly lower-level positions, and that the male influence still has some control over the industry. And though a recent emergence has begun to place women in some executive positions, much work is needed to be done if we want to strive for complete relevancy of the female voice. It is true that “women are less likely to obtain a . . . mentor who is highly placed in a firm and who can provide the kinds of career assistance . . . that is critical to career success.” And this is where the work of Yellow Arrow comes to play—being part of an organization that advocates for female voices is integral not only for professional experience but also for overall female success.

Now—you are thinking about becoming an intern with Yellow Arrow but are not sure what one does? Well, you have come to the right place. As an intern myself, I aim to shed light on my experience, as well as that of my counterpart, this fall semester. I truly believe this experience has been a crucial one for my professional career—and for any young woman who strives to work in publishing, literature, or even just to give back to other women. It is incredibly important to be a part of a female-dominated space like Yellow Arrow to contribute to overall diversity in the creative fields and to understand the need for more female voices in today’s society. (See also another intern’s, Jackie Alvarez-Hernandez’s, point of view about interning with Yellow Arrow in 2022 at yellowarrowpublishing.com/news/week-yap-publications-intern-alvarez-hernandez.)

To give a little backstory, let’s flash back to earlier this year—the summer of 2025—when I first applied to be the fall publications intern at Yellow Arrow. I had found this opportunity through my school, Towson University’s, English department web page. After diligently filling out the application, it quickly fell to the back of my mind as something that would probably not work out, but at least I applied, right? I had nearly forgotten about it until I received an email from Annie Marhefka, Yellow Arrow’s executive director, wanting to set up an interview. I almost did not respond, but I am so, so glad I did. (So this is me encouraging every prospective intern to respond to that email!)

The tasks that ensued during the months to come were everything that I had hoped for. As publications intern, I focused on the specific works that were to be published during my time, and others that were recently published. These included the last chapbook of 2025, Naming a Dying Thing by Vic Nogay, the second journal edition of 2025, Vol. X, No. 2, KAIROS, and the first chapbook of 2026, februaries by Michele Evans. After many (many) rounds and rounds of proofreading and copyediting, these pieces worked their way into a special place in my heart. With Yellow Arrow, mundane tasks such as countless proofreads and copyedits are not just what they sound like they might be. They are tasks that further connect you to Yellow Arrow’s overall mission of uplifting women’s creative voices. They are tasks that make you feel like you really are a part of this project, this mission, and that you are in yourself helping to make a difference in a world where it really is necessary.

Not only do interns get to work firsthand on publications, but I was also tasked with copious promotional work for these pieces. Tasks like these are just as important as getting pieces ready for publication because they work toward putting these women’s voices out there, to hopefully be heard and be read by as many people as possible. I made graphic promotional images and even created social media and blog posts to further grow the emphasis and collection of content on female writers and creatives. Along with this, I also helped prepare and submit publications for nationally recognized awards. Knowing that women are being nominated and acknowledged for literary prizes through your work and the hard work of the entire Yellow Arrow community just proves how integral organizations like Yellow Arrow are to the literary and creative worlds.

Similar to the work of the publications intern, Yellow Arrow also takes on a program management intern. And while she also works to further Yellow Arrow’s mission of uplifting women’s creative voices through access to the literary arts, the program management intern, rather than focusing on current publications, focuses on Yellow Arrow’s countless programs which go to increase participation and growth of creative female minds. A program management intern should expect to also help with copyediting and proofreading publications, but instead of working to promote these specifically, she creates social media posts about workshops and current events and even takes control of the monthly newsletter.

I asked my counterpart this semester, Avery Wood, about her experience as well and what being an intern with Yellow Arrow meant to her, and it is clear that our ideas and outcomes are quite similar. When asked why working with a small press like Yellow Arrow means to her, she wrote, “At an early age . . . I was drawn specifically to women’s stories. They were my own. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized there weren’t nearly enough of them out there and that I wanted to change that by empowering women-identifying writers with reservoirs full of untold narratives.” Interns at Yellow Arrow work to not only further Yellow Arrow’s organizational mission, but to fulfill her own personal goals and values as well. Like my own experience, she also wrote, “The most rewarding thing will always be helping edit and create a brand new beautiful work of art to be published.” Being an intern at Yellow Arrow, working to grow the world of female literature and women-run publishing, is a truly rewarding experience.

Looking back in time, it is clear that these opportunities were not always available to us. This just makes it all the more important that we take these opportunities whenever we are given them. And that we work to provide as many opportunities for as many other women out there as we possibly can. There is so much work out there to be done, and we interns at Yellow Arrow are glad to be a part of it.

Several sources were used to write this blog:

Caplette, Michele. “Women in Book Publishing: A Study of Careers and Organizations.” In Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing, edited by Lewis A. Coser, Charles Kadushin, and Walter W. Powell. Basic Books, 1982.

Claro, Lyndsey. “Women in the Gentleman’s Career of Publishing.” Princeton University Press blog, March 6, 2020. press.princeton.edu/ideas/women-in-the-gentlemans-career-of-publishing?srsltid=AfmBOoriVFaAQHtzoiTJXWzHr_PCw3pc7GKAi8zcaxQX7PDKZWzR2y8h.

Lavrack, Nicole. “Pioneer Women in Publishing: A Timeline.” The Society of Young Publishers blog, September 13, 2025. thesyp.org.uk/2025/09/pioneer-women-in-publishing-a-timeline.

Joynson, Jasmine. “2024 Workforce Report Published.” Publishers Association, December 5, 2024. publishers.org.uk/2024-workforce-report-published.

Hannah Bishoff is a senior English major at Towson University with a minor in business, communications, and the liberal arts. On the weekends, she works at a coffee shop in Towson and when not in class she enjoys reading, drawing, shopping, and watching TV. She hopes to continue working in publishing in the (near) future, if all goes well.

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Kapua Iao 5/5/26 Kapua Iao 5/5/26

Spotlight on Anita Grace Brown: Yellow Arrow Journal XI/01 WONDER Cover Artist

‍Anita Grace Brown is a multidisciplinary artist exploring the intersections of the imaginal, the spiritual, and the visceral, somatic human experience. Drawing from personal healing, nature’s symbolism, and the textures of memory, her work investigates vulnerability and the alchemy of the self. Often dancing, chanting, and practicing breath work before beginning to paint, she embraces the “messy middle” with patience. Creativity has become a space for reconciliation, resilience, and resurrection!! She invites viewers into spaces where the human, the divine, and the imaginal dwell. Anita is also the cover artist for the first issue of Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. XI, on WONDER, guest edited by Heather Brown Barrett. The issue comes out on May 19 and is currently available for preorder at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/yellow-arrow-journal-wonder-paperback. We are excited to showcase Twin Heathers on the cover of WONDER.

According to Anita, “I had just completed this piece for actor Cade Meyer (side note: I sent the original artwork to Cade, who never received it through the mail. . . . In an even more recent update, I’ve discovered that the painting was at least delivered to his building!), who played a lead in the Broadway musical Heathers—so the palette is theatrical.” She adds, “On a Friday (the day after seeing the show!) my friend Kelly suggested I submit some art, saying that I had 24 hours to meet Yellow Arrow Journal’s deadline. I trusted the unfolding.”

For Heather, choosing the final cover came down to the mystery and expressive brush strokes offered by Anita’s Twin Heathers. Two subtle figures, similar but not exact; do they represent two selves present in each of us, or two different entities, like friends, or enemies? Are they children, or spirits, or flowers? Are they all of these? Interpretations abound. It’s a garden, a riot of color, and it’s thought-provoking. Thank you, Anita, for sending us your artwork and for letting us showcase it to our community.

Recently, Anita answered some questions about herself and her aspirations.

How does the synergy of curiosity and creativity encourage your personal artistic process?

I have understood the yin/yang symbol to be an accurate depiction of the harmony of discipline and surrender. When I enter flow state, my curiosity builds! As I begin to create, I allow the messy middle to unfold, and my inner child is grateful and thrilled that I do not admonish her for making ugly art. She doesn’t see ugly. She is simply happy to be part of my process. Eventually a corner is turned, and the art begins to tell me what or who it wants to be. It’s incredibly satisfying. My pieces speak back to me about my journey of healing and wholeness.

What part of the creative process do you find most challenging?

I will tell myself you must have beginner’s mind. That leads to telling myself it is time to structure a piece just for the purposes of being disciplined. I will often go on YouTube to learn from someone and attempt something basic with color and shape. Once I have named this, I usually let it go! And my next piece will be all joy and delight to me. But I must name what may be required to remain in flow.

What do you like most about painting in a loose, expressive style? Is this how you would describe your style?

I love those terms. I have not described my style too much. It’s evolving. But what I like most about my “style” is my commitment to sit and enter. I know it gives me energy. I know it’s essential for my mental health. And oftentimes, what’s created will be gifted, and I’ll know in my heart who I’m creating for.

Are there subjects, themes, or motifs that you return to in your artwork?

Yes!! I paint a lot of pregnant women, Jesus, bodies, Eastern images, such as Buddha faces, and nature (trees, flowers, birds, etc.).

What inspired you to paint Twin Heathers?

The Broadway show Heathers. I write about narcissism, empathy, and the drama triangle often, and how, in my experience, Christ has removed me from this dynamic, which repeated in cycles throughout my life. The show was so darkly comedic, revealing that through art and drama we can redeem pain and find our way to liberation. I came home and painted Twin Heathers as a gift for one of the leads, who is a friend of a friend.

How do you define success as an artist?

To delight in my work.

Is there anything in particular that you would like to share about yourself or your art?

For my entire life I held the story “I can’t draw a stick figure”— like a lot of people. Healing my sacral chakra through body prayer yoga delivered a flow of creative energy in my mid-40s, which showed up as poetry. A few years later, I began to be interested in expressing myself through charcoal and acrylics and took a few lessons. I would love for anyone reading this to know you can unblock energy and create simply for creation’s sake. It doesn’t have to be for anyone else. Making it for yourself is always enough—like, what would you be doing instead?

(Side note from Heather: here’s another thing that Anita shared with me. She goes to Goodwill in search of donated original art with the intention of repurposing it and keeping some components. Recently she found and repurposed a charcoal drawing by a man from 1985, the year she turned 20!)

Where online can readers connect with you or see your work?

I share my work primarily on Instagram @anitagracebrown and sometimes on Facebook. I am just beginning to pursue an online store on Etsy for prints and cards.

Thank you, Anita, for finding the time to answer our questions and for being a part of WONDER. And thank you to everyone for supporting the creatives involved in the issue. You can preorder your copy of WONDER at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/yellow-arrow-journal-wonder-paperback. If you want to reserve a copy of both issues of 2026, make sure to pick up a discounted journal bundle at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/yellow-arrow-journal-bundle, for yourself or as a gift.

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‍Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women-identifying writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we LUMINATE a path for women-identifying creatives this year by purchasing one of our publications or a workshop from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, for yourself or as a gift, joining our newsletter, following us on Facebook or Instagram, or subscribing 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 4/28/26 Kapua Iao 4/28/26

Meet a Staff Member: Sydney Alexander

This year, a publications fellowship was created at Yellow Arrow Publishing to give a woman-identifying creative the opportunity to experience how a publishing company runs. We are grateful to everyone who applied and interviewed for the position and are excited to introduce Sydney Alexander, our inaugural publications fellow. Sydney grew up in the Baltimore area and graduated from Middlebury College with a joint degree in English and geography. At Yellow Arrow, she previously served as an intern, an editorial associate, and a reader. She has also worked at New England Review and Galiot Press.

Sydney says, “It’s really special to be able to look at Yellow Arrow’s bookshop and remember each of the publications I worked on, knowing that I was able to contribute to putting something so tangible together. I’m excited to work on Yellow Arrow’s forthcoming publications and meet all the new authors.”

Tell us a little something about yourself:

I recently graduated from Middlebury College and will be moving to New York City at the end of the summer.

What do you love most about Baltimore?

I love the bookstores of Baltimore. Atomic Books in Hampden and Greedy Reads in Fells Point are my two favorites, and I love that they curate weirder, more experimental fiction than your typical bookstore. I feel like this speaks to Baltimore’s sort of alternative scene and the way that weird art thrives here, which is my favorite kind!

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

The summer after my freshman year of college, I interned at Yellow Arrow, where I was first introduced to its many publications, authors, and staff members. At the end of my internship, I joined the staff as a reader and editorial associate and stayed for several years. I’m excited to be back as the inaugural publications fellow, and I look forward to the administrative and logistical experience it’ll bring. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes of a literary magazine and publisher, and I’m excited to contribute! I think Yellow Arrow’s devotion to its mission of uplifting women writers is really meaningful, and I love how it connects me to Baltimore’s literary community.

What are you working on currently?

I’m currently working on a collection of magical realist short stories.

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

I love speculative fiction and magical realism. I don’t know why, but I love reading weird, magical books. Some of my favorite authors include Karen Russell and Carmen Maria Machado. I also love really winding, beautiful prose, like what Joyce Carol Oates and Janet Fitch write.

Can you recall an early memory that might have sparked your love of writing/reading? ‍

When I was in elementary school, my dad got me to read a lot of high fantasy classics: The Belgariad, The Once and Future King, Firebrand, you name it. I don’t really read much high fantasy anymore, but I remember those as being really formative. I also read tons of comics: Gunnerkrigg Court, Bone, and Calvin and Hobbes, to name a few. I think all these together developed my love for weird, speculative lit.

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

I just picked up Little Nothing by Marisa Silver at Greedy Reads the other day. I had never heard of it before, but when I saw it on the shelf I was really drawn to the cover.

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

My family, my friends, and my college professors.

If you could have a workspace anywhere, where would it be and why?

Somewhere with either a view of trees or a view of a city skyline, but preferably trees. I’ve also been collecting postcards and bookmarks over the years, and I also often find inspiration in having those up on my walls around my desk. Otherwise, somewhere near windows that let in a lot of natural light.

What advice do you have for new writers or anyone starting a new adventure?

Read a lot. Watch movies and television. Read the news. Strike up conversations with random people and learn about their lives. Be open to the world. There is so much to be gained from engaging with art and with people. Otherwise, follow your natural interests wherever they may lead you.

What’s your vision for Yellow Arrow in 2026?

My vision for Yellow Arrow in 2026 is to continue growing and uplifting the voices of women writers.

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Guest User 4/24/26 Guest User 4/24/26

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-identifying creatives 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, book reviews, and podcasts/interviews

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

“When Time Unfurls the Tongue” by Heather Brown Barrett

Genre: poetry

Name of publication: The Ekphrastic Review

Date Released: March 6, 2026

Type of publication: online

ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-challenges/stephanie-grainger-ekphrastic-responses-curated-by-kate-copeland (scroll down page)

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 as well as prizes/awards, book reviews, and podcasts/interviews: here.

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

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Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women-identifying writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we LUMINATE a path for women-identifying creatives this year by purchasing one of our publications or a workshop from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, for yourself or as a gift, joining our newsletter, following us on Facebook or Instagram, or subscribing 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 4/21/26 Kapua Iao 4/21/26

Musing About the Muse: Girl, Drowning by Dana Knott

Yellow Arrow Publishing announces the release of our second chapbook of 2026, Girl, Drowning by Dana Knott. 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 Knott in all her writing and publishing endeavors.

The poems within Girl, Drowning by Dana Knott (she/her) were inspired by Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (1829–1862), a pre-Raphaelite model, muse, poet, and artist. Much attention rests on Siddal’s fame as the model for John Everett Millais’ Ophelia (1851–1852), her laudanum addiction, and the exhumation of her corpse years after her death, so that her husband, artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, could retrieve a poetry manuscript he placed in her coffin. Girl, Drowning intends to amplify Siddal’s voice and fill in other, rich details of her life, including her aspirations as a poet and artist and her desire for autonomy. Beneath the surface lies a woman who longed to be seen and loved as Siddal, the individual, rather than model, muse, and wife.

Knott, born in Chicago, Illinois, and residing in Delaware, Ohio, works in Columbus as Director of Libraries at the Columbus State Library. She launched tiny wren lit, which publishes micropoetry online with downloadable zines for each issue, in 2021 and published the microchapbook Funeral Flowers (Rinky Dink Press) in 2024.

The cover was created by Alexa Laharty, and the interior images were drawn by Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal. According to Knott,

“The contrast between how he saw her and how she saw herself always strikes me. That’s why I love Alexa [Laharty]’s cover art. It feels in-between. Not the hyper-idealized muse, but not only the severe self-portrait either. There’s strength, pride, and containment. The blue tones echo water, but without recreating Millais’ Ophelia. She isn’t floating. She’s upright and looking outward. Not at us, but beyond us. Separate. Self-possessed. I think Laharty captured that balance beautifully, and I completely fell in love with it. It’s powerful to have a woman artist depict Siddal in this way. Laharty also selected some of Siddal’s drawings to include in the book, which is incredible. Readers can see what Siddal was trying to achieve in her own art, and that addition means so much.”

Paperback and PDF versions of Girl, Drowning 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 Girl, Drowning wherever you purchase your books including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. To learn more about Knott and Girl, Drowning, check out our recent interview with her.

You can find Knott on Facebook @dana.a.knott and Instagram @danerbird 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 4/18/26 Kapua Iao 4/18/26

Meet a Staff Member: Arrieonna Derricoatte

‍Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to introduce Arrieonna Derricoatte (she/her), a reader. Arrieonna is currently a candidate for a master’s in public administration at Ohio State University. She holds a bachelor’s in English with a concentration in writing, rhetoric, and literacy and minors in human rights and professional writing. She is passionate about reading and community-building around arts, education, and policy. Arrieonna has been on the editorial team for Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. X, No. 1, UNFURL (spring 2025), and Urban Arts Space’s first issue of the arts publication Artist Commune Journal. After school, she hopes to further her career in nonprofit administration and policymaking while seeking a career in publishing. She can be found on Instagram @arrieonnaderricoatte.

Arrieonna says, “I look forward to reading incredible pieces by women writers and being a part of a space that uplifts us. The women at YAP really care about working in the community as authors, writers, and listeners.”

Tell us a little something about yourself:

I am the oldest of seven siblings and that is a core part of my identity and experience.

What do you love most about where you live?

The thing I love most about Columbus, Ohio, is its very strong art community. There are many organizations there that are dedicated to Black and Brown artists.

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

I was a program management intern at Yellow Arrow in the spring of 2025. I was part of the editorial team for a publication at the time and am excited to continue to be a part of the team as a reader.

What are you working on currently?

I am currently working on research related to taxes and budgets in the state of Ohio and exploring progressive taxes that are more equitable for learnable communities.

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

Outside of research papers for grad school, I write poetry in my spare time. I am working on an archival project using docupoetics to preserve community memory. I read historical fiction most often because I appreciate the way prose and literary language can be used to emphasize themes and movements in a particular time.

Can you recall an early memory that might have sparked your love of writing/reading?

I always enjoyed group reading in primary school, but I was drawn back into reading through various fan fiction and self-publishing platforms. I would be up reading ‘til four in the morning some nights.

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

A book that would be at the top of my to-be-read list would be This Lovely City (2020) by Louise Hare, a historical fiction novel set in 1950s London, following Jamaican immigrant and jazz musician Lawrie Matthews as he navigates post-war life, love, and prejudice after arriving in London on the HMT Empire Windrush.

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

My close friends who know I write, my teachers, and other women writers in my community.

If you could have a workspace anywhere, where would it be and why?

If I could have a workspace anywhere, it would be in London, in a public library in Brixton. I spent a lot of time there when I studied abroad. I could stretch my legs in Brockwell Park whenever I needed to.

What advice do you have for new writers or anyone starting a new adventure?

Giving yourself grace, starting something can be challenging.

What’s your vision for Yellow Arrow in 2026?

My vision for Yellow Arrow this year is to hold a space for women writers who still burn in the dark and light others on their path.

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Kapua Iao 4/17/26 Kapua Iao 4/17/26

Meet a Staff Member: Kelsey Hyeri Ko

‍Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to introduce Kelsey Hyeri Ko (she/they), a reader. Kelsey is a Korean American writer, creative, and psychotherapist based in Baltimore, Maryland. Her creative practice is guided by diasporic blues, ancestral wisdom, queer theory, deep presence, and the dream of collective liberation. They are a reader with Yellow Arrow, and their work and words have appeared in The Atlantic, Baltimore Magazine, and Maryland Matters. You can find them online at kelseyhko.com or on Instagram @kkollagerie.

‍‍Kelsey says, “I’m most looking forward to being in a collaborative community with other like-minded writers and readers and the opportunity to be a part of the process of shaping and bringing a publication into fruition.”

Tell us a little something about yourself:

My creativity and artistry are multidisciplinary. Beyond the written word, I love the performing arts, visual arts, and fiber arts. You can also find me at the theater, singing or playing music, or making creations through crochet and collage!

‍‍What do you love most about Baltimore?

Where do I start? I love that the people who choose to call our magical little city home love it fiercely and unapologetically. I love that it’s the place where I grew up and had my coming-of-age from age 18 until now. I love that it’s a city with a small-town feel—that it’s so easy to know my neighbors, fellow café hoppers, and local shop owners by name, that you run into people on a quick walk to the corner store to grab a bottle of wine. I love that it’s so easy to build community and that it’s home to my chosen family, some of the most remarkable people I know.

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

I am a reader with Yellow Arrow! Yellow Arrow has been on my radar for ages through a friend who was a writer-in-residence, through glimpses I saw of staff members tabling at different book events throughout the city, and also through my time working as a barista at Bird-in-Hand Coffee & Books, which Yellow Arrow has a partnership with. I wanted to join the Yellow Arrow team because I believe that good writing starts from doing a whole lot of reading. While in a season of coping with personal tumult, immense growth, and intense change over the past two years—thanks to my Saturn return, for folks plugged into the astrology world—I found myself continually returning to my creative practices like writing, which I had used to process and to cope with difficult emotions since childhood. I felt inspired to nurture a consistent creative writing process for my own inner child, and felt that being in community with other writers and readers would be the best way for me to do that.

‍‍What are you working on currently?

I’m currently working on crocheting a tank top for myself! Learning how to crochet over the past year has taught me so much about frustration tolerance and the humbling nature of being a beginner again. As a mental health professional, I’ve been thinking about how the repetitive motion simulates the mechanism of fidget toys and how its tactile nature can be helpful for both taking the edge off restlessness and cultivating mindfulness.

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

‍I read and write poetry that’s both lyrical and free verse. I also enjoy writing creative nonfiction and love reading memoirs and personal essays. I have a deep fascination with the raw truth and emotions of everyday people, and I find that these genres allow me to access these stories and feelings in a very tangible way. I recently finished the memoir Ma & Me by Putsata Reang, recommended to me by a friend, and cried crocodile tears while finishing the last chapter.

Can you recall an early memory that might have sparked your love of writing/reading?

My earliest memories of reading and writing come in flashes. There’s sitting next to my grandfather in Seoul while he would read Korean children’s books to me until his voice was hoarse because I couldn’t ever get enough. There’s learning how to read for the first time and feeling as though the world was coming alive around me in a way I’d never experienced before—the feeling of wonder as I sounded out the words on road signs, bulletin boards, and flyers is something I still remember. There’s reading fantasy books like Inkheart and The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke, which took me to places far beyond the suburban homes and cornfields of my school-age years growing up in Pennsylvania. All these moments shaped me into becoming a voracious reader and writer.

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

Hot Girls with Balls by Benedict Nguyễn! It’s a satire that’s queer, trans, and about volleyball. I went to see her book tour event last summer in D.C., with a friend and got my signed copy, but as my to-read pile has grown and time has gotten away from me it’s fallen by the wayside. It’s been great seeing the recent media and pop culture interest in the hotness and queerness of sports with Challengers and Heated Rivalry,but I want to read more works from trans authors, and I think it’s more important than ever to elevate these voices given our current political climate.

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

‍I feel grateful that throughout my education, I’ve had English and poetry teachers see a spark of potential in me and tell me to pursue writing. When I find myself in a slump, I remember their words and feel a desire to keep going—it’s a big part of why I stepped into the classroom and taught English for several years. I’m also inspired by my lineage and my ancestors. My grandfather wrote poetry and the Kim clan in which he and my ancestors belong to is known for its many scholars and poets. Both my maternal grandparents were educators in the Korean language arts. They remind me that the art of writing is not just about me but about honoring all those who have come before me.

If you could have a workspace anywhere, where would it be and why?

Jeju Island in South Korea! My paternal side of the family is descended from there through the Jeju Ko clan. Jeju is a beautiful subtropical island with its own unique culture separate from mainland Korea. It has volcanoes, forests, hiking trails, waterfalls, beaches, flower fields, cafés, and amazing seafood. . . . Basically a writer’s paradise. I’m imagining staying somewhere overlooking the water to do my morning and evening writing, spending time in nature for inspiration, and immersing myself in the local writing scene at different cafés. Sounds absolutely dreamy.

‍‍What advice do you have for new writers or anyone starting a new adventure?

Just play—let go of self-consciousness and follow your impulse to create! Performance anxiety, fear of my art being “good enough,” and the pressure of perception have been the biggest blocks to my creativity and has kept me from writing for months and years at a time. Capitalism has a way of ruining everything. Whenever I allow myself to playfully follow my whimsy and wonder, I realize that creation is a human instinct. We have been drawing on cave walls long before we built societies. When I follow my intuition, I find that I have everything I need to be an artist.

What’s your vision for Yellow Arrow in 2026?

I reread The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin last year and have been feeling called to his words. I’ve been meditating on this quote from him: “The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”

I think he already said it best. As we witness fascism, genocide, war, internment, and suffering all around us, I hope that the words we choose to amplify this year can be guiding lights that illuminate the darkness.

*****

Kapua Iao 4/16/26 Kapua Iao 4/16/26

Meet a Staff Member: Sophia Nguyen

‍Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to introduce Sophia Nguyen, a reader. Sophia is from Pembroke Pines, Florida, but is currently in Bloomington, Indiana, finishing a BA in English with a concentration in creative writing and minors in comparative literature and Japanese. She plans to pursue an MFA in fiction after completing her undergraduate degree. She primarily writes speculative/dystopian fiction but has experience writing literary fiction, poetry, and prose. She has worked as a reader and in editorial and social media marketing roles with academic and literary journals and has both participated in and helped organize writing conferences.

‍‍Sophia says, “I look forward to reading through the submissions Yellow Arrow receives for its publications. A lot of what I read has been curated for the purpose of studying craft or commercial consumption. I’m excited to read more current work from people of all walks of life and from voices I align with more closely.”

Statement on what you look forward to about working with Yellow Arrow:

‍When I was in high school, I self-published a fantasy novel. During my undergraduate, I took a step back from trying to get published and spent time experimenting with form and improving my craft. I did end up getting some poems published in a few zines though. I also had a music school stint as a trumpet player!

What do you love most about where you live?

I love the community around Bloomington. Whenever I step out into town, whether it’s the local cafes or the coop markets, you can really feel how connected everyone is.

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

I am joining the team as a reader. I was neighbors with Yellow Arrow’s very own executive director, Annie Markhefka, during the Martha’s Vineyard Summer Writing Conference! When she mentioned that Yellow Arrow was looking for readers, I was happy to volunteer. I was really drawn to its mission of empowering traditionally underrepresented voices.

What are you working on currently?

I am currently working on a short story about a mask designer and getting my BA.

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

I write primarily speculative fiction with a focus on near future dystopias and “tomorrow’s technology.” As such, a lot of what I read falls in the sci-fi realm. I love reading and writing these reimaginations of our world, and how they can address so many aspects of societal structures, cultural values, identities, etc.

Can you recall an early memory that might have sparked your love of writing/reading?

I vividly remember writing a short blurb about a giraffe in second grade for a creative writing exercise. I never forgot the smile on my teacher’s face after she read it.

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

Red Rising by Pierce Brown!

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

My parents have always been my biggest supporters. They’re both engineers and very STEM-minded, but they’ve both always encouraged me to pursue my passions and interests.

‍‍If you could have a workspace anywhere, where would it be and why?

I’m simple, so a room in a house in a quiet neighborhood is all I want. Maybe with a window out into the front yard.

What advice do you have for new writers or anyone starting a new adventure?

If it feels right, it’s the right choice. Even if the end result doesn’t look like what you originally intended or wanted.

What’s your vision for Yellow Arrow in 2026?

When I see the word LUMINATE, I think of a spotlight and attention. I hope that Yellow Arrow can give more and more voices the recognition they deserve. I’m excited to be joining the work to make this happen.

*****

Kapua Iao 4/15/26 Kapua Iao 4/15/26

Meet a Staff Member: Rita Collins

‍Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to introduce Rita Collins, a reader. Rita began life in Baltimore, Maryland, and then left, only to return 55 years later. During the hiatus, she lived in eight other states, two other countries, and put on countless miles of travel. Teaching in public schools and universities was her primary profession, which morphed into becoming the owner/operator of a traveling bookstore in 2015. St. Rita’s Amazing Traveling Bookstore has set up all over the U.S. at book festivals, brew pubs, schools, cafes, museums, and county fairs. Rita is also an artist, making artist books and doing letterpress printing. She sees her work, her art, her travels, and her community involvement as attempts to create dialogue and build positive networks.

‍‍Rita says, “I look forward to reading amazing new writing, working with the Yellow Arrow team, and learning what makes a small publishing house run.”

Tell us a little something about yourself:

‍For years while teaching, I published academic articles. Then I began making artist books and learned letterpress printing. I’ve had a few poems published, some short stories, and sold some artist books. I mostly enjoy exploring ways to use words that catch people’s attention. This can be letterpress posters, a zine, a quilt. My traveling bookstore is a piece of this as well. The bookstore goes to all sorts of places and allows me to meet all kinds of people. Often conversations begin with books and then slip into topics ranging from literature to politics, travel to raising kids, feminism to food.

What do you love most about Baltimore?

This one is easy. I just moved (back) to Baltimore in October 2024 and completely fell in love with all the arts happening here. From the large institutions like the Baltimore Museum of Art and the American Visionary Art Museum to smaller ones like Yellow Arrow Publishing and Good Contrivance Farm, it is a delight to discover all the incredible stuff happening in Charm City. And surrounded by all of this and the many artists, writers, and musicians, I find myself doing more with my own art.

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

I first heard of Yellow Arrow through Good Contrivance Farm (there was a retreat there last summer). Then I met Ann Quinn at a writing workshop, and we reconnected at a few other events. I started following Yellow Arrow online, and when I saw the notice for volunteer readers, it seemed like a good way to become involved.

What are you working on currently?

Currently working on a photography show that will go up at the end of February (called “A Show of Hands”), some large collages for a show with another Baltimore artist next fall and putting on my first-ever Pecha Kucha Night at the senior housing complex where I live.

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

‍I read a wide range, partially because I have many interests and partially because I own a bookstore. I try to read as much as possible so that I can talk books with my customers. I write a blog, make and send postcards, and write the occasional short story and/or essay.

Can you recall an early memory that might have sparked your love of writing/reading?

My mom was a veracious reader, always read to us and then as soon as we could read on our own, she would take us to the public library for books.

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

The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman.

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

The people I meet, the places I’ve experienced. Hearing other people’s stories and being inspired, visiting different places and finding myself grow.

If you could have a workspace anywhere, where would it be and why?

A room at the Library Hotel in New York. It is within an easy walk to the central library in New York, has a great lounge with free coffee, large tables and an amazing view. And then there are all those New Yorkers to interact with.

What advice do you have for new writers or anyone starting a new adventure?

Keep writing. Tell people you are a writer. Talk with other writers. Attend writing workshops. Keep writing.

What’s your vision for Yellow Arrow in 2026?

That new writers will be encouraged to write and submit, and that Yellow Arrow will gain recognition for the work they are publishing.

*****

Kapua Iao 4/14/26 Kapua Iao 4/14/26

Gratitude is a Divine Emotion: Yellow Arrow Interns

“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 current list of partners here).

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. Today they focus on the ins and outs of releasing a publication, running a publishing company, and our community-driven projects. Tasks can range from editing to formatting, marketing, and putting together events and workshops. Above all else, our interns support and champion staff/board, authors, workshop attendees, and themselves. We are so thankful to have had them with us on this journey.

So let’s introduce the spring 2026 interns. Each has our appreciation.

Camille Leah (Cam) Barrón, Editing Intern

Lives in Baltimore, Maryland

*What do you do*? My work includes copyediting and proofreading Yellow Arrow chapbooks and journal issues, writing blog posts, and creating social media content.
*Where do you go to school*? I currently attend Loyola University Maryland and expect to graduate in May 2027.
*What are you currently working on*? I’m currently writing a literary analysis on themes of sexuality in Bram Stoker’s *Dracula* for my Monsters and the Monstrous class.

Camille Leah (Cam) Barrón (she/her) is a junior at Loyola University Maryland majoring in writing with a minor in gender and sexuality studies. She grew up devoting much of her time to reading, writing, and playing lacrosse and has since developed a deep commitment to women’s empowerment and language as a tool for connection, argumentation, and social change. Her academic and creative work centers on rhetoric and poetry with a particular focus on conversations surrounding her Méxican heritage, mental health, gender-based violence, and feminist thought.

She’s currently exploring options for graduate programs to further her education in rhetoric and composition.

What is your favorite course at school? Why did you choose to take it?

It’s hard to pick just one, but Rhetorics of Resistance in Women’s Writing was a special class to me for several reasons. It introduced me to memoir and creative nonfiction—changing the way I think about storytelling. It also introduced me to a professor for whom I later became an archival research fellow for, and ended up encouraging me to make writing my major.

Have you read anything this year that has stuck with you?

I reread Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1831) for a class this year, and it reminded me of why it’s considered a classic. Shelley’s use of the epistolary form is just one of the many ways she demonstrates she was a master at her craft.

Why did you choose an internship with Yellow Arrow?

Yellow Arrow felt like a natural fit because it brought together two passions of mine: publishing and amplifying women-identifying voices. I wanted real experience in the industry, and I wanted that experience to feel meaningful.

What is your favorite part of your internship so far?

I’ve really loved making promotional material and writing social media posts. Canva can be a tedious program, but the result is well worth it.

Taylor Anne Trotta, Program Management Intern (Year-long)

Lives in Abingdon, Maryland

*What do you do*? I primarily assist with the outreach and author support aspects of Yellow Arrow.
*Where do you go to school*? I am currently enrolled in Towson University’s women and gender studies graduate program. I will be in the graduating class of 2026, projected to walk across the stage in December. My time spent as an undergraduate was split between Towson University, where I studied within the women and gender studies program and the Community College of Baltimore County, where I studied social sciences and humanities.
*What are you currently working on*? Currently, I am an emerging freelance writer. Prior to taking this internship, I was the graduate assistant for the history department at Towson where I was a copyeditor and research assistant for the professors.

Taylor Anne Trotta is a writer currently enrolled in the women and gender studies graduate program at Towson University. Taylor has worked under the historians in Towson’s history department as a researcher and copyeditor. She is proudly a founding executive of the university’s women and gender studies club. Taylor has garnered newsroom experience as a reporter on fashion sustainability, with pieces featured on Holy Blog. Her voice has also appeared in the Community College of Baltimore County’s award-winning issue of Fine Print in 2019. She purposely wears many hats so that there is no expectation of abiding by any restraints that a single label puts on a being. Her intention is to hone a career in writing to world-build and advocate for those who are often rendered voiceless. Find her at taylorannetrotta.com and on Instagram and TikTok @taayloraane.

After graduation, she plans on self-publishing the introduction to a utopian fictional series (think Octavia Butler but targeted toward young adults). Also, she is officially launching an upcycled clothing brand that has been in the works this year.

What is your favorite course at school? Why did you choose to take it?

Embodied Activism takes the cake (topped with chocolate-covered strawberries) for my entire time in the academy. In this class, I adopted and maintained the embodied practice of writing daily to relax my activist mind. While most of the time, it’s not a lot, writing on a page without expectations is an essential break from the academic language I primarily use.

Have you read anything this year that has stuck with you?

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.

Why did you choose to do an internship with Yellow Arrow?

The commitment that Yellow Arrow has made to the women-identifying writers of Baltimore (and beyond) is similar to the one I have made in my education. The basis in which I was accepted into this graduate program was that I use my writing as a tool for advocacy for the amplification of marginalized voices. I couldn’t imagine a better fit.

What is your favorite part of your internship so far?

I really enjoy working within a community of writers, something I have never had the opportunity to be a part of. Witnessing a nuanced feminist-based structure of leadership has been pivotal in shaping how I would want to work in a group moving forward in my freelance career.

*****

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 social media. If interested in joining us as an intern, you can learn more at yellowarrowpublishing.com/internships.

Kapua Iao 4/7/26 Kapua Iao 4/7/26

“The everyday is our portion of eternity”: Of Devotion and the Notebook

By Lillian Deja Snortland, written February 2026

I was at first absorbed entirely by the mystique of “the author”—beginning with Beatrix Potter’s fables and peaceful watercolors of the English countryside. Eventually, my voracious reading introduced me to many other avatars of authorship, including the grave, troubled artist, wandering the proverbial (or literal) woods, shepherding the truth about nature and the human condition, and so forth.

They made anything real—how could there be any greater power?

When I was a toddler, I wanted to one day own a tea shop with my mother and become an author myself. For a long time, my north star was Christopher Paolini, the young author of the Eragon series; with talent and drive, he wrote the first book when he was only 15 and published it officially only a few years after.

I will publish a fantasy novel by the time I’m 18, too, I promised myself.

On clunky computers, I spelled stories about fairies and demons. Fanciful and unserious, maybe, but my imagination was my domain, a place to formulate, resolve, and release reality’s constraints at will. No matter how the world saw me, with my brown skin and messy hair and curiosity, there was dignity I felt with every word I recorded. Children innately flex these muscles of self-actualization, and if they’re lucky, they are encouraged by others to strengthen them.

With 16 candles on my cake, I had ideas swirling around and around, scenes written, and accompanying doodles. However, no book was born by the time I was a legal adult. Eighteen came and went, and 20, 24—now, nearly with my 30th birthday in April, there is still no novel with my name on anyone’s bookshelf.

Yet I have created more than I ever thought possible through commitment to the core of my practice: keep observing, keep absorbing, and keep processing on the page. As it turned out, creation came easiest when I removed authorship from its lofty pedestal, and my writing became a simple part of daily living, my “every day,” as necessary and commonplace as taking a breath.

At one time, as part of my job at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, I sat at a podium and checked donors into a lounge. Throughout those nights, my notebook, which I carried in a tiny white beaded purse, was surreptitiously tucked away, whipped open, and then hidden away, over and over again.

The dotted notebook contained guest demands to pass along to my bosses the next day. It was also a space for schedules. For hurt feelings that I wasn’t sure how to say aloud. Dinner shopping lists. Pros and cons. Travel lists and strategic plans. Questions. The names of songs with swells that felt akin to my characters’ journeys. Words I needed to look up. Descriptions of people and their behavior.

My notebook is perhaps what might be called a commonplace journal, perfect for someone whose brain is tantamount to spinning plates.

There’s no limit to what one might include. For example, while traveling in a bus, my handwriting nearly illegible from the bouncing, I copied a few sentences from James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son,which imbued my writing with a new rhythm. Lines from video essays and colors I really want to wear in fall (chocolate brown, if you’re curious). Academic-style presentations and YouTube videos might be synthesized in equal merit. If I’ve enjoyed a movie or book, I consider why, be that the pacing, weaving of descriptions, length of sentences, overall chapter structure, and keep my observations like a treasure map—though I don’t always have the “X” marked yet.

The tiny notebook was my companion as I processed myself, not as a diary but as a grounding tool. The pen in my hand flitted about with no aim, but with the utmost attention to what was immediate in my life.

After the musicians’ scattered warmups melded into a single tuning note, and the lights dimmed, I took a temporary seat in the hall myself. Once I could no longer see the page in the darkness, I wrote in diagonals, with black ink looping back over itself. This was a time for poetry. Static, random lines, pops of a color, doodling blindly.

At intermission, I would return to the podium and write some more. In between pleasantries, closets of coats, refilled Keurig cups, and boxes of white wine, I drafted scenes of a fantasy world, made of character types I’d tended to as a child, and incorporating elements of media I loved.

Whatever world my imagination had once lived in developed over the decade. In my vignettes, there grew the vision of a character with thick brown hair and oxblood-colored eyes. An island. A festival. Magical systems and transformations. Countries bearing suffering and moral conflicts that resembled present-day horrors.

At this job, my time was often traded in for a paycheck, but I was lucky it afforded me spans of boredom and an empty page. Novelist Henry Miller wrote (then later published along with other “commandments” in Henry Miller on Writing (1964)), “Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand”—and so I did, between taking orders, in the dark, always learning and watching, remaining humbly faithful to my creative practice.

Interspersed amongst commentary about my work, house, and community, nothing shiny and literary linked together in an obvious way. There were no chapter titles, nor logical order. Nothing particularly resembled a noble lightning strike of brilliance I’d always imagined, naively, that Paolini might have felt while writing Eragon. Yet quietly, the scenes, brightened and shaped by the music around me, sequenced together. I transcribed the notes onto my laptop and found I had over 50,000 words: a first imperfect draft of exactly the sort of novel I’d been chasing for years.

Sharing a novel with the public was my dream, but it was this commonplace journaling, this scattered meditation, that provided me an unexpected ladder to reach it.

French author and activist Simone de Beauvoir went to see her friends often, and this social treat was part of her creative world. Writing at the symphony amidst the white noise of strangers allowed for a calm sense of momentum without the immense crushing pressure of isolation. I often take notes after meetings with friends where we sit and gab about life, or create stories, scripts, and tabletop role-playing games together. I attend local poetry and fiction readings or find cheap tickets to the symphony on occasion.

During a recent girls’ trip to New York, I purchased a tiny notebook with a blue-and-yellow watercolor tree on the cover. Containing no more than 30 milky pages, I asked my friends to fill the emptiness with whatever they wanted. Over the course of our trip, they left me with stickers and sketches of a bagel shop, a scruffy dog, and Stonewall.

As our trip drew to a close, I took a page at the end and drew the chevron pattern from a woman’s coat who stood near me at New York Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station. In spite of its meaninglessness, the pattern was part of a story just waiting to be written. Once my eyes opened, and even while at times I felt far adrift from my novel’s success, I found my writing growing richer as my relationship with the world shifted endlessly between my internal landscape and that of the external.

Concepts from truncated notes often return like a north wind and drive some part of my creative work. Rather than by divine inspiration, I can trace my mind’s connections directly back to something I took notice of in commonplace musing. Disparate thoughts and observations are not without meaning, but a form of meditation and mesmerization.

Take, for example, this fragmentary passage from author Julian Barnes’ novel The Sense of an Ending, which stirs the heart and queries the passage of time with everyday things:

I remember, in no particular order:

‍‍—a shiny inner wrist;

—steam rising from a wet sink as a hot frying pan is laughingly tossed into it;

—gouts of sperm circling a plughole, before being sluiced down the full length of a tall house;

—a river rushing nonsensically upstream, its wave and wash lit by half a dozen chasing ‍torchbeams;

‍—another river, broad and grey, the direction of its flow disguised by a stiff wind exciting the surface;

—bathwater long gone cold behind a locked door.

This last isn’t something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.

We live in time—it holds us and molds us—but I’ve never felt I understood it very well. And I’m not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing—until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.

I recently viewed the Ruth Asawa retrospective at the MoMA, labeled Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective exhibition. Though I was familiar with her commercially successful works, I was most inspired by her textile and meditative practice. She was patient in her pursuit of quiet beauty, with works spanning repeated, unpolished graphite gestures of an elementary sunflower, to her powerfully modern paintings and wire sculptures.

Her sketches were not a rudimentary means to a grandiose end. They were part of her fundamental daily practice of living. “Doing is living. That is all that matters,” Ruth Asawa is quoted on a panel in the exhibit. As she walked, through the concentric expansion and contraction of her thoughts, the path was created beneath her. In his book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007), Haruki Murakami speaks of routine habits as follows: “The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”

Commonplace journaling was one such way I mesmerized myself. This professor shared a series of anchors to consider when observing the world, including, but not limited to: readings, watching, sketching, eating, praying, quoting, needing, eating, buying, thinking, considering, debating, owing, avoiding, looking at, wondering about, checking in, gratitude, planting, harvesting, nurturing, weaning, creating, listening to, ignoring, cooking, wearing, planning, releasing, tasting, touching, smelling, noticing, embracing, rejecting, waiting for, allowing, learning, dreaming, becoming, embodying, giving, appreciating, resisting, hard truths, delights, small wins, inside/outside, architecting, sound, sidewalks, streets, traffic, stores, trash, sticker, graffiti, energy, sounds, a color, a shape, an accessory, dynamics, attention/distraction, and so forth.

It was only after years and years that I discovered delight in dry observations, arranging sights and sounds which, if I described them alone, would mean very little. In director Guillermo Del Toro’s film Frankenstein, Lady Elizabeth countermanded scientific voracity in favor of wonder towards God’s smallest creatures. Lady Elizabeth’s faith was tenacious, and I think of her faith as something akin to my own. French writer Maurice Blanchot writes, in a translation of his piece “Everyday Speech,” “The every day is our potion of eternity.” My habits are a trellis for my dreams, including my desire to see my name on the spine of a book. But by the same token, my habits are in attendance of the awe-inspiring every day.

I write, therefore I am, and therefore I am also in this eternity with you.

Though I have no religion, journaling has become a sort of ritual, a grounding procedure based on mechanical habit. I believe one’s craft has very little to do with talent and much more to do with devotion. Writing and paying attention are ways of life, and anyone can do it.

Writing in the dark of the orchestra hall, there was nothing splendid in my routine or my view of myself. It was then that I sensed my sweet spot—when I wrote from within a paradox. I was both dedicated and casual. My writing could be everything, but most importantly, it was nothing at all—I observed simple things and trained myself to say simple things, too. When writing became so commonplace, it allowed me to detect, within the swirling chaos of time, compelling patterns worth sharing.

As a creative, it behooves you to open doors around you rather than closing them. Start wherever and however you can, today: take life in. After all, consciousness is a matter of attention.

And what is any life made of, if not infinite stories?

Lillian Deja Snortland’s poetry, essays, features, creative nonfiction, and short stories have appeared in Postscript Magazine, OUCH! Magazine, Goucher Magazine, Yellow Arrow Vignette BLAZE, and Amplify Arts publications, been performed at Voxel Theater, and exhibited at the Temporary Arts Centre in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Her essay “The Tragedies of Ecstasy” was nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize through After the Art literary magazine. She will be leading a Yellow Arrow workshop called Bear Fragments in May; registration is at yellowarrowpublishing.com/workshop-sign-up/bearfragments.

Her work explores metamorphosis (physical and metaphorical) and precipice. She loves collaborating with teams in any creative medium, including film writing/production (having participated in the Baltimore 48 Hour Film Project and the Maryland 72 Film Fest), tabletop role-play, and musical jams.

Originally from Eugene, Oregon, Lillian graduated from Carleton College with a BA in Classical studies and a minor in French/Francophone studies, and has an MFA in nonfiction from Goucher College. She enjoys lounging in parks, zooming via public transit to Baltimore cultural events, and hosting thematic parties in her apartment.

*****

Kapua Iao 4/4/26 Kapua Iao 4/4/26

A Young Woman’s First AWP: On Nerves, Community, and Finding Your Voice

‍By Camille Leah Barrón, written March 2026

‍

I taught myself to read twice.

The first time was like everyone else. The second time was harder—that was in middle school, newly diagnosed with dyslexia, learning to reorganize letters in their proper order to form a sentence that actually made sense. It was slow. It was frustrating. I liked the idea of reading—of dreaming up new worlds and sharing stories—but for some reason, I was never good enough at it to take advantage of the enjoyment everyone else experienced. And then I found the books that made the effort worth it. Young adult fantasy. Dystopian fiction. Stories about girls who had no business surviving the situations they were dropped into, and who survived them anyway. I read every one I could get my hands on. I decided then: If they could fight their way through impossible worlds, I could fight my way through a page.

Reading became an escape at first. Then a passion. Then I started writing stories of my own. I made a decision somewhere in those pages: one day, I would work in publishing.

That day looked like this: spring break, junior year of college. My classmates were on their own vacations with their friends or families. My little brother was backpacking across Iberia. I was at the Baltimore Convention Center in the professional clothes I bought specifically for the occasion, about to walk into AWP—11,000 writers, editors, publishers, and me—for the very first time.

The AWP—the Association of Writers and Writing Programs—conference is one of the largest literary gatherings in the country, spanning several days of panels, craft talks, readings, and a book fair. Yellow Arrow Publishing, a Baltimore-based press, had only attended a handful of times before. This year, AWP came to Baltimore, and we kicked things off the night before the conference opened by celebrating Yellow Arrow’s 10th anniversary with a reading from 10 of our incredible authors.

The last time I had been inside the Baltimore Convention Center was for a Comic Con when I was in middle school. The differences were obvious—one had thousands of people dressed in elaborate costumes of their favorite comic book characters, and the other had thousands of people carrying tote bags overflowing with literary magazines and dog-eared chapbooks—but the energy was surprisingly similar. Both were thousands of people converging in one place to celebrate and learn within a shared passion. Both were overwhelming in the best possible way.

This time, though, I wasn’t a middle schooler tagging along with my best friend’s dad as a chaperone. I was there professionally, as an intern, with “Yellow Arrow Publishing” on my badge.

The book fair alone had hundreds of booths, small presses, journals, and publishing houses stretching across the floor in every direction. Panels were happening simultaneously upstairs across multiple rooms, with lines of people snaking out into the hallways waiting to get in.

I stood at the Charles Street entrance for a moment and genuinely did not know where to go first.

Walking into a new experience without knowing a single person, without knowing the unwritten rules of how things work—it’s disorienting in a way that’s hard to explain. You look around and assume that everyone else knows exactly what they’re doing, that they’ve done this before, that they belong here in some way you don’t yet. You think: I’m just an intern, these people are real adults.

But then I started noticing the people around me more. And what I saw was this: so many women. Women presenting at panels, women running booths, women standing in the hallways mid-conversation, animated and engaged. Women who looked like they had been coming to AWP for 20 years and women who looked like they were figuring it out in real time, just like me. In a split second, I felt less nervous. I wasn’t alone in that room. Not even close.

The connections came slowly at first, then all at once.

Through Yellow Arrow, I had the chance to meet other interns along with people interning at other small presses. What I didn’t expect was how quickly a shared admission of nervousness could dissolve the tension of meeting someone new. Within the first few minutes of almost every conversation with another intern, someone would say some version of “I wasn’t sure what to expect or I’m still figuring this out or I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing,” and suddenly we were just people talking, not professionals performing professionalism at each other.

That’s something nobody tells you about networking: Most people aren’t as confident as they look, and most people are genuinely happy to talk to you. About their writing. About the press they’re working for. About where they’re from, what brought them to publishing, what they’re excited about right now. The conversations didn’t feel like transactions. They felt like people just sharing their love of reading and writing.

The community at AWP was more welcoming than I had any right to expect as a first timer. People offered advice freely—not in a condescending way, but in the way that people share things they wish someone had told them earlier. I absorbed as much as I could.

And the representation in that convention center was incredible to see. So many women. So many people of color. So many voices that publishing has historically struggled to center, now showing up and claiming space with full force. It wasn’t just visually affirming—it was a reminder of why small, independent presses like Yellow Arrow exist in the first place. The industry has room for more voices; it needs them. Walking through that book fair, I saw what it looks like when the door gets held open a little wider.

I started my internship in January not knowing what publishing actually looked like from the inside. I left AWP with a slightly clearer picture, and it was bigger and stranger and more interesting than I had imagined.

There are independent presses and literary magazines operating on shoestring budgets with enormous amounts of heart. There are editors who specialize in poetry and editors who work exclusively in literary fiction. There are authors at every stage—debut writers with their first book, seasoned writers reinventing their practice, writers who also teach, also edit, also run presses of their own. The publishing world isn’t a single ladder you climb. It’s more like a web with a hundred different points of entry and a hundred different ways to build a life inside it.

The panels reinforced this. Conversation after conversation made clear how deeply collaborative writing is—how much writers rely on each other, how communities form around journals and workshops and readings and, yes, conferences like this one. Writers supporting other writers isn’t a nice sentiment. It’s structural. It’s how the work survives.

I also learned something more practical: Networking doesn’t have to feel like performing a version of yourself that’s more polished and less real. The most meaningful conversations I had at AWP happened when I stopped trying to say the right thing and just talked honestly about what I was learning and what I cared about. Professionalism, it turns out, isn’t a costume. It’s just showing up and being present and treating people like they’re worthy of your full attention.

What made that easier than I expected was how freely people offered up their knowledge—especially women. There was no sense of guarding hard-earned wisdom or doling out advice strategically. If anything, it felt the opposite. The women I met seemed genuinely invested in watching another young woman find her footing. Like they remembered exactly what it felt like to be new and had decided that the best thing they could do with everything they’d learned was to hand it forward.

The advice was surprisingly simple.

Be yourself in your writing. Don’t soften your voice to make it easier to swallow. Your work has a place, especially when it doesn’t fit cleanly into a box. Women’s voices matter and need to be heard, not as a gesture, but as a genuine correction to a long history of erasure.

I’m a junior in college. I’m a poet and a rhetorician. I’m an intern. I am, by most measures, at the very beginning of whatever this is. AWP didn’t change that. But it did something more useful—it reminded me that everyone starts somewhere. The writer signing books at her publisher’s booth was once a student who didn’t know what AWP was. The editor presenting a panel on queer ekphrasis once stood at the entrance of a convention center feeling exactly the kind of overwhelmed that I felt on day one. The conference exists, at least in part, because the literary community understands that the people coming up behind them need to see what’s possible.

Sometimes the hardest part is walking into the room. The sheer act of showing up when you’re uncertain, when you don’t yet know the language, when the imposter syndrome is loud takes courage. But once you’re inside, you realize that the room is full of people who want you there. People ready to hand you a piece of advice, strike up a conversation, or simply exist alongside you as proof that this world is bigger and more open than it might have seemed from the outside.

I walked into AWP not knowing what to expect.

I walked out knowing that little girl who struggled to read was now a part of the conversation.

*****

Kapua Iao 3/31/26 Kapua Iao 3/31/26

Meet a Board Member: Raga Ayyagari

‍Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to introduce Raga Ayyagari, a board member. Raga draws inspiration from nature, stories, music, and unexpected moments of connection. Whether she is writing policy briefs, scientific reports, or poems, she enjoys reflecting on and sharing observations and experiences in accessible and creative ways. Her poems have appeared in the Banyan Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Yellow Arrow Journal, and Stanford University Leland Quarterly Journal. She has shared poetry at various readings, contributed to a poetry and art exhibit with Art Enables, and facilitated several workshops on ecopoetry.

Raga says, “Yellow Arrow Publishing has nurtured me as a writer and teacher over the years, and I am excited to pay this forward by supporting the organization and community of writers as a Board Member.”

Tell us a little something about yourself:

I enjoy listening to and making music, volunteering in my community, taking care of animals, and exploring libraries and community gardens.

What do you love most about where you live?

I currently live in the Bay Area and enjoy the natural beauty, cultural diversity, and caring community here.

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

Yellow Arrow has been a supportive and inspiring catalyst for my writing career. I learned about Yellow Arrow through an in-person literary event in Washington, D.C., in 2019. I published poems in two of the journal issues and participated in two readings, which gave me the confidence to keep writing, publishing, and reading. I also led two workshops on ecopoetry and nature poetry through Yellow Arrow and really enjoyed the process of preparing and delivering the curriculum. I appreciate how welcoming and nurturing the Yellow Arrow = team has been for me, and I am excited to give back to the organization as a board member.

What are you working on currently?

I am enjoying working on learning new music and vocal techniques.

What genre do you write and read the most and why?

I enjoy writing poems. Poetry offers so much flexibility while also providing useful structures to express emotions and experiences. I appreciate how writing poems helps me be present, take time to observe the worlds within and around me, and explore different styles of expression.

I enjoy reading autobiographies because I am fascinated by how people reflect on and share their life experiences.

Can you recall an early memory that might have sparked your love of writing/reading?

My parents introduced me to the joy of reading and writing in Telugu and English at an early age, helping me and my sister carry heavy bags of books from the public library in Texas each week and patiently teaching us the Telugu alphabet. Growing up, I enjoyed writing stories with my sister and had several teachers who encouraged me to continue writing.

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

You Are Here, a poetry anthology edited by Ada Limon.

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

I am grateful to several writing teachers and literary friends who inspired me to keep practicing reading and writing and introduced me to different opportunities to learn and share my work.

If you could have a workspace anywhere, where would it be and why? What would it look like?

I prefer calm workspaces with gentle lighting.

What advice do you have for new writers or anyone starting a new adventure?

Creating a supportive community of writers, whether through classes, events, or other connections, can open new opportunities, help with accountability, and make the creative journey more fulfilling.

What’s your vision for Yellow Arrow in 2026?

To help secure resources and nurture partnerships to expand the reach of Yellow Arrow’s offerings for writers. ‍

*****

Guest User 3/27/26 Guest User 3/27/26

Her View Friday

single-author publications
single pieces in journals, anthologies, etc., as well as prizes/awards, book reviews, and podcasts/interviews

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

“When Time Unfurls the Tongue” by Heather Brown Barrett

Genre: poetry

Name of publication: The Ekphrastic Review

Date Released: March 6, 2026

Type of publication: online

ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-challenges/stephanie-grainger-ekphrastic-responses-curated-by-kate-copeland (scroll down page)

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 as well as prizes/awards, book reviews, and podcasts/interviews: here.

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

*****

Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women-identifying writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we LUMINATE a path for women-identifying creatives this year by purchasing one of our publications or a workshop from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, for yourself or as a gift, joining our newsletter, following us on Facebook or Instagram, or subscribing 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 3/24/26 Kapua Iao 3/24/26

Muse Mayhem: A Conversation with Dana Knott

‍ ‍Stand slender as a brush stroke.
Silence the mind and still the body.
Let the heart mimic the grave
beats of a windup metronome.

“Supermodel”

Dana Knott is a librarian, writer, and publisher (among many other amazing roles!) based in Ohio. Her passion for art in all its forms and its accessibility is evident in her work, her words, and her daily life. She brims with knowledge of and admiration for diverse and unsung voices in the creative community—past and present.

Knott’s poetry collection, Girl, Drowning, which will be published by Yellow Arrow Publishing in April 2026 and is now available for preorder at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/girl-drowning-paperback, is an exploration of the myth-shrouded life of artist Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal and the societal constraints faced by women artists of her time. It also encompasses themes of gender and power dynamics and the complex experience of the model/muse. Her work is a must read for those who love discovering the layers of humanness that make up an enigmatic and mysterious figure, page by page.

Melissa Nunez, Yellow Arrow interviewer, and Knott connected to discuss the birth and development of this poetry collection, along with the challenges and experiences of women in literature (and the bigger art community) and the significance of an equitable and supportive community for all creatives.

Who are some women-identified writers who inspire you?

There are so many inspiring authors in both poetry and prose. In poetry, the writing of Jane Hirschfield always stands out to me. I think of the poet and novelist H.D. and the imagery of her mythology poems. Lucille Clifton is another go-to for me. When I feel like I’m in a poetry drought, I turn to a poet, Kenneth Rexroth, who translated anthologies of Chinese poems, many of which were written by women. They contain such beautiful images and bring so much nature to the page but also dig deep into the experience of being a woman and sometimes feeling trapped.

For prose authors, I think of Madeleine Miller, who wrote Circe and The Song of Achilles. Circe is an audiobook that I can listen to on repeat. I also read and reread the words of Emily St. John Mandel, who wrote Station Eleven, The Glass Hotel, and Sea of Tranquility. I go back to these comfort pieces. I’m in Ohio right now, where Toni Morrison is from, and her birthday is coming up. In the library where I work, and others across the state, we are celebrating Toni Morrison and her works. I think her words have awed and impacted many of us from the first read. I also admire Isabel Allende for her use of magical realism. The House of the Spirits is another work that really stayed with me. It focuses on women’s resilience and creativity and connects storytelling and heritage across time.

I also have a small press and online lit mag called tiny wren lit at tinywrenlit.com. I think of some of the women I’ve published, such as Jennifer Browne, Kortney Garrison, and Vic Nogay (who also has a poetry collection, Naming a Dying Thing, published by Yellow Arrow).

What drew you to the story of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal and how is her story relatable to a modern audience?

I think I have a similar story to many people who majored in English. I focused on British literature in undergrad and continued that focus for my master’s. I was taking a class and reading a lot of authors from that period. What’s interesting is that we weren’t reading Siddal’s work, but her husband’s, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s, poetry. My professor mentioned the story of Rossetti putting his manuscript of poems in his wife’s casket and regretting it seven years later, working with his agent to have her exhumed by bonfire. I was struck by that because not once was it mentioned that she was not just Rossetti’s wife, but an artist, a poet, and a model. Of course, we didn’t read any of her poems. I didn’t even know she was a writer. In many ways, she’s been this character from history with two defining moments. We have her posing in the bathtub as Ophelia for John Everett Millais (tate.org.uk/art/artworks/millais-ophelia-n01506), and then the gothic element of her being exhumed. Both events are surrounded by romanticized imagery. When you think about the moments that stand out in your own life, a person is complex, layered, and full of detail. Yet her life is limited to two moments where she is a vessel for men.

For the Ophelia painting, she posed in a bathtub wearing an elaborate wedding-like gown. The bath water was kept warm by candles and oil lamps underneath. The painter was absorbed in his work, not noticing the candles going out and the water turning cold, to the point that she became ill. We know she didn’t say anything. Is that weakness? Passivity? Or professional strength and resilience? People don’t like women who complain. There’s complexity in that moment. Unfortunately, she became seriously ill, and many point to that as contributing to her use of laudanum. Years later, when she was exhumed, there was the myth that she looked as beautiful as ever, that her red hair had continued to grow (which is another romantic notion). The reality after being in the ground that long is likely very different. I was fascinated by the macabre, romantic aspects, as I was around 19 at the time, and it felt dramatic and compelling.

What is it like to inhabit the voice of another?

I’ve always been fascinated by how people lived, especially in Victorian times. With Siddal it started with reading everything about her, from the biographies to the criticism. I’ve always been interested in history and its connection to art and literature, and how the context of a time impacts art and one’s ability to create it.

First, I wanted to know the circumstances of her life, the biographical details. Many of the major scholars on Siddal are women, and I benefit from their labor of bringing attention to her not as a passive victim, but as someone with her own aspirations and talent. It makes you wonder how many more women we might know if there had been more feminist recognition of women’s art at the time. It’s not that long ago that we gained real access to Siddal’s poems, which brought them critical attention. There’s something wonderful about reading her poetry now and seeing it appreciated. Scholars like Jan Marsh have curated exhibits focused on Siddal and other women creators of the time. I also think about Lucinda Hawksley, who worked to give Siddal recognition beyond being someone’s muse. Hawksley is a descendant of Charles Dickens, who famously left his wife for a much younger actress, and the power dynamics there are like those in Siddal’s life. That historical grounding mattered to me.

I’m 50 now, and I began writing the poems within Girl, Drowning during the pandemic. I’m not sure I could have written them earlier. My life experience mattered. In the years leading up to 50, I felt a loss of control. I had left a job and started a new one that felt unstable. My health was also fragile as I had to have a hysterectomy. Even with a grown child it is strange how much femininity can feel tied to your uterus. Severe health problems made my body feel unreliable. My marriage, which had been steady for years, felt unstable for a time. As someone who values control, I felt I had lost it in every area, and it was frightening and humbling. I took those emotions, reread biographies of Siddal, and put myself into a kind of method acting, pulling everything to the surface and writing from there. Afterward, the emotion just sat at the top. I stopped at 20 poems in the collection, though I’ve written more since. After inhabiting who I thought she was so deeply, I couldn’t write for a while. It was too much sadness. In many ways, I was using Siddal as a muse in thinking about loss of control. That theme shows up often in my writing, feeling passive, then trying to reclaim energy and agency. Between the girl in the bathtub and the girl in the grave, there’s so much more of her story to tell. I wove in small details from my own life with dramatic license. (In “Accidental Death,” a poem about her dying, historically, there were four doctors who tried to resuscitate her, and the first one pumped her stomach, but for dramatic effect I have it as the fourth doctor.) I wanted emotional truth, even if not every detail is historically exact.

Beyond biographies, I immersed myself in primary texts. I read the Rossetti family letters, the inquest into her death, and descriptions of her. Only a handful of her own letters survive. I placed pieces of those letters into the poems to anchor them historically, especially the one written after she lost her child. At that time, she struggled with severe laudanum addiction while pregnant with her second baby. Some scholars analyze her through a medical lens, questioning anorexia, control over the body, and illness as a way to hold onto someone. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s part of the conversation. Some even describe her as manipulative, while others emphasize Rossetti’s cruelty. He despised Siddal’s dependence on laudanum, yet later became addicted himself to chloral hydrate, morphine, and alcohol. The codependency runs both ways. They were both complex characters, but he had more power.

I like the idea of connecting deeply with someone else’s story—using your voice to speak for them, even though it remains your voice. The poems in my collection mirror that complexity. There are other women fascinated by Siddal. There was even a Kickstarter project where an artist gathered Siddal’s poetry into a volume. She had red hair herself and staged photographs embodying Siddal. It’s interesting how people continue to inhabit her image. She’s still a muse, but more than that, she represents a woman with talent and unrealized possibility. What if she had the support she needed?

The girl will look at herself
horrified, fascinated, as if
staring into a crystal ball
from which death emerges,
a blazing scarlet poppy.

“Girl, Drowning”

How did you hear of Yellow Arrow and what led you to submit your collection?

I’m very bad about sending out my work. My husband pushes me to get it out there, but I love publishing other people’s work and being supportive without expecting anything in return. That’s one thing I love about Yellow Arrow. Joining their community of authors is such a welcoming, nurturing process. Everything about the mission and reputation of the press inspired me to submit my collection. When I see the list of poets in the journal, I’m in awe. I’ll admit I felt a bit of imposter syndrome seeing the amazing authors published alongside me. I’m just excited to read their stories. The diversity of women, ideas, and experiences is exciting, and that support is given so freely and generously by the press.

That’s something I try to do with my own lit mag. I don’t charge reading fees or expect people to put money down for contests or to fund it, just provide access and support. It’s amazing what that kind of opportunity can mean. What would it have meant for Siddal? When Siddal created her art, you had someone like Coventry Patmore, famous for the poem “The Angel in the House,” promoting this ideal of the devoted, domestic wife. And then looking at Siddal’s art and suggesting Rossetti must have helped her. That assumption says so much.

Can you share with us the process of selecting a title and cover art for your poetry collection?

It’s interesting because the manuscript originally had a different title: Vermilion Dove. Vermilion (not just red) and dove because Siddal was often likened to a dove (Rossetti called her that). They all had nicknames in their circle, but it began to feel objectifying. Originally, the first poem in the manuscript leaned into the supermodel myth, but I decided instead to frame the collection around those two defining moments: the girl in the bathtub and the girl in the grave. I wanted to begin with the bathtub and end with the exhumation, reflecting how we tend to see her, even as I challenge that framing. I also thought carefully about using the word “girl” instead of “woman.” There’s the focus on youth and beauty but also the way calling someone a girl diminishes power. Many women, at all ages, are still called girls. I’ve experienced that myself. Being called a girl carries that sense of not being taken seriously, and I wanted to highlight that. Drowning, of course, plays into the Ophelia myth. Water imagery is layered—drowning can symbolize surrender, escape, release. You could go full The Awakening with it. There’s also the question of Siddal’s sexuality, whether she and Rossetti were intimate before marriage, the rumors of abortion, and the rapid pregnancies after they wed. Who’s to say? Some of that is imaginative reconstruction.

The title is striking because it enters through the familiar image, the Ophelia figure, but in the poem she gazes back. The artist looks at her, but she looks back and questions him. What do you know about being a woman? About desperation? About the women who drowned in the Thames because they were ruined or pregnant and saw no escape? Even now, that obsession with purity lingers. What does he really know, beyond painting beautiful women? There’s also the way Rossetti obsessively drew her. One poem references the sheer number of sketches, so many that they seem to spill everywhere. You see endless depictions of her, often idealized. Then you look at her self-portrait, and it’s starkly different. Severe, almost critical. The contrast between how he saw her and how she saw herself always strikes me. That’s why I love Alexa [Laharty]’s cover art. It feels in-between. Not the hyper-idealized muse, but not only the severe self-portrait either. There’s strength, pride, and containment. The blue tones echo water, but without recreating Millais’ Ophelia. She isn’t floating. She’s upright and looking outward. Not at us, but beyond us. Separate. Self-possessed. I think Laharty captured that balance beautifully, and I completely fell in love with it. It’s powerful to have a woman artist depict Siddal in this way. Laharty also selected some of Siddal’s drawings to include in the book, which is incredible. Readers can see what Siddal was trying to achieve in her own art, and that addition means so much.

Can you talk about the concept of a muse and the balance of power and prejudice, maybe even oppression that comes with the role?

It’s hard not to think about the muse in comparison to a sex worker. Sex work can mean being objectified, paid to satisfy someone else’s need, controlled by financial circumstances, sometimes by men who profit from that labor. There were rumors about Fanny Cornforth, one of Rossetti’s models, who came from the working class. Some depict her as a prostitute, though who knows how valid that is. She stood in contrast to Siddal, as she was fleshier and more sensual, whereas Siddal was pale, red-haired, and almost fragile. Siddal helped make red hair fashionable at a time when it could be seen as demonic. That pale, sickly aesthetic, the deathly “heroin chic” of the 1850s, became desirable. With sex work, there’s also the idea of agency. Is there power in controlling your body, in evoking desire? Or is that power always limited by who ultimately controls the money and reputation? That tension feels similar to the muse. On the one hand, you’re an object of inspiration. On the other, you evoke desire, creativity, obsession. Is there power in that? Maybe. But it’s complicated. It ties into the broader gender dynamics, including women’s relationships with each other.

In “Pre-Raphaelite Death Cult” I reference the idea that there’s a special place in hell for women who hurt other women. That quote is often attributed to Madeleine Albright, and it resurfaced during Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It became a kind of cultural shorthand—printed on coffee cups, circulated everywhere. Even Taylor Swift has spoken about the scrutiny she faces, especially from other women, about her body, her relationships, and her success. Nothing is taboo when it comes to women in the public eye. There’s that persistent “mean girl” vibe. I experienced some of that in graduate school. My first English program felt competitive and hostile. When you gather so many ambitious people in one place, it can become unhealthy. I wasn’t in the creative writing track, but I still wrote poetry. A few times I won awards, and some people suggested my husband must have written the poems. The irony was that the poem in question was deeply personal about working in a cancer center, handling paperwork that exposed me to intimate details of people’s lives while watching their health decline or improve. Yet the response wasn’t support, it was suspicion. And it wasn’t only men who said it. That kind of internalized sexism, that competition, can come from anywhere.

So the question becomes: how do women support each other? How do we resist that dynamic? One positive outcome of the pandemic was the rise of online writing communities. As a Gen Xer, I grew up connecting with people physically through school, neighborhoods, and workplaces. The idea of forming deep creative connections online felt strange at first, but during the pandemic, I found an incredible community of writers. People like Taylor Byas, who is not only an extraordinary poet but also a generous human being. I was able to bring her to my library for a poetry reading and workshop. Those connections matter. In contrast to the isolation and competition I experienced earlier, that sense of mutual uplift feels radical. It’s the opposite of the “special circle in hell” dynamic. It’s women amplifying one another instead of diminishing.

There is a line in your poem “The First Dose” that is so simple and straightforward and yet speaks volumes to the position of women in Siddal’s era and, unfortunately, attitudes that still linger in the present day: “Laudanum, a tincture / of opium, Victorian / cure-all in cocktail form / for teething babies / and troubled women.” Can you expand on the importance of calling out and confronting inequities both past and present?

It’s fascinating how prevalent laudanum was. You’d take a few drops, feel drowsy, passive, wrapped in a kind of haze. I’ve often imagined what that must have felt like for Siddal with that fog settling in. There were even advertisements suggesting you give it to teething babies to keep them quiet. Just drug them into compliance, and that connects to something darker. The impulse to keep women quiet through drugs, through institutionalization, through “treatments.” I think of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Yellow Wallpaper. Isolating a woman, removing stimulation, confining her for her own supposed good, not wanting her to embarrass you, not wanting her behavior to reflect poorly on you. It’s about control.

Siddal wasn’t the only one navigating those expectations. Annie Miller, who modeled for William Holman Hunt, was also “trained” to be a lady. Rossetti had affairs with her, too. There’s this pattern of men selecting working-class women, shaping them into something more socially acceptable, refining them, but also rendering them more passive. If drugs helped smooth that process, then so be it. I recently read The Bell Jar after many years of meaning to. The electroshock treatments, the insulin-induced comas, all methods to make women compliant, less troublesome. Zelda Fitzgerald comes to mind, too, the accusations that F. Scott Fitzgerald borrowed from her diaries, and then she’s institutionalized. Again, questions of power, authorship, control. It’s all part of the same conversation—who gets to create, who gets labeled unstable, and who gets silenced. It is an issue that, unfortunately, women and those in positions of less power still deal with today.

As a publisher yourself, how was the experience of writing and submitting as compared to that of selecting and publishing the work of others?

I think a big part of publishing is wanting to make the author happy, making sure they feel you’ve handled their work with care and reflected their vision. When I talk to someone I’m going to publish, I ask: “What’s your vision? How do you see the cover? The presentation?” I see it as a labor of love. I don’t expect anything except the privilege of putting beautiful work into the world and supporting it. One of my favorite moments is when an author receives their copies and tells me how happy they are. I love using linen covers—that tactile smoothness, the feel of it in your hands. It matters. I recently bought a small chapbook from Ethel Zine by Kortney Garrison. She wrote about Julian of Norwich, and I was drawn to how concisely and beautifully she captured that mystic’s experience. I probably overuse words like “beautiful” and “lovely,” but that’s honestly how so much of this work feels to me. It’s collaborative. Sometimes an author wants something I might not have chosen myself, but I honor that and often see that it works. Other times I suggest small touches they hadn’t considered, and later they appreciate it. That back-and-forth feels very feminist to me. Not “this is how we’re doing it,” but listening and shaping together. I’ve heard stories of authors fighting publishers over titles or covers. My experience with Yellow Arrow has been nurturing. I’ve never felt dismissed; I’ve felt heard.

Art has always been emotional for me. I grew up near Chicago, and the Art Institute has one of Rossetti’s posthumous paintings of Siddal. But when I was 20 and in London, seeing Millais’ Ophelia in person was overwhelming. The Tate has an extraordinary Pre-Raphaelite collection, and they mounted an exhibit called The Rossettis, featuring Dante Gabriel, Christina, William Michael—and importantly, Siddal’s work centered among them. The only other venue for that exhibition was the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington. My husband and I drove from Ohio to Delaware the final weekend that it was open just to see it. It felt like a pilgrimage. Seeing so many of Siddal’s works together brought tears to my eyes. You think about that old idea, what might someone have created if they’d had full support and opportunity? What could Siddal have been with different circumstances, better health, more training, more access? That’s why it’s so distressing when schools cut art and music programs, when art becomes accessible only to the elite. It’s a privilege to drive across states to see an exhibit.

One of the most moving moments was seeing a preserved lock of Siddal’s red hair, discovered among papers and later archived by the museum. Standing there, looking at that fragment of her physical presence, was overwhelming. I walked through the exhibit several times, and at one point alone, just to take it in quietly. They also displayed pages from the manuscript Rossetti placed in her coffin, and you could see the damage, the wormholes. It quietly dismantled the myth of perfect preservation. The reality was there in front of you. That same weekend we visited the Brandywine Museum to see the Wyeth family’s work (my husband has written ekphrastic poems about them). It became a day of immersion in art. I really believe everyone deserves these moments of standing before something and feeling connected to history, creativity, and possibility.

If I should find Heaven, let it be
the woods flooded with bluebells,
their perfume fresh, leafy, and clean,
where we sought shelter from rain
and drank water from a sweet spring,

“Wake”

What advice do you have for fellow women-identified writers?

It’s hard to put yourself out there and build confidence in your art. How do you become confident? Do you need someone to tell you that you’re good, or is it about developing community and finding trusted people to bounce ideas off? Is it being open to revision?

When I was younger, I wasn’t good about keeping drafts. I’d write something, edit it immediately, cut lines, and only keep the final version. Now I’d say to hold on to everything. Keep those versions. You may return to them later with new clarity. Especially with the Siddal poems, revision mattered. For example, the last poem, “Wife of Rosetti,” originally had the title “Tales of the Macabre” and was in two sections. The first focused on a story Siddal reportedly told at dinner parties about a neighbor who carried her over puddles in muddy streets and later murdered his wife. He dismembered her, scattered the body, and lived with his mistress before being caught and attempting suicide in custody. He was eventually hanged, while the mistress was transported to Botany Bay. The second section was the poem you see now, which focuses on Rossetti’s possession of her even in death and the digging up of her body. At first, I liked the pairing. It felt almost like tabloid fodder to pair these two macabre stories. But eventually I realized the poem was stronger when I cut the first section and focused entirely on Siddal. The other story distracted from that central moment. I still have the original draft. I don’t know if I’ll use it, but keeping it gave me the freedom to make the harder decision.

Revision often means making difficult choices for the good of the poem, even when you’re attached to what you cut. Community helps with that as does time. Letting a poem sit and returning to it. Complex details can pull you in as a writer but sometimes you have to decide which ones serve the poem and which don’t. So, I think confidence comes partly from craft, from understanding that first drafts are rarely right. It comes from revision, from trusting the process, from saving everything, from keeping a notebook of lines, images, headlines that catch your attention. It comes from not being afraid to make hard editorial decisions. We almost never get it right the first time. And that’s okay.

Do you have any projects in the works you would like to share with our audience?

I’ve been writing little poems here and there. It’s hard not to respond to what’s happening in the country. Sometimes I write very sarcastic poems about the government, but I don’t send them out. Other times I worry about being too inactive, too passive in the face of what feels like real harm. What do we risk by speaking? What do we risk by staying silent? I work in a public institution as an educator, and there are times I feel I have to set aside my personal beliefs. In a state like Ohio (heavily gerrymandered and increasingly red) there’s a tension. It has not been a swing state for years. That sense of complicity, of compromise, seeps in. I’ve read poems written in response to recent events. Amanda Gorman’s poem about Renée Good stood out to me—it felt authentic. Some other poems about the same events feel opportunistic, almost exploitative, like people rushing to publish their “moment” poem. I think authenticity matters. Gorman writes as a Black woman whose lived experience shapes how she understands injustice. There’s a difference between speaking from that place and writing toward a trend. So, I think a lot about responsibility and how we use poetry, when we speak, and why. And sometimes the question isn’t just what we write, but what actions we take beyond writing.

At the same time, I’m still working on Pre-Raphaelite poems. I haven’t sent many out. I’m reading deeply again about other members of the Brotherhood and the so-called sisterhood and considering more portraits. I’ve also been drawn toward more scholarly work on Siddal. I’ve gone down a rabbit hole researching Victorian pregnancy, obstetrics, and women’s medical care. What was that experience like for her—losing a child, delivering a stillborn baby, struggling with health and addiction? What kind of support did she have? So much goes unsaid in the letters. You read Rossetti’s brief comments to his mother, “she is doing well,” and the understatement is staggering. What isn’t being said? The grief, the trauma, the guilt. We don’t really talk about postpartum depression in that era, but it must have existed. How might that have shaped her final months?

Research can become consuming. There’s a point where you think, I know too much. And then you have to decide how much to use, and where you’re taking liberties. When I thought about sharing the book with the Pre-Raphaelite Society, I wondered whether it would be judged on historical precision. But it isn’t a scholarly monograph. It’s a poetic interpretation. It is memoir braided with history. We learn history through film all the time (Titanic, Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan) and we accept that those versions are shaped by perspective. That’s what this book is: Siddal as seen through my eyes.

What symbol represents you as a writer?

One reason I’ve thought so much about dove imagery in writing this collection is personal. When I got married, I read a Jane Hirshfield poem as part of our vows. We didn’t have a traditional ceremony but went to Colorado and officiated our own wedding. The poem felt like a statement of what binds us.

My husband writes poetry, too. In the early years of our relationship, there were tensions surrounding creative competition and different levels of ambition about sending work out. We’ve been together over 30 years now, and like any long marriage, there have been times when we pulled apart and came back together. Now we’re each other’s biggest champions. He used to call me his dove, his love dove. Our son, Callum, whose name also means dove or peace, carries that imagery, too. He’s our dove. So, when I return to dove imagery, it isn’t only about Siddal. It’s layered with my own life. Maybe I gravitate toward the dove because I value peace, calm, and steadiness, even if that calm is often impossible.

I’ve always gravitated toward roles centered on helping and championing others. I’m a library director and a professor, and supporting other people’s success feels natural to me. But there’s complexity there, too. Librarianship is a female-dominated profession and predominantly white, which raises its own issues around representation and diversity. Because it’s women heavy, the profession is often devalued. There’s a kind of vocational awe attached to librarians and teachers, the idea of sacred service, but also a belittling. There is a sense that it’s lesser than, less professional. That tension resonates with me. The desire to nurture and support, and the way those roles can be diminished precisely because they are associated with women. There’s a parallel there between the dove as peace and gentleness, and the way gentleness can be misread as weakness.

Thank you, Melissa and Dana, for such a thoughtful conversation. You can order your copy of Girl, Drowning from Yellow Arrow Publishing at yellowarrowpublishing.com/store/girl-drowning-paperback. ‍

Knott, born in Chicago, Illinois, and residing in Delaware, Ohio, works in Columbus as Director of Libraries at the Columbus State Library. In 2021 she launched tiny wren lit, which publishes micropoetry online with downloadable zines for each issue, and in 2024 published the microchapbook Funeral Flowers (Rinky Dink Press).

Melissa Nunez makes her home in the Rio Grande Valley region of south Texas, where she enjoys exploring and photographing the local wild with her homeschooling family. She writes an anime column at The Daily Drunk Mag and is a prose reader for Moss Puppy Mag. She is also a staff writer for Alebrijes Review and interviewer for Yellow Arrow Publishing. You can find her work on her website at melissaknunez.com/publications and follow her on Twitter @MelissaKNunez and Instagram @melissa.king.nunez.

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