Thriving with Curiosity: Reflecting on the WONDER Issue
By Heather Brown Barrett
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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