Her View Friday
Yellow Arrow Publishing supports women-identifying writers from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes us stronger. Women’s voices have historically been underrepresented in literature, and we aim to elevate those voices and stories through our programs, publications, and support.
Part of our mission in supporting and uplifting women writers is to promote the Yellow Arrow community’s individual accomplishments. We’d like to further expand that support and promotion outside of our Yellow Arrow publications. Twice a month, we’d like to give a shout out to those within the Yellow Arrow community who recently published:
single-author publications
single pieces in journals, anthologies, etc., as well as prizes/awards, 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.
Author: Maureen Clark
Maureen Clark lives in Bountiful, Utah. She received her BFA at Westminster College and her MFA in poetry at the University of Utah. Confessions of a Once Upon a Time Mormon Girl (Hypatia Press) was released June 15. Her poetry collection This Insatiable August was released by Signature Books in 2024. Clark served as president of Writers @ Work, where she worked with Carol Houck Smith of W. W. Norton Company, Abigail Thomas, Agha Shahid Ali, Sherman Alexie, David Lee, Tom Sleigh, Peggy Shumaker, and many others. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals.
Where are you from: Bountiful, Utah
Tell us about your main writing space in three words: good pens, lokta paper notebooks, vanilla and almond
Tell us about your publication: It is 1975, and like every young Mormon couple, Jon and Maureen will start their life together with a temple wedding. But first, they must participate in the preparatory endowment ceremony, which turns out to be full of shocking experiences—such as covenanting to have their throats slit or to be disemboweled if they ever reveal the sacred secrets of the temple. In spite of this horrifying start, they go through with their wedding the next day and begin their life together. Thirty years later, Jon announces he is leaving the LDS Church, and all that repressed trauma resurfaces as Maureen examines how those early covenants affected her. She is battling her own lack of faith in an institution that is becoming more conservative every day. Still, her journey to leaving the church is deeply convoluted, unraveling the ways Mormonism controls her and the ways it satisfies her spiritually. In searching to tell her truth, she finds that, in the end, the only thing that really matters is her own sanity.
Why this book? Why now? How did it happen?
Maya Angelou once wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” I started writing this book 20 years ago when I felt the first serious questions rise up in me about the church to which I had always belonged. The process of leaving Mormonism was excruciating, and I wanted to do the experience justice by following the path as truthfully as I could. For a long time, I was simply too close to the story to tell it well. Only after I left—and began to distance myself from the trauma—was I able to write about it fully.
What advice do you have for new writers? Someone with a book that needs a home?
My advice is don’t give up and do your research. I studied small publishing houses for years before I found one that sounded like it might be a good fit. In the meantime, I sent my work out and did extensive revision between periods of sending it out. I was constantly asking myself what I had left out of the story or how I could tell it better. Revision is the tool that might clear up the one image or sentence that is tripping up the reader.
What else are you working on/doing that you’d like to share?
I have been working for quite a few years on the study of witch trials in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. With the antiwoman sentiment in the country right now, I was not surprised to find so much overlap in how women have always been defined. Of course, the women who were labeled witches paid the ultimate price for that designation. I am also fascinated by the way a world without any knowledge of biology, meteorology, psychology, or how disease was spread was able to twist what they did know into a nice bundle of accusations of witchcraft against women and children (and some men). The poems that have come from this research are finding homes in all kinds of places, and I am now sending out the manuscript You Can’t Shoot Someone for Looting. Hopefully, it will find a good home. In the meantime, I’ll read more deeply academic books about witch trials around the world.
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.
