Wild Resilience: Little by Little by Ann marie Houghtailing
Yellow Arrow Publishing announces the release of our first chapbook of 2025, Little by Little by Ann marie Houghtailing. 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 Houghtailing in all her writing and publishing endeavors.
Little by Little explores the universality of human suffering and how we find our way to meaning and purpose. Houghtailing is a visual artist and cofounder of the firm Story Imprinting. She delivered a TEDx Talk entitled Raising Humans and performed her critically acclaimed one woman show, Renegade Princess, in New York, Chicago, Santa Fe, San Francisco, and San Diego. “Little by little” is the phrase that Houghtailing’s mother used to say when things were hard. Things were almost always hard. Houghtailing grew up in a culture of poverty and witnessed violence, struggle, and wild resilience every day. What she did not realize was that her mother’s phrase would become a life affirming strategy. It was a map that took her back to herself when life took so much from her.
From 2019–2020, four members of Houghtailing’s family died in rapid succession, including her mother. Their deaths were an extension of historic and epigenetic trauma that would require her to sit inside of suffering and paint, write, and garden her way through to transformation. Little by Little delves into how Houghtailing was able to find meaning in the suffering by examining the beauty of life itself. Every day we experience loss. The loss of innocence, youth, relationships, jobs, money, confidence, power, life, and hope are in constant play. Learning to sit inside of deep suffering can be intellectually, emotionally, and physically demanding territory that invites us to examine who we are and what we are made of. Little by Little is a way to see, a way to suffer, and ultimately, a way to live.
The cover and interior art were created by Houghtailing. According to her, “All my work is filled with color, which is very much rooted in my mom’s background from Hawai’i. . . . Color is joyful. It’s life affirming. The cross-section of painting and writing [are] the ways in which the intersection of life and death [come] together for me. The cover art is a collage piece of a woman with a typewriter on her head. It came from the same period as the poems, so it felt very right to pair these together.”
Paperback and PDF versions of Little by Little 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 Little by Little wherever you purchase your books including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. To learn more about Houghtailing and Little by Little , check out our recent interview with her.
You can find out more about Ann marie Houghtailing and her work at her website annmariehoughtailing.com and on Instagram @trailsnotpaths and Facebook @annmariehoughtailing 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.
*****
Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women-identifying writers through publication and access to the literary arts. You can support us as we BLAZE 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.