.Writers.on.Writing.
Get to know our authors, the foundation and heart of Yellow Arrow Journal, and what writing means to them through our monthly series.
W.o.W. #75
mandy shunnarah
How did you first publish your writing and what was it?
When I was 19, I started writing for my hometown newspaper, The North Jefferson News, in Gardendale, Alabama. I covered a city council meeting where I took meticulous notes on things like stop signs needing to be replaced and deer eating people’s gardens, and turned in 4,000 words of the most boring news writing in the history of journalism. Thankfully, I’ve gotten better since then.
What word do you find yourself using most often in your writing?
I love to throw in “unmoored” when I can. I’m drawn to the idea of not merely being adrift but being set apart in a way that’s confusing and attempting to make sense of your surroundings in relation to your past life. That’s the connotation, at least for me, and it’s a theme in a lot of my work, so “unmoored” makes some nice appearances.
What is a book you wish someone would write?
I want a reverse Indiana Jones swashbuckler! A literary adventure novel full of shipwrecks, museum art heists, and the kind of weird, delightful characters that stick with you for years to come.
What does your inner writing voice tell you?
Whether the idea I want to write needs to be a poem, essay, or short story, I write across all three genres and know pretty quickly which medium the idea would be best served by. I don’t think too hard about it; it’s more running on vibes and intuition.
Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is an Alabama-born Appalachian and Palestinian-American writer in Columbus, Ohio. Their essays, poetry, and short stories have been published in The New York Times, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, and others. Their first book, Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland, was released in 2024 from Belt Publishing.
Yellow Arrow published Shunnarah’s piece “a train derails in ohio & they still won’t say the name of my country” in Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 1, KINDLING. You can find her online on Instagram @offthebeatenshelf, Facebook @Mandy Shunnarah, X @fixedbaroque, and at mandyshunnarah.com.
Mandy would like to share that their poetry collection We Had Mansions is out in the world! You can get your copy at diodeeditions.com/product-page/we-had-mansions. Congratulations Mandy!