Notebook Navigation: Inspiring Selections from 2025

Let's hit the (note)books and do some writing. Notebook Navigation is a series of creativity prompts and exercises to spark the writing process

In this installment of Notebook Navigation, we will revisit some handpicked selections published by Wild Roof Journal in 2025.

The Notebook Navigation series is intended to be reminder to write something in your notebook today, a quick refresh for your creative writing process. For today’s post, I asked some of WRJ’s friends and collaborators to offer a few of their own favorites from 2025. Since there are so many wonderful selections included here, I’ll keep the writing prompt short & sweet: pick one of the pieces listed and write an “after” page in your notebook that responds to it with your own connections. See where it leads you!

And one more housekeeping item: Remember, as a paid subscriber, you get a free submission for our upcoming issues, as well as editorial feedback on 1 poem per month, and a live Q&A for any revision or submission questions you have. (Are you sending work to a wish list lit mag? A second set of eyes could help!)

And it’s a great way to support what we do as an independent publisher!

---

Selected by Tim Loftus

Sarah Eddy

Goldenrod

I would know you anywhere. 
I would choose you for my crown—
intricate florets as florets
shaking out pollen, 
bees dancing around my head
like cartoon birds, you loon, 
you seasonal lover. 
Yes I’d know you by the roadside
or the edge of the woods
while the dog pokes his nose in. 
Goldenrod, you mean school buses, 
sneezes, rich dark honey, 
shorter days, the last flash
before the gloom of winter. 
You wave back at forsythia, 
flashy bookends to a summer, 
this summer, stung twice
lost my phone, kissed a girl
in the parking lot of a diner—
all of that in a frame of gold, 
a seasonal sequence
synchronous at this end
with wood aster, autumn olive. 
Every fall you are here, 
crowning me queen.

~
from Issue 31, Fall 2025

---

Selected by Rachel Lauren Myers

1. “Huffing Flowers” by Rachel Becker (from Issue 31, Fall 2025)

2. “The Wisdom of The Hobbit,” Substack feature by Ellis Eden

3. “Camouflage in Nature” by Chel Campbell (from Issue 30, Summer 2025)

---

Selected by Elizabeth Levinson

“Upriver Downriver” by DeAnna Beachley

from Issue 29, Spring 2025

---

Selected by Ashley Cundiff

Jessica Whipple

Poem on the Last Day of My Thirties

I find a can of beans in the kitchen. 
Great Northern, left there open the night before. 
They’re past their prime now. Into the trash they go. 

I’m ashamed of the waste. I didn’t intend to wake
wondering if I’ve spent well the years in this vessel
but sometimes a question needs to be left out on the counter
to know what should be done with it in the morning.

~
from Issue 31, Fall 2025

&

“Fear Is a Rabbit” by Rachel Bunting (from Issue 30, Summer 2025)

---

Selected by Nora Curry

Issue 28 — “The Crane Wife” (Katherine Larson), “Despite the Wood Frog’s excellent camouflage” (Katherine Hagopian Berry), “Of Womb and Wings” (Emily Patterson)

Issue 29 — “I’m Not Used to Being Asked” (Shagufta Mulla)

Issue 30 — “Recessed Luminaires” (Piera Chen), “When My Mother Was an Apiary” (Claire Poshusta),

Issue 31 — “There Is So Much to Hold on To” (Rebekah Chan), Rewilding (Samuel Day Wharton), Looking for Signs (Rachel Beachy)

“Compost” by Jane McBride

from Issue 30, Summer 2025

---

Check out our issues online here or click the links below to download PDF copies (available to paid subscribers).