Catherine Pritchard Childress is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Essay/Memoir Contest
Offering food as a form of comfort for those in mourning is as much a part of my Appalachian upbringing as Vacation […]

Cottonmouth
As the boat eased out on
the pond, there was just enough
light to see pale ribbons of sky
rippling in the water. Dad
paddled ahead with slow, heavy
strokes, but the lives watching
from trees, […]

I went on a museum field trip not too long ago and had a revelation.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to have pondered the following—but isn’t it wild to think that all sorts of currently priceless a […]

We had been married a little over a year when I had an abortion.

Put down your rocks and torches. If I had not had the abortion, I might well have died.

Not so simple now, is it? If I had been your wife, […]

Serenity by the Sea by Virginia Watts   Today is Nora Richard’s seventy-fifth birthday. She sighs, blows her nose, rests her head back against the scratchy, cheap couch that came wi […]

Stories by Sharon Ackerman I Like the Story Of the watch my father gave my mother how it stopped whenever they fought, except that is not the full story, the whole one. In […]

Who Killed the Video Star by Betty Wilkins Betty Wilkins is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Essay/Memoir Contest Rewind. By September 2002, I had been out of college for nine […]

I spent a month in Europe in 1998, doing research for a novel I was planning to write (and still plan to finish). The trip brings back memories, some delightful and others regretful. Often, both had to do with […]

Two “aha!” moments have erupted during my career as a fine arts photographer. But rather than lightning bolts from on-high, they arrived as a voice—my voice—exclaiming, “why not!” At each moment, my p […]

Journey by Billie Hinton …………Perhaps when the boy built the elaborate scaffolding between sand trays in his first therapy session he was building bridges from me to […]

Conceptual Art by Peter Allen   Having been interested in both visual art and writing/poetry since I was able to pick up a pencil or paint brush, it seemed natural to […]

You’re twenty. Fresh-faced. Everyone else in this writing cohort is watching you, rubbernecking, wide-eyed, pale. They can smell the blood in the water. They know you are going to say something, you mu […]

As a very small child I learned language just like all small children. Only in my case there were some mysterious words that took me years to sort out their true meaning. There were words like Amtrak, lugao, Santo […]

Meeting Myself on My Morning Walk

…..a long look up
into branches I’ll see him,
………………his blond hair
in a butch I wore more
than fifty years ago.

………..Where wind currents swell
every […]

A Taxonomy of Lists by Fred Wilbur     As a youngster, I watched my father slice out-of-date reports whose 8 1/2 x 11″ sheets had blank back sides; the pivoting knife of the p […]

Ahab’s Widow
I wait for him as every whaler’s wife.
I write him letters every day.
I tell him how he grows bigger and stronger.

I tell him of his first words and of his first walk on his own.
I write, […]

Whenever I say that my extended family camps together in the summer—living in tents, cooking over the fire, and bathing in the river—someone will ask, “And you all get along? For a whole week?”

Sure, I say. […]

My goal in approaching each new painting is to create something both pretty and uncomfortable. The colors and compositions—largely focused on nature—are traditional bubble gum fare that is pleasing to t […]

It was my granddaughter’s fourth birthday party. I, old lady
with cane, was sitting in the shade on the side, then made my way
cautiously to watch the children hit the piñata with a plastic bat […]