By Stefanie Newman
I spent most of my life at a loss for words. On job interviews I could never describe my good points or my bad. As an art professor I would get student evaluations that said She was nice but I […]

It was like one of those dreams where you’re trying to reach someone in a crowd and you keep glimpsing the back of their head before they’re swallowed up by the thick humanity. The crowd is impermeable— you try e […]

K. Douglass Hopkins, DMV, is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2016 essay/memoir contest.
I sighed as I loaded my duffle into the Trooper, reluctant to leave for a long weekend at the emergency veterinary […]

We Always Called Him Fletcher
 
Never by his first name Albert, or Mr. Fletcher.
He was tall as a sugar pine, skin the color

of freckled walnuts, walked our whole
neighborhood hauling

an extension […]

The Sheets Pulled Over
 
When one thinks in love about love,
he’s doing what he shouldn’t. He will get it wrong.

What if everything were revealed?
The apples and milk on your mind

when we lay down in W […]

The coffee shop was closed. I would not have made the detour into Leland if it hadn’t popped up on my smartphone map. And who would have expected that a coffee shop would be closed at 9 am? So there I was p […]

Sometimes we need to write about writing. Sometimes we need to list all the reasons we love to write, or why we hate to write or what we want to write about.

I write because I want to find out what I think, […]

Write It Right! Free Grammar Resources for Writers.

Sometimes even the most erudite writers use bad grammar or misspell words. Hey it happens. English is a living language after all and subject to change. […]

9 Pieces of Advice for Writing Fiction From Streetlight’s Fiction Editor

First off, crafting stories is a skill that can be learned. (Unlike, say, the ability to keep house.) So here a […]

Street of My Life
 
Street of my life, I have left you and I have returned,
   wandering nights in your renovated future,
The deed has passed into my keeping, and the dead,
   ever gracious, have agreed […]

Smoke
—translated from Theophile Gautier’s Emaux et Cemées, 1852-1872
 
Down there, under sheltering trees:
A hunchbacked hovel of the poor—
Walls crumbling; roof down on its knees.
Moss blots the thres […]

Many writers choose not to enter creative writing contests because they think the low odds of winning aren’t worth the effort. And yet, that’s exactly the kind of thinking that makes it easy for other people to […]

Winter white. Snow White. Bone white. Wedding gown white. Pearl white. Lilly white. White knight. White lies. White lightning. White hot.

Whether cold or steamy, saintly or seductive, ghostly or s […]

Prompts are everywhere all around you, all the time. If you have recently been startled awake from a dream, taken a bite out of an apple, crossed a busy intersection or lived another day, you have new material to […]

I’ve always known that what I love can disappear.

When I was three, I fell asleep on the subway, head on my father’s lap, my stuffed green bunny clutched in my arms. One instant I slept; the next, Daddy rou […]

It’s a highly discriminatory practice, but on this small tump of an island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, dark-haired boys are the ones rewarded as harbingers of good luck for the coming year. If such a c […]

The Ones Who Stay by Jenna-Marie Warnecke August 2012 Paris is empty. There’s no one left except the tourists who planned poorly, or cheaply. All the Parisians a […]

Last week it rained for three days. Outside my window the light pearled gray and rain drumming on the roof inspired me to ignore my to-do-list and wander among my bookshelves. My books have a way of wandering […]

“Do you know how fast you were going?”

Not fast enough, you don’t reply.

You have somewhere to be, and you can’t get there quickly enough. It’s not your own bed (that’s where you just came from) and it’s no […]

On the day I found out that I was pregnant I went to a bar and drank heavily with my boyfriend. It was early afternoon and I had a spicy bloody Mary and followed it up with a few craft beers. He drank the same. We […]