I had a fantasy when I began volunteering for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Charlottesville. I would help newly arrived refugees document their identities, tell their stories and illustrate […]

HELP, I’m roiled in moil, chaos on every side of me. My life flashes before my eyes, although the only thing I’m drowning in is the sorting of minute particulars. It’s a cautionary tale.

Some time ago (has it […]

“Just meet me at my internist’s office,” my mother texted.

“Oh, ok. You have an appointment?”

“Yes, I’ve had some internal bleeding.”

“Oh, ok. I can be there by 4:30.”

I was going to visit my mom for […]

For photographer Andrew Shurtleff, the goal in covering sports and political events is “to report the story — whether winning or losing — through photographs. I l […]

2nd place winner of the Streetlight 2015 Poetry Contest.

Rubble
 
The water found a home in our wreckage.
                 Our city, once a bastion of high times—
      colored lights on strings, avenue […]

1st place winner of the Streetlight 2015 Poetry Contest.

Hum
 
Out of the blue,
he gave her a recording.
She thought there was something
wrong with it, but they had only
slept together once,
she […]

While sitting with Lena at their kitchen table the Sunday before, Carl Mobley had experienced the annual burst of optimism that marked the beginning of bowling season. But not now. With the Thursday Night Classic […]

“Here we go,” Roberta croons, lifting her granddaughter from Bethy’s arms. Dora has been what Roberta would term ‘colicky’, but the pediatrician claims colic appears around three weeks, and Dora’s only ten day […]

Boulder. That’s how Maddie will find it easiest to describe the 8-pound chunk of petrified earth that explodes into the car. She will come to think of it as a boulder. But at this moment it’s an explosion mea […]

Two years ago I couldn’t have even told you that Carson McCullers was female. My familiarity with Southern Gothic was that limited. But this summer I found myself haunting Columbus, Georgia, her b […]

Beyond the obvious grief of losing a parent or relative to old age, there is a particular tragedy that accompanies a person’s passing rarely whispered inside the comfortable blandness of funeral homes or o […]

I live in a town where the writer who cranks it out rakes it in. I can’t get past page three in any of John Grisham’s books before I give up. Those books are page-turners though, you betcha, the whole who […]

Over the past year, I watched Mike, one of my best friends, die of a brain tumor. In the midst of this misery, I came to think about things that make life worth living. Foremost is love, of course, but after that […]

All right then. I get it.

The San Souci Motel is called the San Soo-chee, not the Sahn Soo-cee. People in Buckroe Beach, Virginia, do not go in for Frenchification. At least according to my husband’s family, w […]

I’ve encountered many different roads to take on my quest to develop my style as a poet. Sometimes I’ve moved forward and sometimes I’ve stayed still, uncomfortable with change. I expect this has been the case […]

One day I decided I wanted to write a short story with a sex scene in it. I decided this for two reasons. One, first and foremost, I had read a short story by my sister’s high school boyfriend and he e […]

August 10, as my friend, Wikipedia, tells me, what is often called (by historians and other interested parties)  “the Second Revolution” occurred in France, when the mob stormed the Tuileries Palace, effectively […]

                      Balancing Craft and Business…

Sharyn McCrumb, known for her Appalachian “ballad” novels, including The New York Times best sellers The Ballad of Tom Dooley, The Ballad of F […]

I was a typical child of Depression-era parents—left to fend for myself as long as I didn’t bring unwanted attention to my respectable, Southern family.

I, like most of my age group, was what I call a sel […]

You’re watching a show, and suddenly it happens: the story cuts to a scene of a naked woman about to take a shower. Her breasts — huge and gravity-defying — jiggle and roll as she enters the shower stall, […]