by Laura Marello Many people knew him better and longer. Many can say more articulate things about his work. I always loved him so much. I remember many details of our ten months at the Fine Arts Work Center Provincetown. For those ten months, I lived two doors down from Denis Johnson in Provincetown in 1981-82 when we were both writing fellows there. Tama Janowitz lived between us. I remember so much about it. He had not yet published his first book. He did so that spring. When I first met him, he toasted … Continue reading Remembering Denis Johnson→
As the 19th century was drawing to a close in America, a young iconic steel magnate by the name of Andrew Carnegie originated an ideal that would ultimately shape the non-profit mission. He suggested to his fellow wealthy benefactors that charitable organizations, which at that time tended to address the most basic human needs, should rather address a greater public good to create “ladders upon which the aspiring can rise”. This ideal was applied to a prioritized support of institutions that fostered education, civility and inspiration, and became the guiding principle that urban … Continue reading Piedmont Council for the Arts in the Age of Cutbacks→
When I was in college I took a child development class with a lab, complete with Osh Kosh B’Gosh clad tots. We studied how they picked up language to convey meaning. It was fascinating. I remember one experiment in particular. The little kids would be shown pictures of an action word–in present, future and past tense illustration: –See the clown? Soon the baby will laugh. –The baby is laughing now. –The baby laughed when the clown came over. Then the young subject would be shown a picture of somebody doing something random like touching a … Continue reading Monana! Or: A Writer Thinks About Language in the Age of Trump by Erika Raskin→
Thank you to Trudy Hale and the Streetlight Magazine editors for choosing me to be your new poetry editor. I’m excited and grateful to be part of this ever developing and stimulating home for “exceptional talent, both new and established.” As I begin reviewing the poetry submissions we receive, I see several which come very close, but are not quite ready for publication. I can’t help but imagine that poets and writers and readers of Streetlight Magazine are wondering, “Who is she?” and “What is she looking for in my poems?” Poetry in which the … Continue reading What is She Looking For?→
Before there were Google maps, cable travel channels and live streaming from every corner of the Internet, there were slides, those posh cousins of snapshots. The tiny film inside a cardboard frame only reveals itself through projection on a white screen in a dark room, lending a kind of drama and mystery to each shot. In my home, putting up the screen and watching a round of slides was an important occasion. So important that my parents invited friends over for cocktails before regaling them with a slide show of, say, Pompeii, or Rome. You … Continue reading Into a Sliding World by Jane Bradley→
I was standing in the stacks of the Sutro Library in San Francisco, following a lead on a case I was working. I was not a private detective, but I had aspirations to be one, and my sister-in-law wanted me to find a college classmate whom she had lost touch with, I guess, the minute they had graduated. And she was willing to pay me to find her friend. I offered to do it for free, but she knew that her sister and I were not doing that well, and, besides, my sister-in-law was a … Continue reading My (Almost) Fling With Private Investigation by Miles Fowler→
I talk to dead people. Oh, don’t get worried. It’s not like they talk back. Although, there was that time… What I’m saying is that I have some graves that are my favorite haunts. (And just to be absolutely clear—it’s me that’s doing the haunting.) My grandmother’s for one. But also David’s, because my grandmother is several hours away. David, the firefighter and preacher. As his assigned mentor in the ministry, I spent a lot of hours with him. I also helped with his funeral five years ago after he was thrown from the vehicle … Continue reading On Talking to the Dead→
Frankie Slaughter is a mixed media artist living in Richmond, Va. She works with a variety of materials including fabric, paper, encaustic and porcelain. She previously designed one-of-a-kind jackets, jewelry and accessories. I collect bits of papers from my travels and beyond: gold leaf funerary papers, old dress pattern papers, newspapers written in Hindi, Thai and Chinese, and notes and doodles from my sketchpads. Over 15 years of living in Hong Kong, I was drawn to the nuances of the culture: I learned basic Cantonese, traveled extensively, and collected beads and ethnic … Continue reading Full Circle – Recent Works by Frankie Slaughter→
I’ve forgotten how hard moving is. Not just the organizing and packing but the time spent in small details; the time spent on the phone and mad-dash trips to the store for tape and bubble wrap. My husband and I have lived in our current house for just over ten years. We had moved to Harrisonburg as an escape from Washington DC, where our work commutes into northern Virginia were beginning to feel impossible. Not wanting to prolong the move by taking the time to buy a house, we rented. And on moving day we … Continue reading The Storm Before the Calm→
I wrote these poems to capture and preserve real events. They depict shifts from isolation and loss to connection and love—the dance of relationships in unexpected places, with unexpected dance partners. I witnessed two men, so clearly from different worlds, collapse together in a moment of grief and compassion. The second poem tells the story of a friend’s struggle to remember who is familiar and who is foreign, as early onset dementia takes hold. And the third shows the dance of freedom that comes from the structure of love and belonging. —Kate Bennis … Continue reading Three Dances by Kate Bennis→
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