Horror is my favorite movie style by far. There are endless sub-genres, including supernatural, inbred/cannibalistic families on the prowl, suspense/thriller, cult related brainwashing activities, etc., etc. (they breed like mutants—fact-check this on Netflix). Unlike some people I know who enjoy only one or two of these specific categories—you dilettantes know who you are—I, a true aficionada, love all of them. Hunkering down for a scary film in the theater is especially enjoyable, with the heightened effects of sound, lighting and communal terror, but I am perfectly happy watching with my dog on the couch. But … Continue reading The Truth is Scarier than Fiction→
My favorite flower is an iris, inspired by Van Gogh’s painting, Irises. It’s a painting of blue irises with one white iris symbolizing his loneliness. I feel loneliest in a group so I strongly relate to this painting. I have been photographing irises longer than anything else. I started taking photos of flowers, especially irises, roses and tulips, in the spring and summer months of the late ’90s and early 2000s in Providence, Rhode Island, where I live. I have struggled with manic depression for three decades. The mania … Continue reading Kate Salvi’s Flower Power→
Time to break out the champagne! Streetlight Magazine’s second annual essay/memoir contest ended July first and the judging was completed yesterday. Whew! Seriously, we’ve looked at a lot of great essays. Writing something meaningful, and one hopes, memorable, in eight hundred words or less is no mean feat. I have been full of admiration—and just a smite of envy—to see how so many of our entrants managed exactly that. It’s been a rewarding project. So, let’s see. Streetlight Magazine is happy to award first prize to Alex Joyner for his essay, Spirit Duplicator, a poignant, … Continue reading And the Winners Are…→
by Mary Carroll-Hackett I move too fast. Always have. I talk fast, walk fast, read quickly, even had to be taught as a child to slow down while eating, Mama saying things like It’s not a race, Mary, or You know no one’s coming to take that away from you. I was the child she had to keep by the hand if she were to keep me from running too far ahead in stores, racing my way up stairs and escalators, or headlong down them. Sometimes that speed has worked to my advantage, later, … Continue reading “Girl, I Hear You’re Fast” Barry Hannah, Old Blue and the Most Valuable Writing Lesson I’ve Ever Learned→
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→
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