By Janis Jaquith

Is it pathetic that my gray roots are showing? What about wearing yoga pants to the grocery store – are people thinking I should know better?

Women have always been subject to physical s […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

I’m a writer which means I am constantly taking in interesting things. Even when I shouldn’t be. I can be having a very serious conversation with a doctor, for instance, while simultaneously po […]

On a drizzling November day our poetry group gathers around the workshop leader’s kitchen table. Before we begin the critique of our poems that we wrote during the week, our workshop leader, Sharron Singleton g […]

“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]