My mother had a chair that when she sat in it, she was invisible. At first she put it in a corner where she would be unseen and could not be found and where she would hide from our rambunctiousness and our […]

Anne Whitehouse’s moving new poetry collection, Outside from the Inside (Dos Madres Press, 2020), takes us on four journeys, each with its pains and losses, its accretions of insight and moments of joy. In the f […]

I have worked with children in Bosnia, crocodiles in Mexico, frogs in Puerto Rico, egrets in Bali, mushrooms in Montana, archaeologists in Spain, butterflies in Los Angeles and lectured on island […]

The truck stop parking lot reverberated with idling big diesel engines. The air smelled like sour urine. Randal Whitley stood by the open door of his cab smoking a cigarette and drinking his morning coffee. A […]

I grew up in Virginia Beach where I witnessed damage and destruction of rural and natural lands for the lie called development. I feel levels of anger and disappointment when I see gree […]

Some of America’s greatest photographers roamed the country by automobile. They forever changed the context of artistic imagery. They eventually replaced traditional monochrome with color, and they shot the u […]

Anne Holzman is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2020 Flash Fiction Contest
 

I hear you before I see you. I start working on arranging my face.

There’s the ding-ding of the elevator, the door op […]

I’m bored. Really, really bored.

Since the cases of COVID went back on the rise about a month ago I’ve been put back on shelter-in-place orders. Since my transplant I’ve been immunosuppressed, so I have to be […]

You tiptoe back towards religion, in my experience, cautiously and nervously and more than a little suspicious, quietly hoping that it wasn’t all smoke and nonsense, that there is some deep wriggle of genius and p […]

The Captain had not been himself ever since we extracted the frozen bird carcass from the ice. He had become withdrawn, seeking solitude, showing disinterest in his duties even as four of his men resided in the […]

Streetlight Voices: Short Fiction & Memoir · One Hundred by Tara Lindis
Podcast: Short fiction about desperation and mothers’ love.

A fictional story performed by Jennifer Sims.

Read the story online: […]

My father was an atheist; my mother, an agnostic. My parents preached conscience and character to their two daughters instead of dogma.

I grew up in Greensboro, N.C., a city with seven colleges. Outside of […]

Sheila Longton is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2020 Flash Fiction Contest
 

What I remember of my mother is this: She is down on her hands and knees, crawling backwards along the hallway, s […]

Nancy Ludmerer is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2020 Flash Fiction Contest
 

The Lubavitch Hasidim are sending two teen volunteers to spend time with our daughter. I resist at first, but […]

It is no easy task to provide a peek into a textured world, with backstory, present and possibility —in only five hundred words. The writers who submitted to our Flash Fiction Contest took on the challenge a […]

Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.
Simone Weil
Love is not merely an emotion. It is a meltdown that reestablishes a more unified space of brilliance, goodness, and sadness. This is the real function of love […]