Images come in my imagination, either imposed by impressions from the movies, music or theater or by simple communication with another person. Some think my works are based on literature, but this is not […]

“Period. New Paragraph,” the mother of a good friend of mine used to announce when changing subjects—sometimes mid-sentence.

It’s a good rule for life in general, though. I believe in changing your m […]

I’ve lived way out in the country for a little over a year and, with the exception of an inability to have food delivered, I have no complaints. There is something weird about the house though: the r […]

Just another one of those, he’d say to himself when it all got really annoying and he was trying to talk himself down a little. And we know just how to take care of things like that. He’d say this to him […]

A while ago I went with one of my nieces to get matching semicolon tattoos. This was remarkable for a variety of reasons:

1. I was 56.

2. Years before, when my eldest daughter came home from college […]

As a retired college English professor, I much enjoy editing manuscripts part-time. Clients find me via a University of Virginia website called Professors as Writers, a service intended for UVA faculty and grad […]

A year after the car accident that orphaned Nick, the Bishops picked him up from his grandmother’s for a weekend at Fallen Tree Lake. Saddened by his circumstances, the financier and his wife had taken to […]

One evening, damp and full of anguish, I arrive at a camp and basically fall apart. I want to talk to my boyfriend back home, but as usual have no signal. I start climbing on soggy leaves, moving higher, hoping. […]

Write what you know.

That was the mantra when I was in graduate creative writing school. We were admonished to write from our own experience, not to try to reach beyond our boundaries and try to re-create […]

I grew up telling it to whoever would listen—mostly that fell on my mother’s shoulders.

At the breakfast table, at the dinner table, I proselytized with the fervor of a repenting sinner. And it beg […]

Ingrid Jendrzejewski is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2018 Flash Fiction Contest

 
Mare’s tails and mackerel scales Make tall ships take in their sails.
She’s studied the weather and knows about […]

Emily Larkin is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2018 Flash Fiction Contest
‘I’ll have a shot of anxiety with mint, vanilla syrup, and crushed ice, and a pint of despair. With a lemon wedge […]

Julie Gesin is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2018 Flash Fiction Contest

It’s dark when he reaches home and opens the garden gate, shoulders vulnerable to the pulse of crickets that rattles the gar […]

As her life changed so did the patterns of her art.

“I love patterns…I surround myself with patterns,” says mixed media artist Judy McLeod, a Charlottesville resident for more than four decades. “Whe […]

Dear writing one,

There will come a day when you will stop writing, for no good reason. There will be no drama, no single event that sinks your writing heels into the ground. You will come home from a writing […]

Since changing paths on my photographic journey about three years ago, I continue to find great excitement and inspiration—as well as endless thematic possibilities—while experimenting with light painting tec […]

My granny Sally, who had a pillow-like soul (except for when she was playing gin rummy and this badass alter-ego would jump out and stomp the competition) used to warn my siblings and me to wash our […]

When the bus drops Diana off in the afternoon, her mother is still at work. She lets herself into the silent, spotless apartment, a large box of Oreo cookies and two bags of Mounds in her embrace.

Dropping […]

Podcast: A young woman faces the most difficult of decisions.

A short story performed by Jennifer Sims.

Read the story online: No Matter What by Tracey Levine

On the face of it, it wouldn’t seem to be a match. Beat writers and military cadets. But Gordon Ball, Allen Ginsburg’s farm manager, taught Beat Generation writers to cadets at Virginia Military Institute for 26 […]