The Bridge of Sighs by Martha Wiseman Martha Wiseman has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2023 Essay/Memoir Contest   My mother sighed. Frequently, variously, […]

The Drowned Place by Miles Fowler Red-wing blackbirds flew overhead, their red shoulders gleaming in the afternoon sun. The air was thick with the chirping and buzzing of wild fauna. […]

My Brother's Heart by Phyllis Brotherton Phyllis Brotherton has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2023 Essay/Memoir Contest   I carry my brother’s heart all the way to Salina, Ka […]

Dream House by Wendy Fontaine Wendy Fontaine is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2023 Essay/Memoir Contest An itchy palm means you’re going to come into some money. T […]

Love in Life’s Tunnels by Linda Styles Berkery Linda Berkery is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2023 Essay/Memoir Contest Ten years ago, I was the one with memory loss. I was repeating […]

Male Enhancement Or, You Think I Need a New Email Address? by Susan Shafarzek Seems like every morning I find myself weeding my inbox: delete, delete, delete, like a gardener tending a hopeless patch. I’m wary of accidentally o […]

Find the Difference by Rigel Oliveri Rigel Oliveri is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2023 Essay/Memoir Contest It was late on a Saturday night. My son, who had just turned nine, […]

Return to Civilization by Elizabeth L. Delaney Two 584-million-mile trips around the sun—the only traveling any of us could do. Two sets of birthdays and anniversaries and seasonal accoutrement. I […]

In the After by Sarah E. Laughter My favorite photograph shows my children trudging through a cold, whispering creek hand in hand.  The afternoon light filters through the canopy, […]

We Celebrate Our Winners by Susan Shafarzek It’s a pleasure—and also a great privilege—to announce the winners of this year’s Streetlight Essay/Memoir Contest. This year’s submissions made an a […]

Poverty Sucks by Scott Hurd Framed on my mother’s real estate office desk was a small poster from the ‘80s. Twenty years later, it was still there in a space where a family por […]

A Case of Spiriting by T. J. Masluk “To Live Until . . . ” Many know the rest of the title: “We Say Good-Bye.” It is from Kübler-Ross’s well-known book about terminal patients, […]

A Very Small Adventure by Susan Shafarzek Many, oh, many, many, years ago, a friend and I took a plane trip to Minneapolis, Minn. It was not a first flight, but it was a first time west for […]

Dear Portland: a Love Letter to My Childhood Sweetheart by Melissent Zuwalt We first met holding hands at the outdoor Saturday market, vendors selling tie-dyed tee shirts and us eating foods that seemed exotic to me, like […]

Culture Shock by Rachel Lutwick-Deaner Fifteen years ago, I knew that moving to the Midwest would be a kind of culture shock. I knew it because I googled “Regional Food of Michigan” and the […]

I reach for a glass jar of sweet gherkins and notice the same unfamiliar woman is following me down another aisle in the grocery store.

I wonder if it is a coincidence. My gut tells me otherwise.

The […]

At recess, I was talking to a friend on the schoolyard, when a kid came up to us and said that President Kennedy had been shot. He did not say he had died. He just said he had been shot.
I turned to my friend, […]

My flight is booked. I’ll be with you at the hospital, and I’ll stay for your recovery when your kids go back to work. It’s been just a few days—plenty of time for the doctors to figure things out. We’ve been talk […]

These searched for their family records, but could not find them and so were excluded from the priesthood as unclean.
Ezra 2:62
I can’t tell you exactly what percent of my waking hours is spent looking for t […]

I would describe what I witnessed that day as a meeting of the mundane and the spiritual. I was a young man living in Boston, Mass., in the late 1970s, when I saw something that made an indelible impression on me. […]