P. W. Bridgman is the 1st place winner of Streetlight‘s Flash Fiction Contest She told the story about him, but only once. About how she found him on a chair, pushed up to the kitchen window leaning out over Baskov Lane from their second-floor apartment in Leningrad. He was holding between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand the bloom of a Siberian Fawn Lily, plucked from her window box. His little hand was steady, his gaze was too, as he waited. She dried her hands on her apron, bread rising on the … Continue reading Little Vova* by P. W. Bridgman→
Streetlight Voices: Short Fiction & Memoir · Free Swim by Marjory Ruderman Podcast: “Free Swim” is a story about uneasy sleep. A fictional story performed by Jennifer Sims. Read the story online: “Free Swim” by Marjory Ruderman Jennifer Sims is an actor and voice over artist who has voiced hundreds of projects across all genres. After attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts she wandered into a career in advertising. She worked as an ad agency producer for ten years before she found her way back to her creative path as an actor/improvisor and … Continue reading Free Swim by Marjory Ruderman→
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, woke up screaming. He had localized abdominal pain on one side. I couldn’t even touch his tummy without provoking screams. Although just thinking about the cost of an ER visit made me feel sick, this seemed serious. I woke my six-year-old daughter up and told her we had to go. Like a trooper, she threw a few books and some markers into her pillowcase and tossed it over her … Continue reading Find the Difference by Rigel Oliveri→
Margaret Watson is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Flash Fiction Contest I try my best to ignore the telephone vibrating in my back pocket. I focus on what I am doing–massaging Stephen’s feet. Using lotion, my fingers like feathers, caressing the skin that is now so delicate. The vibration stops and starts again. Whoever this is, they aren’t going to use voice mail. “I’ll just get this,” I say to Stephen. I can’t be sure if he’s heard me. I step back, tap the answer icon, already knowing who it is. Barbara, … Continue reading Thank You For Calling by Margaret Watson→
Gina Malone is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2021 Poetry Contest Why My Father Cannot Lay a Stone Wall Nearly eighty now he drags out the soft middles of words when he plunders his past, sweeping disparate bits into piles his voice steps around. I always wanted to learn how to build stone walls, he says. ……………………………………………Eyes elsewhere he tells of a man ……………………………………………he knew when he was young, ……………………………………………an old man who said he would ……………………………………………teach him how to build a wall, to lay stone level upon stones in layers of orderly precision. … Continue reading Why My Father Cannot Lay a Stone Wall by Gina Malone→
The first place winner of Streetlight’s art contest is Robert Schultz of Salem, Va. Schultz’s work, Specimens of the Plague Year, documents a year in the pandemic with his thoughts, quotes from scholars, poets, and current news events, all illustrated with scanned images of plants and flowers from his wife’s garden. Images are selected from some thirty-seven illustrations in Schultz’s elegant photo journal, Specimens of the Plague Year. A sampling of Schultz’s nature images will be featured in Streetlight January 7-24th. His work will be exhibited at Chroma Gallery, Charlottesville, during February, Robert Schultz … Continue reading Winners of Streetlight Art Search Announced by Elizabeth Howard→
Marjory Ruderman is the 1st place winner in Streetlight’s 2021 Flash Fiction Contest Phoebe was busier than ever, juggling depression and a midlife crisis. She dreamt of favorable circumstances becoming chaotic. A swimming pool displaced the boxes in her attic, its tiled bottom Escher-stepped and undulating. The water teemed with strangers. “Not serious buyers.” The Realtor at Phoebe’s elbow aimed her pen at the hordes of people there for the free swim in a structurally bewildering pool. Phoebe had never had a chance to enjoy the calm of a solitary swim, and now she … Continue reading Free Swim by Marjory Ruderman→
Kate Sheridan is the 1st place winner in Streetlight’s 2021 Essay/Memoir Contest I wasn’t always a thief. But some losses demand rebalancing. Redistribution. Retribution? In hindsight, I should have asked for the house. But the habit of self-sacrifice was so ingrained it barely crossed my mind. Instead, in the dead of winter I took our tiny travel trailer to a campground along the river and left him our two-bedroom rancher on its fertile country acre. Later that spring, when I moved into a real house, I took only the minimum from the home we’d … Continue reading Garden Thief by Kate Sheridan→
Susan Muse is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2020 Poetry Contest Peas are on. The kitchen smells of fatback and cornbread rising in a rush of heat from the stove, unfurling around me like those green stalks in the south field bent over with a want for picking. Earlier I sat in the swing on the shaded porch popping a mess of purple hull peas into a colander, abandoning the shells haphazardly in a ripped-open bag spread brown on my lap. Each one, its freedom echoing against the metal sides of the blue speckled … Continue reading Renegade by Susan Muse→
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 Mattie’s Special Ed teacher explains that it’s a mitzvah for the girls, who are sixteen—a special program started by a rabbi’s wife. She says I should let them come; it might be good for Mattie. She hasn’t seen Mattie smile in the eight months since her mom died. If Kayla were alive, she would have fumed: “We’re not religious. What will they … Continue reading Mayim by Nancy Ludmerer→
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