Wendy Fontaine is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight‘s 2026 Essay/Memoir Contest I need to find my winter boots My daughter is home from college on her freshman spring break, and she wants to wear them to a swim meet. She’s here for such a short time and anxious to see old friends and teammates from her high school swimming years, despite the lousy weather. Three straight days of precipitation, flooding and wind. An atmospheric river, they say, creeping in from the Pacific. Just this morning, as she lay sprawled in her bed, I ran errands through … Continue reading Lost Boots by Wendy Fontaine →
Wendy Kennar is the 1st place winner of Streetlight‘s 2026 Essay/Memoir Contest Within my first few years of teaching, the district’s grading system changed. Instead of the familiar A, B, C, D, F letter grades for academic achievement, students would now be graded on a 4, 3, 2, 1 scale. Many teachers at our school, including new teachers like myself and veterans with over a dozen years’ of experience, didn’t like this new system, mainly because it was so vastly different from the traditional grading system everyone knew and understood so well. I believed the change from … Continue reading On A Scale Of . . . by Wendy Kennar →
We’re happy to announce the winners of the 2026 Streetlight Essay/Memoir contest. First Prize goes to Wendy Kennar for “On a Scale Of . . . ”, her incisive and personal look at the difficulties involved in the medical diagnosis and treatment of pain—a subject familiar to all of us, sometimes too much so. “Lost Boots,” by Wendy Fontaine, is our Second Prize winner, a subtle blend of love, loss and nostalgia. Jeffrey M. Kane is our third prize winner with “Flare, Strobe, Pulse,” an antic account of an illustration of the irrepressibility of human … Continue reading Our Winners by Susan Shafarzek →
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