Current Issue

Comedians

Standing before a group of strangers is the closest thing Angela has to achieving her dreams or making her mark on the world. She seesaws her arm, delivers a joke about a merman who pools his money with a sea urchin to get a triton.

Head On

The construction truck in the opposing lane, exceeding the speed limit, careers into my lane and right at me. I am immobile, staring, my hand not getting the signal to blast the horn. I might manage to dive onto the shoulder but the truck’s driver stops doing whatever distracted him and sees me and, with [...]

McPherson Square

A tiny girl cupped her eyes against a tree and yelled numbers as fast as she could remember them. “Fifteen… sixteen… seventeen…”

Ode to Gliders

1950’s turquoise totems escape providers on countless porches, not grandmotherly like rockers, more kinetic

Fooling the Angel

When my grandmother was sick her parents changed her name in order to fool the Angel of Death.

Kirkman’s Schoolgirl Problem

If fifteen young ladies in a school walk three abreast for seven days in succession, how would you

The Journalist

What is it you observe? Maybe traffic because you are in your car so often it’s an extension of self, a familiar surround, while you keep an eye on

Impermanence Alight

The little church that is the morning the stillness that allows (at least) for breathing—we are to be alive

Momma House*

Touring is a kind of homelessness, The price the body pays as the soul takes wing. Fans brought to their feet, the faithful to their knees!

Willa on North Broad Street*

Who made beauty, I ask you. God or the devil? When I first touched a piano, the keys twinkled Like heavenly stars. All over me they sprinkled

Community & Tradition in There, There

The annual collaboration between Philadelphia Stories and One Book, One Philadelphia celebrates the symbiotic relationship between reading and creating. When we read we gain grist for the mill that produces new work. We find connections between our experiences and those of another.

An Incandescent Coming of Age

— Former Philadelphia Stories Nonfiction Editor, Julia MacDonnell talks with Lanternfish Press author Erin Eileen Almond