Stephanie King, Writer

WRITER & EDUCATION ACTIVIST

Stephanie King was raised in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York and has since lived in several different states and attended or worked at numerous colleges. She currently lives in Philadelphia with her historian husband and their two children.

Her stories have won the Quarterly West Novella Prize and the Lilith Short Fiction Prize, and have also appeared in Loch Raven Review, Lumen, Entropy, and Every Day Fiction. Her education writing has appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Penn Capital-Star and The Typescript. She received her MFA in Writing & Literature from Bennington College, and currently serves on the board of the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference.

SHORT STORIES & EDUCATION WRITING

SPACEWALK PROCEDURE
AND PREPARATION

Tethers are like ropes, with one end hooked to the spacewalker and the other to the vehicle. Wrist tethers keep hand tools from floating away. Don’t fantasize about unhooking yourself and floating off.

EVERY NIGHT, WE MAKE
OURSELVES OVER AGAIN

After he left, everyone kept telling me that I looked tired. I was tired, but the truth was, I’d already been a single mother for years even with him there. So it was nothing new to stay up late, silence creeping over the house and exhaustion settling into my bones as I wandered around the house picking up this discarded sock here, packing lunches for tomorrow there.

DON'T STEAL OUR TEACHERS
DURING A PANDEMIC

Then October arrives. The school district suddenly comes in and rips your teacher away from you, juggling your classmates around as you’re abruptly reassigned to a different group and your teacher is sent to another school.