A Dozen Personal Essays, and a Half-Dozen Announcements...
Welcome to Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter featuring the best personal essays from around the web, and a quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Granta, Guernica, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub, and Orion Magazine — plus many additional publications.
In addition to the weekly curation, there are now original personal essays under the heading of First Person Singular, for paying subscribers.
The latest original essay, published in the First Person Singular series in November, is “Listen, and You Will Hear Pain Speak” by Liz Iversen. The next original essay is coming next week. Submissions are open. You can find submissions guidelines and more on the “About” page.
Recently, we launched a new video interview series for paying subscribers. Check out the first interview with Some of My Best Friends author and Catapult editor-in-chief Tajja Isen, about the realities of publishing an essay collection. The next video interview, coming later in January, with be with Chloe Caldwell, author most recently of The Red Zone: A Love Story, about finding a publishing deal unagented, among other topics…
Essays from partner publications…
Living With Wolves
by Nikki Kolb
“I was petrified of the wilderness. Despite my pure exhaustion, I would lay awake those first nights alert to every creak and scratch, so frightened of the coyotes and the immense dark that I wouldn’t even venture to the outhouse. Listening to the howls of the pack while I shivered against my sleeping bag, I reminded myself that I was here to absorb this—to live off the grid, to walk with wolves and learn.”
On War, Fatherhood, and the Half-Life of Cormac McCarthy’s Literary Fission
by Will Cathcart
“When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, my life became the stuff of a Cormac McCarthy novel. I was in Mariupol, Ukraine, a city I had reported from over the years. It is now a permanent set from The Road. The events to which I bore witness transpired in bone-struck Cormac Pentameter peppered with shocking hilarity and gutting one-liners. Part of me remains in that rubble. But I found deliverance in his latest novel, The Passenger, a prescient book about the Westerns, the haunted and brilliant children of a physicist who helped develop the first atomic bomb. ”
O Brother
by John Niven
“I wake up early, just after dawn, back in my teenage bedroom at the age of forty-four. Well, I’m in a bigger version of it. The partition wall was knocked down a few years back, Mum returning the house to its original two-bedroom configuration. The strange, universal sense of depersonalisation it brings, waking up here. The peeling away of adulthood, of all you have accumulated since you left this room. All the plans you made in here, in the crucible of your adolescence. All the anxieties and insecurities you tried to work your way through.”
The Crows of Karachi
by Rafia Zakaria
“When I was a toddler, my grandmother sang a song in which a pretend peacock danced in my palm, ate imaginary food, drank imaginary water, and then flew into my armpit for a round of tickles and laughter. I had never seen a peacock or anything close to it, so I imagined it would be much like the crows. When I began to speak, I referred to crows as mor, the Hindi word for “peacock.” I was immediately corrected, but the adults could not understand why I would make such a mistake.”
A Wrinkle in Time
by
“When I see my age group—I am 76—depicted as a newspaper turned brown around the edges, a light goes on over the bathroom mirror. If you are a female human—and many other kinds of human—your life is a trail of insults that leads to someone telling you what you can eat.”
Essays from around the web…
Before the Last Snow Melts
by Wendy Mages
“Nearing the top of the staircase, I took a deep breath, an attempt to quell any appearance of sorrow or sadness, then quietly stepped onto the landing. I saw Lydia’s sister hovering near the couch. Then I noticed Lydia’s almost hidden form nestled among warm comforters and recently-fluffed pillows. Her clear blue eyes, vivid as ever, appeared more prominent in her now gaunt and fragile body. Neither my friend nor I had ever seen anyone so thin; it was as if, at any moment, she might vanish right before our eyes.”
Why Can’t I Get Rid of My Mom’s Clothes?
by Amy Ettinger
“I've been driving around with bags full of my mom's old clothes since she died almost five years ago. Every time I go to put groceries in the trunk, I see a one-inch patent-leather heel, size 8.5, or a zebra-striped asymmetrical zip-sweater…The clothes don't fit me, and they are not my style. I live in stretchy pants and simple, cotton T-shirts, always wanting to squeeze in a yoga session or a walk between work and mom duties.”
Ask Jimmy
by Robin Hennessy
“I had been writing a memoir about my childhood, a time when our family migrated like birds across triple-decker apartments in Worcester, to faraway Texas and Colorado, then back to New England. As I culled memories, questions arose: Where did we live when this happened? Is my memory of that correct? Once I had created an outline, my brother, older by a year, helped color it in. He always was a better artist than me.”
Lo Carmen is the Boss of Her Own World
by Lo Carmen
“I’ve officially lived in album cycles for the last 20 years now…My first solo album, Born Funky Born Free, was self-recorded and produced in my bedroom, and independently released on my own label Chiquita Records in 2002. I did my own artwork on a creaky old computer, made a music video with my friends, and telephoned and schlepped around to record stores to hand sell it. I toured it and posted CDs around Australia to street press and fans. I could not imagine how I could ever get my music out in America or Europe at that time.”
You Can’t Resolve Yourself Out of New Year’s Grief
by Anna Rollins
“The Gwinnett Place Mall is a dead mall today, as are so many malls. The mall was used as a set for the third season of "Stranger Things." Monstrous aliens were filmed in violent pursuit of the dorky adolescent cast, just steps away from where my pretty aunt, decades before, stroked my hair and told me — gangly, big glasses, brunette-banged me – that nothing I wanted was silly, none of my desires were too much.”
Special Victims Unit
by Amy Scheiner
“When I was nine, slouching in my seat in class, Mom and a detective walked past my open classroom door and she waved ferociously at me. I had to blink twice to make sure it was really her. When I was eight, I found out one of my friends went to see Mom after her stepfather molested her. When I was ten, twelve, sixteen, Mom gave talks to my class about internet safety. When I was fourteen, she prosecuted my Math teacher…I knew the word rape before I knew my times tables.”
Sweet Spot
by Jennifer Shields
“I took stock during the long solitary afternoons, watching General Hospital and The Carol Burnett Show. I realized my need to belong was far greater than my need to hold a grudge. I fought the urge to stew in the why me pity-pot, and I’m not the only one who teased blame game. I did not want to align myself with my father’s way of coping, gripping onto despair with a white-knuckled tenacity. Believing the world owes you because you have suffered. The team’s ban broke me, cracked me open, and dispersed the meanness into the ether.”
🚨Announcements (galore!):
📢 Through February 5th, Memoir Monday founder Lilly Dancyger is considering memoir and essay collection submissions for Barrel House. Per the Barrel House site: “We're interested in full-length memoirs and essay collections that combine personal narrative with... something else. That could be reportage, criticism, history, etc. We're especially interested in projects where the external element has something to do with pop culture, and projects that do something unexpected and original with form and structure.
📢 Lilly Dancyger also has some new workshop offerings: The Braided Essay, Memoir as Detective Novel, Essay Revision Intensive.
📢 Intimacy, Permission, & the Heart of the Story: A 4-week online workshop with award-winning memoirist Elissa Altman, via Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass.
What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? How do we navigate the minefield of story ownership and permission-to-write when crafting a narrative that involves others (which it inevitably will)? What makes a great memoir what it is versus simply a recollection of experience or an information dump? In this rigorous, generative, asynchronous online workshop, award-winning memoirist Elissa Altman will explore issues of curation, permission, and clarity in the crafting of memoir and creative nonfiction. Class is limited to fifteen attendees.
📢 Marlene Adelstein, author of National bestselling novel, Sophie Last Seen, and professional freelance editor of memoirs and novels, is now accepting new editorial clients. She offers developmental editing, critiques and coaching. Her authors have published with mainstream, small presses, and hybrid publishers.
📢 Through January 16th, submissions are open for The Rumpus’s ENOUGH series. “We publish people who identify as women who have encountered rape culture or domestic violence,” says editor Katie Kosma.
📢 New Orleans Review is seeking writing (prose, poetry) and art by Iranian women (trans and non-binary inclusive) for a special issue of the journal, inspired by the current women's revolution, guest edited by writer and filmmaker Naz Riahi.Please submit your work by January 15 and help spread the word.
📢 Attention Publications and writers interested in having published essays considered for inclusion in our weekly curation:
By Thursday of each week, please send to memoirmonday@gmail.com:
The title of the essay and a link to it.
The name of the author, and the author’s Twitter handle.
A paragraph or a few lines from the piece that will most entice readers.
Because of data limits for many email platforms, going forward we will only include artwork from our partner publications. No need to send art.
*Please be advised, however, that we cannot accept all submissions, nor respond to the overwhelming number of emails received. Also, please note that we don’t accept author submissions from our partner publications.
You can also support Memoir Monday—and indie bookstores!—by browsing this Bookshop.org list of every book that’s been featured at the Memoir Monday reading series. It’s a great place to find some new titles to add to your TBR list!
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