A Dozen Personal Essays to Start Your Week Off Right...
Welcome to Memoir Land—a newsletter edited by @Sari Botton, now featuring three verticals:
Memoir Monday, a weekly curation of the best personal essays from around the web brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Granta, Guernica, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub, Orion Magazine, The Walrus, and Electric Literature.
First Person Singular, featuring original personal essays. Recently I published “The Re-Parent Trap” by
.Re: submissions for First Person Singular, here’s some good news: The week of August 7-14, Katie Kosma, my fellow former Longreads editor, will be open for submissions of essays of 2K to 3K words. Stay tuned for more details. Katie will be editing one essay per month here. I’ll share Katie’s email for submissions on Monday, August 7th. Get your pieces polished in the meantime!
(*I’ll probably do a limited submission period, soon, too, likely in the fall. So many pieces came in last time I had my submissions open that I’ve still got more pieces to respond to.)
The Lit Lab, featuring interviews and essays on craft and publishing. It is primarily for paid subscribers. Recently I published, “Life (and Writing Career) After Going Viral,” an interview with Adult Drama author Natalie Beach. A new interview is coming soon.
Essays from partner publications…
Borges Dealt with His Anxiety About Going Blind by Learning a New Language
by Andrew Leland
“When I first tried writing with a screen reader, turning off my monitor to see what it was like, I had a flash of this dissolution: I typed too fast for the screen reader to keep up, so I wrote into a void, the words audible in my mind, but without any confirmation that they were actually being recorded on the screen. It was like writing in water, or calling out into the darkness. ”
Running the Road to Nowhere
by Eva Holland
“It had never occurred to me that the Road to Nowhere might serve an actual, practical purpose—that it might lead somewhere useful. I’d figured the road was built years earlier, for some planned subdivision expansion or for a forgotten industrial venture. At most, I’d figured people were using it as an outlet—a way to get out of town, for a picnic or a party or, in my case, a spectator-free jog. The online map had confirmed my perception: a thin white line through a vast blank space.”
We Need to Tell a Different Kind of Love Story
by Patricia Fancher
“Friendship need not be a grand narrative. When I looked for friends within my favorite memoirs, I was also looking for heroes, for a literary legacy of friendship, for the people whose smaller roles nonetheless created significant pivots in the narrative. Friendship doesn’t need a man on a loudspeaker or a soapbox.”
The Kaki Tree
by Edmée Lepercq
“I thought my grandmother had a kaki tree because she felt homesick. And I thought that, through kakis, I nurtured my relationship to her and her country. But if the website is correct, kakis have as much to do with Vietnam as they do with French colonial history.”
Endurance
by Maartje Scheltens
“Four electronic organs stand in a circle on the stage…Four members of Piano Circus take seats at their organs and a fifth performer is standing in the middle to explain to us how to listen to the next piece, the second of the concert – Four Organs by Steve Reich (1970). The same performer introduced the first piece too. There, he was one of the pianists but here he is standing by an empty chair…Both the concert programme and the music festival director have already warned us that this piece will be intense, both for the players, from whom great concentration is required, and for the audience. I had previously heard it described as a single chord for nineteen monotonous minutes, and so I expected exactly that – a chord held for that time, a kind of mirror in sound of John Cage’s 4’33, but much longer. I expected it to be quite hard work to sit through, leaving room for terrible thoughts, the kind that come to mind while lying awake in the dark.”
Notes On Another New Life #5: I Almost Don’t Care What You Think (of Me).
by
“I wish I could tell you I don’t care what people think of me. I wish I could tell you I’ve grown out of caring, the way I’ve grown into the fiery impatience I’m telling you about. I have always wanted to be included—at summer camp, in high school, in the women’s movement, at the Village Voice, in my female friendships—anywhere there have been groups. I wanted to be included inside an anxious sweat that doomed it.”
Essays from around the web…
No Place for Women
by Farah Ahamed
“The place had a strange energy—a feeling of paralysis and listlessness, on the one hand, and a preying, animalistic aggression on the other. In a corner opposite the main building from a small kiosk a man was selling lawyers’ gowns, white shirts, striped ties, and black shoes. I was surprised. Were the garbs of a lawyer like an actor’s costume that any man could buy for a few hundred rupees? I became conscious that I too, that morning, was acting and impersonating.”
How I Survived a Wedding in a Jungle That Tried to Eat Me Alive
by Melissa Johnson
“No sound emerges from our five tents, just green-black humming in all directions, 1.6 million acres of primeval rainforest teeming with the richest biodiversity in Central America. I shake my hips, pull up my skivvies, and float back to my tent. I flop down and remind myself, This is the opportunity of a lifetime, when a mosquito the size of a Winnebago chomps my left butt cheek. The pain is electric but passes quickly. After frantic swatting and cursing, I drift off, anesthetized by this single dart. It was not a mosquito.”
Good Art Friends
by Jason Prokowiew
“We listen, knowing the hours lost and exhaustion gained from the work. When I get stuck for inspiration or how to start the next page, they often guide me where I need to go, sometimes just by nodding and commiserating. Their work makes me think differently, and I want to know all about it. We cheer for the occasional victories, whine about the ubiquitous rejections, and convince one another again and again not to give up.”
Shalimar
by Ellen Notbohm
“It was the smells I thought I could never forget. The deeply awful smell of her house those last years. My beautiful, fastidious mother didn't always dwell in a house of pong. It crept up on her as insidiously as the dementia it rode in on…Through the decades, her house smelled of baking bread, of her peonies and roses, of Tide detergent and Ivory soap, of mint meringues and brisket, of the lipstick and soft leather coat she wore. So intent was I on preserving the independence and privacy she treasured to the point of desperation, I missed the sly, sinister creep of her final illness. By the time I became undeniably aware of how craftily the stink had usurped all the other smells and taken ownership of her home, it was too late.”
The High Diving Board
by Wendy Mages
“When the film finally gets developed, my family gathers in the living room to view my proudest moment. I see myself climbing the narrow ladder, walking to the edge of the board, and bravely diving in, just like the big kids. I am so proud!…Then Dad says, ‘If you think that was something, watch this…’”
How to Build Resentments (List of Parts)
by Dorian Fox
“In another online dialogue, after a man with a long gun and a high-capacity magazine murdered dozens of people, you brought the First Amendment into the conversation. My right to free speech, you asserted, demands the same respect as your right to bear arms. No limits. Shall not be infringed, you wrote. Words, I argued, can harm, but they cannot kill. They cannot take a life. But maybe that’s not entirely true. The Constitution is a story. America is a story. Marketing is a story. More and more, I am trying to understand where violence starts.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 Until 30 July, applications are open for Writing Memoir: Unlocking Memory and Shaping Experience, the second offering from the Granta Writers’ Workshop. Tutor Midge Gillies, an educator with over twenty years of experience, will guide students through the creation of the first 10,000 words of a book-length memoir over a six-month period beginning in September. Applications are also open for an eight-week introduction to nature writing, tutored by Jessica J. Lee. One fully funded bursary place is available on each course in the Granta Writers’ Workshop.
📢 Electric Literature will be offering manuscript consultations for short fiction and essays of up to 6K words. “The editorial staff of Electric Literature is pleased to announce that we will be offering in-house manuscript consultations! For the first time, up to 50 writers may enroll to receive a comprehensive manuscript review, with detailed notes, and a video call with an EL editor.” Enroll August 1st.
📢 Writer and book coach Paul Zakrzewski wraps up Season 2 of The Book I Had to Write podcast by interviewing Toronto-based journalist Leah Eichler. They explore her Holocaust memoir-in-progress and how her book has evolved thanks to the coaching process.
Plus! Complete a new listener survey before August 8th to win the chance for a free 1:1 Instant Clarity Session (value $350)—a highly-focused, supportive call to help you get clear on a writing project or publishing question.
📢 Take my Skillshare workshop in blending the personal and universal in your essays!
📢 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!