A Dozen Solid Personal Essays to Start Your Week Off Right...
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, Granta, Guernica, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub, Orion Magazine, The Walrus, and Electric Literature.
In addition to the weekly curation, there are now original personal essays in a vertical called First Person Singular. Recently I published “Crying, a Dissertation,” by
there. A new essay is coming Wednesday.
***Submissions for First Person Singular are now PAUSED. An overwhelming number of new submissions have recently come in. There are more essays in my inbox than I could publish in two years. And I’m too overwhelmed to keep bringing in more to read before I go through all those already in there, even with help from recently appointed contributing editor Katie Kosma.
*Going forward, there will be specific limited submission periods, which I will announce here. You can find submissions guidelines and more on the “About” page, but, again, submissions are currently PAUSED.
In other news, recently I launched “The Lit Lab,” a new vertical dedicated to interviews and essays on craft and publishing. It is primarily for paid subscribers. Recently I published an interview with author and
advice columnist .
Essays from partner publications…
On Aging Alone
by Sharon Butala
“One of the things that most puzzled me during the more than thirty years I spent with my husband in what was for me rural solitude—partly because I didn’t fit into rural society and partly because I chose the work of learning to be a writer, which further isolated me—was that, even as I was often brought to an absolute physical halt by the natural beauty I was seeing, I was at the same time stricken painfully in the heart by the sight. Looking closer, I identified it as yearning, and then, in the end, I gave it the name of loneliness.”
“It Stands for ‘F*ck This Shit.’” Abigail Thomas on Getting a Tattoo at 80
by
“I’m getting a second tattoo in honor of turning 80. The whole phrase is too much to tolerate if it hurts as much as my salamander did, so it’s just going to be initials. Black, I think, a nice severe black. It will go on my left arm, because the salamander lives on my right. At first I wanted the font from The New York Times but it’s too complex. I settled on simple capital letters, like Scrabble squares. FTS. It stands for Fuck This Shit.”
Judy Blume Taught Me What My Parents Wouldn’t
by Kavita Das
“I was amazed that there was a book written for kids that so openly portrayed topics like crushes and the changes that happen to girls’ bodies. And I knew I needed it. I asked my friend if I could borrow her copy of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. for a few days, and she agreed. I smuggled the book home in my backpack, worried about what would happen to me if my parents ever discovered it. If they found it, I suppose I could tell them it was about a girl named Margaret who talks to God and is trying to understand religion (incidentally, this is true). My devoutly Hindu parents couldn’t fault me for reading about a girl seeking to be closer to God and religion.”
“A” Is for Anosmia
by
“ Two negative Covid rapid tests and one negative PCR test, and I am still coughing and fatigued…And not tasting. And not smelling…I Google to find out when my chemical senses might return: Maybe never. The ability to taste and smell diminishes as we age. (I’ll never know for sure whether I had three false negatives, or it was something besides Covid. And while my senses of smell and taste did eventually return, they were definitely diminished.)”
Essays from around the web…
My Night in an Emergency Psych Ward
by Samantha Mann
“Down the hall a woman let out a blood-curdling scream, and I watched a man with his hands deep inside his pants walk laps around the unit. I didn’t want to see where I would be in another ten years if I kept living the same way. I wanted to learn how to take care of myself. I wanted to find an honest version of getting better. Laying in my wrinkled yellow gown and matching gripper socks, I smelled the alcohol and sweat seeping from my skin and knew I would never feign wellness again. This revelation was an enormous relief.”
The Blessing Room: I Thought I Was No Fun, Then I Received A Surprising Text
by
“"I couldn’t help it, I took his staying out late personally, and over time tried every response to his eventual return: yelling, sobbing, ignoring, once even taking the cats and checking into the Washington Square Hotel so I wouldn’t be there when he got home—but he didn’t get in until eight in the morning and by then I was already back and cooking oatmeal.”
Ethan Hawke Was Here: On Hotel Chelsea & Romance in the ’90s
by
“Writers often believe in the superstition that there exists one place that will inspire progress and literary greatness, a location infused with creative spirits of past residents or patrons whose genius will somehow seep into our DNA and make us brilliant. However, one night, while taking the long way home, walking beneath the hotel’s neon sign and wrought-iron balconies, I realized I had already missed the many movements that had jumped off behind the Chelsea walls.”
The Loneliest Road in America
by Michelle Polizzi
“In contrast, Robbie’s unbridled obsession has demonstrated just how addictive ketamine can be. He underestimates how much I know about his problem. But having an alcoholic parent has made me watchful, attuned to everybody’s actions—no matter how subtle. I know he keeps the baggies in his wallet, and it’s obvious why he takes his wallet to the bathroom when we go on dates to restaurants. When he’s gone, he’s gone for a long time, and I find myself staring at the empty place where his wallet was on the table. How can something that heals one person destroy another?”
Remembering Freetown
by Janay Garrick
“I am not in any way prepared for postwar Freetown. Postwar Sierra Leone. The tanks parked on the roadside, the brand-new Toyota 4Runners marked UN rolling by. I am not in any way prepared, despite my ten-day Hostile Environments and First Aid Training by the British Royal Marines in the Shenandoah Mountains; ten days of mucking around with other aid workers and journalists from the Sacramento Bee, the Associated Press, and the New York Times. There are guns here, I notice.”
cooked: a pandemic in review
by Maya Bernstein-Schalet
“in September, i pack tubs of quinoa and lentils into the cooler for a drive. through new jersey, through delaware, through maryland and virginia. i eat packets of trader joe’s nuts and watch the moon rise over a foggy lake from the passenger seat. i empty packets of beans onto small pans on the camp stove and watch the stars. i feel alive and horrified. i feel my core unfurling to the light of dolly’s clear blue morning, sipping cool blue gatorade in the driver’s seat. through tennessee, through oklahoma, through texas. i feel so good and so far away, from my body, from my friends. i wish i could make a run for it from my mind.”
My Heart Defect Was Repaired by Age 4. But Was I Cured?
by Leigh Kamping-Carder
“For most of my years, it was inconceivable that the doctors who had preserved my life had also inflicted suffering. I hadn’t been abused or neglected. I had been saved. But something had knocked free inside me in those days I lay alone in the hospital three years ago, something I needed to tread carefully around.”
The Perseids
by Nancy Huggett
“I grip Jessie’s hand as she slips into the cold MRI machine, trying to let her know that I will not let go. Terrorized by the restraints, by her loss of words, by tongue and mouth and brain not connecting, by the clanging and whirring around her head, she squeezes my hand and pleads with her eyes: Make it stop. My own helpless nightmare: standing under the weight of a lead gown, cheek pressed against the cold MRI, its deafening mechanical whine vibrating through my jaw. I clutch her hand as her body slides away into darkness. ”
🚨Announcements:
📢 Attention essayists: Electric Literature is launching a creative nonfiction program! Learn more about it in a free salon Tuesday, May 16th at 3pm EST, hosted by Mount St. Mary’s University. Tune in to hear EL’s essay editors, editor-in-chief Denne Michele Norris, associate editor Wynter Miller, and contributing editor Michelle Chikaonda in conversation to learn more about their new submission guidelines and more.
📢 Lilly Dancyger also has a few new workshops on offer, plus manuscript and essay consultations. Lilly is a talented writer, editor, and teacher who will help you improve your work. Check out her offerings…
📢 Granta Writers’ Workshops has two new courses on offer: Nature Writing: Rewilding Language, and Writing Memoir: Unlocking Memory and Shaping Experience.
📢 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!