Welcome to Memoir Land—a newsletter edited by Sari Botton, now featuring four 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. Below is this week’s curation.
First Person Singular, featuring original personal essays. Recently I published “Happy Birthday to Me,” by Jesse Sposato. A new essay is coming soon.
The Lit Lab, featuring interviews and essays on craft and publishing. There are also occasional writing prompts and exercises for paid subscribers. Recently I posted “The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #6: Annabelle Tometich” the sixth installment in that interview series.
Goodbye to All That, where I’m continuing to explore my fascination with the most wonderful and terrible city in the world, something I began doing with two NYC-centric anthologies, Goodbye to All That, and Never Can Say Goodbye. Recently I published “What the Prior Tenant Gave Me,” an essay of my own that’s an ode to artist Joe Coleman.
*Please note: I am no longer posting about these roundups on X/Twitter.*
Essays from partner publications…
Authenticity Games
by Laura M. Martin
“I was content to live alone. I stopped treading quietly, threw out most of my dresses, and bought an electric piano so I could accompany myself as I sang “Miss Ohio.” But I also craved community, people who could accept the unbridled version of me that was beginning to emerge. My ex had shamed me when I challenged people or was competitive, and in our years together I’d learned to play at docility. I wanted a chance to connect from a place of integrity, swapping my attempt at high femininity for a more authentic nonbinary balance of strength and softness.”
A Word to the Unwise
by Shalom Auslander
“Despite being of the age when it seems so many others have found peace with themselves, when they have gained the quiet confidence that comes with age, I have not. I still feel shame, I still feel insecure — and I still worry what people will think when they see my internet browsing history after I die.”
Lentille
by Urs Mannhart; translated by Christine Müller
“I have barely left the tiny railway station behind me, barely passed the small shop and the church and reached the gentle hill on which the last houses of the village are gathered, where the view opens up to the far-reaching forests, the pastures and the farm where I have been helping out for a few weeks – I have barely reached the gentle hill when I hear the piercing mooing of a cow.”
Parenting through an Apocalypse
by Liz Harmer
“In an effort to break the tension, I took my mother for a walk in the new neighbourhood and we admired the cactus gardens, the pink bougainvillea, and the sharp orange-tipped faces of the birds of paradise. I gestured at this prettiness and we agreed that my family had found a nice corner of Riverside. But then I ruined things by provoking her. ‘None of this will be here in thirty years,’ I said.”
Essays from around the web…
I Thought I'd Given My Mom A Good Eulogy. Years Later, A Phone Call Made Me Question Everything.
by Alyson Pomerantz
“‘You made Mom sound like a crazy person,’ my sister told me. I struggled to process her words. My beloved mother? Who I looked up to more than anyone? While I couldn’t remember exactly what I said in the eulogy, I could still hear the mourners’ reactions as they streamed out of the synagogue.”
When The Nights Belonged to Nick at Nite
by Jennifer Dines
“This voice that told me I was fine, that my insomnia was fine, maybe even a good thing! Nick at Nite could assuage my troubles. Nick at Nite could help me smile again. And its promise of quality time was especially appealing.”
Mount Everest was the Riskiest Place I Had Practiced Medicine Until I Became an OB/GYN in the South
by Mimi Zieman
“I’ve also been thinking a lot about the decision I made to go to Everest with the risks involved and the potential for trauma. I’d joined the team to experience the majesty of the Himalayas. To wake up to fine blue mountain light, live within vastness, and quell the warnings from girlhood to stay small and be safe. To this end, I made peace with the risks I was taking and ultimately grew from facing my fears. When trauma beset us, each team member grew into the best version of themselves. My family moved to Georgia almost three decades ago, a different kind of unlikely for this city-raised girl.”
Seaweed Project
by Pragya Agarwal
“A night or two later, she wakes up crying for seaweed crisps at midnight. There are no shops open at that time of the night, but she is inconsolable. The crisps are in fact made of sea kelp and not seaweed I think to myself as I lie down next to her holding her close and trying to soothe her flailing arms and legs, praying and hoping that she wouldn’t wake her twin up. The thin sheets of green moreish saltiness and umami are often made of the red algae nori or kelp. Seaweed is a generic name for thousands of these macroalgae that grow in the sea: red, green and brown fronds coming up for air when the tide is low, and then dipping back down when the tide goes back down; dipping, rising, dunking, tumbling every day twice a day with the changing seasons of the sea, looking out at the moon doing its thing.”
I Have a Master’s in Artificial Intelligence. I’m Leaving the Tech Industry.
by Harshini Rajachander
“After six months of searching-and-not-searching for management-level jobs in tech, I am done. I have done what society demanded of me. I have pursued what I thought needed to be pursued. I valiantly pushed on toward a goal that should have been mine but never was. I have given my time, my energy, and my youth for a white-collar world that will never stop gorging on people like me.”
Red Lipstick
by Farah Naaz
“Female friendship surprises you with its tenacity and preciousness. They are the ones that hold us while everything falls apart. They don't need long explanations. They understand our silences too. They know you and accept you for what you are.”
Pavel, Paris, Prague
by Leslie Li
“At the Alliance Française, one of my classmates is Czech. He fled to Paris soon after the Soviet Union invaded his homeland with $5 in Western currency in his pocket and a visa good for three months. For two months, Pavel and I practice our French together, explore Paris together, become lovers. With ten days remaining on his visa, instead of seeking asylum and remaining in the West, Pavel decides to return to Prague with stops along the way in Avignon, Nice, and Rome. He asks me to accompany him as far as Rome. I say yes.”
The Divided Self: Does Where I Live Make Me Who I Am?
by Anandi Mishra
“At home in Delhi, I am a more social, interactive person. A quiet balcony in Frankfurt gave me space to be by myself.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 If you’re in the mid-Hudson Valley, come hear me talk with Susan Ito about her excellent adoptee memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere next Weds., 4/17 at 6pm at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck.
📢 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.Nope…not doing Twitter anymore! Read and share the newsletter to find out/spread the word about whose pieces are featured.A paragraph or a few lines from the piece that will most entice readers.
Please be advised 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!
Thankyou for including my piece .Beyond thrilled.
So good as always