A Fresh Batch of Absorbing Personal Narratives to Read this Week...
Plus: My upstate conversation tonight with Elissa Altman about "Permission," Narratively's True Romance contest and a new workshop, and a call for submissions for Literary Liberation.
Welcome to Memoir Land—a newsletter edited by
, 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, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub, Orion Magazine, The Walrus, and Electric Literature. Below is this week’s curation. ⬇️
First Person Singular, featuring original personal essays.
The Lit Lab, featuring interviews—The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire—and essays on craft and publishing. There are also weekly writing prompts and other exercises from, ahem, a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter of memoirs (that’s me) exclusively for paid subscribers.
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.
*While I have you…I could use some more support in the form of paid subscriptions. If I’ve featured your work or that of your publication’s contributors…if you’re a publicists whose clients I’ve regularly featured…if you just want to help me keep doing this and paying contributors, please consider becoming a paid subscriber…*
***Next week I’ll be traveling so the “Memoir Monday” newsletter will be crowd-sourced, like this one and this one. Get ready to share your favorite personal essays that have been published recently, or ever.***
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Essays from partner publications…
The Secret Language We Share with Our Children
by
“Before I watched you acquire language of your own, I’d often wonder about that version of me—someone who shared a first way of speaking with her mother. Singing the lullabies to me that she grew up with; saying pórtense bien instead of goodbye. For a long time, I’d have a visceral reaction to hearing those words.”
What Does It Mean to Be a “Good Author” When You Publish a Book?
by
“If my more than two decades in books has taught me anything about being an author, it’s to manage my expectations. I don’t have my heart set on a celebrity book club pick, and I’m not gonna be devastated if I don’t get the cover of the New York Times Book Review (or any page in there, for that matter). I will not be waiting with bated breath to see the nonfiction bestsellers list the week my book comes out. These things are out of my control and they are out of my publicist’s control. There is nothing but heartache for the author who doesn’t realize this, and even more heartache for that author’s publishing team, who are overworked and underpaid as it is.”
The Bus Chasers
by Maggie Andersen
“At 35, I have my first child. My father, now retired, sometimes gives us rides to the pediatrician on the South side, the other side of the city, where I have to go as a grad student because we can only be seen at the university hospital. He drives with the baby seat in the back and takes us for lunch after our appointments. In the neighborhoods I want to explore, I request the chic new Mediterranean place or the cozy Scottish pub, and he occasionally indulges me and inevitably ends up close-talking with the owner, no matter their age or background. One guy says, “I like your father. Around here, we call him Mr. Whispers.” More than one person calls him The Mayor. Usually though, my father prefers the time machine restaurants that remind him of a different Chicago, or what he might consider the soul of it. The Breakfast Club in West Town, the White Palace Grill on Canal Street—breakfast and lunch, nothing fancy. He likes running into his friends from back in the day and knows exactly where to find them. Retired police officers, precinct captains, and community organizers from all 50 wards.”
The Danger of Befriending Celebrities
by
“Carrie Fisher was simply playing the part of a celebrity giving a journalist what he wants…Feeding me the illusion of friendship was very savvy, and kind of delightful too, since we were both in on the game.”
Essays from around the web…
The Mirror Operator
by Sarah Mullens
“What would it have meant to see her there? One final, tangible connection, maybe, between our story and Waco’s history—thirty years later, back to the same spot. We’d each spent a lifetime since then fixated on the years surrounding the Siege. 1990 to 1995. We’d treated these years like a labyrinth, each going deeper alone with the faint hope that maybe, if we met at its center, we’d emerge, finally, as mother and daughter. If that had been her dark hair on the screen, her fist pumping in anger, might that image have distilled her, in all her multiplicity, down into something flat and fixed, something, at last, intelligible to me? Or maybe my motivation was simpler. Maybe I looked for her in the crowd only because I needed to see her face, how it moves when she chants. Maybe I looked for her because I can’t bear to let myself forget.”
Who? Me? A Complainer?
by
“For older people, age-related stereotypes make it all the more important to avoid getting tagged as a complainer. Unpleasant, draining characters include the grumpy grouch; the fussbudget who finds fault with everyone; the bellyacher who disparages whatever is new and different; the sourpuss endlessly moaning about aching hips; and apparently me, tossing dark opinions right and left."
This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I’d Never Write
by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
“Now, all these years later, after I hung up with Ilana, I walked around Covent Garden, unable to sleep, a panic welling inside me. I had not told Mr. Lindenblatt’s story, the thing he asked me for forever, and now he was dying. All the Holocaust survivors were dying. All the Holocaust survivors were dying, and at home in New York, spray-painted swastikas had been showing up all over town, and my nephews had stopped wearing their yarmulkes. Yes, all the Holocaust survivors were dying, and we were locked in debates over whether a salute given by a newly installed government official was a Nazi dog-whistle or a Nazi Nazi-whistle or maybe just an awkward wave or a weird shout-out to his buds.”
Release Me: Love, Addiction, and the Edge of Letting Go
by Ryan Berg
“Release Me recounts a night on the brink—dragging my partner back from the edge of a twenty-seventh-floor balcony as he teetered between delusion and death. What begins as a welfare check spirals into a portrait of love entangled with addiction, psychosis, and codependency. Set in the shadowy hours of a Minneapolis summer, the essay explores the impossibility of saving someone who doesn’t want to be saved and the slow, painful recognition that in trying to love him, I was abandoning myself.”
Zuma
by
“Your father’s scent—Dial soap and Clorets gum and coffee breath—is replaced by the smell of soggy diapers, of unwashed flesh, of hair heavy with its own oil…Late at night you eat ice cream straight from the pint, spoon sticky with sugar. You eat by the fridge light. You eat and eat and eat. You are alone…You eat fast, worry about scarcity. You always hunger for more but have learned not to ask for seconds at meals…You’re not still hungry, are you?…Are you?”
Our home survived the Palisades fire. Our love almost did not
by
“But having a child means that even during times of disaster, natural or self-made, we must carry on. As the days passed, I attempted to blend our old life with our new one by scattering our few family photos around the apartment, helping my daughter navigate a new bus route, dealing with insurance adjusters. Yet as my husband grew increasingly more distant, I sank into a state of despair.”
I was Caring for a Patient with Down Syndrome. A Fellow Doctor’s 8-Word Remark Left Me Stunned.
by
“‘Wow! You were so kind to that little boy!’ a pediatric resident told me with a saccharine and insincere tone. I was a third-year medical student, and she’d pulled me aside after she’d witnessed me giggling and zipping trucks along bedrails with a patient. I was also a 25-year-old woman who lacked a professional filter. ‘Why wouldn’t I be kind?’ I blurted out. My voice mirrored my grandmother’s.”
Wake Up Call
by Nicole Dahmen
“I started practicing my speech. ‘Billy saved my life. I believe I’d be dead today if I hadn’t met him,’ I’d recite in front of the crowd on the banks of the Willamette River, just upstream from the forest where he’d chopped down our Christmas tree the month before. ‘He made me a wife and mother,’ I’d say. ‘And for that, I’m truly grateful.’”
The Summer Job
by Dorothy Walton
“I thought I must have passed muster my third night when they told me to eat all the freshly baked bread I wanted in the kitchen. “Really?” I said, reveling in the smell of yeast and warm butter. Turned out, they were letting me down easy. I got the boot later that night.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 Don’t Call Me Home author ’s Writing Retreat in Tuscany, August 2-9 looks amazing and I wish I could make it…
📢 Tonight, Upstate: My final of three events with Permission author …
Readers,
’s new memoir/craft book Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create sits so squarely in my wheelhouse—and, honestly, that of most who write memoir and struggle to feel permitted to do it—that I’ve been doing a number of events with her about it.Tonight I’ll be in conversation with Elissa at my wonderful local indie, Rough Draft Bar & Books in Kingston, NY. If you’re around, please come!
📢 x Belletrist True Romance Writing Prize
Narratively is accepting submissions for their Narratively x Belletrist True Romance Writing Prize. They are looking for remarkable memoir and reported stories that offer new perspectives and defy all odds, completely shifting our understanding of romance and relationships. The guest judges are star actor Emma Roberts and acclaimed producer Karah Preiss of Belletrist. Awards will be given in two categories: longform (1,000-5,000 words) and shortreads (up to 999 words); for longform, one grand prize winner will be awarded $3,000 and two finalists will be awarded $1,000 each; and for shortreads, one grand prize winner will be awarded $500 and two finalists will be awarded $250 each. For more information and to submit a story (or stories), head here. Note: There is a $20 entry fee for longform and a $10 fee for shortreads — which are waived for paid Narratively subscribers! (one in each category per person). The deadline to submit is Thursday, May 1, 2025.
📢 New Academy Workshop: The Insider's Guide to Writing Personal Statements and Applying for Grants & Residencies
Abeer Hoque, a writer and photographer who has won fellowships from the NEA and Fulbright Foundation, is teaching The Insider's Guide to Writing Personal Statements and Applying for Grants & Residencies, an intensive 2-day workshop for 8 students at Narratively Academy, April 27 and May 4.
📢 Call for Submissions for a Collaboration Between Memoir Land and Literary Liberation
Memoir Land and
will co-publish an essay series called “Writing A Liberatory Practice.” Rate: $150. For submissions guidelines, deadlines and more, visit Literary Liberation.📢 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.
Your name and Substack profile link, if you have one, so I can tag you in the post.
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.
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So many great essays this week!! Thanks for including Nicole’s :)
And everyone should read Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s story on the Holocaust. It’s brilliantly written and
beautiful too but, of course, incredibly sad.
Thank you for including my piece! <3