A Fresh Batch of Excellent Personal Essays...
PLUS: A Narratively Academy workshop with Kerra Bolton, private coaching with Starina Catchatoorian, and "Summer Salons" From FAWC in the announcements at the bottom.
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, 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 “Fleeing Toxic London, Finding Possibilities in Experimental Writing” by
.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 Prompt-O-Matic #17,” and “The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #15: Chelsea Devantez.
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 “The Free Pied-à-Terre that Spoiled Me,” something I wrote.
*Please note: I am no longer posting about these roundups on X/Twitter.*
Essays from partner publications…
What I’ve Learned from Getting Fired Six Times (So You Don’t Have To)
by Cathrin Bradbury
“I was was called into my boss’s bland pale-brown office. It was 11 a.m. on Thursday, November 15. Each of those details was important. I knew from my own history of doing the firing that any date closer to Christmas than mid-November was regarded as unseemly, that morning was preferred, and that Fridays and Mondays were verboten because they were too close to the weekend.”
Whatever Happened to Queer Happiness?
by Kevin Brazil
“‘I feel that every good thing that has happened in my life has come from being queer.’…Sometimes a line just won’t let go. Sometimes a line just sticks….It was the conclusion to an interview with Andrea Lawlor about their novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (2017). It seemed carefully chosen, as if to pose a parting challenge: is this true for you? Logically, it couldn’t be. I have two parents and three siblings, who are mundanely, gloriously, and definitionally straight. Some of my best friends are straight. Many of my favourite writers, and most of my favourite artists. But logic has little to do with it. That line stuck to me because I stuck to it.”
How to Build a Father
by Danny Goodman
“On October 22, 2020, I officially outlive my father. Fifty-one days later, I will turn forty, a milestone he never reached. Years ago, despite how morbid it felt, I’d figured out the exact day. It’s not a competition; I simply don’t want to die. Not at all, not ever, but somehow and absolutely specifically not before he did.”
Brace Face
by
“While we were setting off to find our separate cars in the parking lot, my father waved me in to make a pronouncement. I wasn’t surprised. He does this at the end of all of our visits, saying something supportive, firmly, like, You’re doing a great job or I’m proud of you type of thing. Except this time he leaned in and said, ‘I’ll pay for orthodontics.’”
Essays from around the web…
My Lunch with Jackie
by Laurie Joachim
“And. Then. In walks Jackie Onassis. She was in tweed slacks and a brown sweater with the sleeves pushed up closer to her elbows. She was alone. I wondered if she had just hot footed it down from 1040 5th Avenue. It was only 11 blocks. Had she walked the streets by herself? Did she take a cab or car service? Was there a bodyguard outside?”
Suffering Embarrassments in a Small Town
by D.W. McKinney
“I don’t remember the first time I asked the internet if I was safe in a city that was not my hometown. Yet the question became so frequent and so regular that I didn’t think twice when I typed, ‘Are Black people safe in ___?’ or ‘What are race relations like in ___?’ Travel forums unfolded years-long discussions about culture shock and discrimination. Blog posts and articles detailed the existence of Black expat communities abroad. In this way my travel guidebook was the historical compendium of life between Black folks and everyone else. I referred to this record often, whether the place was an unfamiliar U.S. city I was visiting for an overnight trip or a potential study abroad destination.”
To Survive My Daughter's Cancer Treatment, I Left Her Behind and Flew to Ireland
by Elizabeth Austin
“Unreasonable expectations dog single mothers like gum on a shoe, and we’re rarely allowed our follies and vices. We are expected to make up for the absent parent while also shouldering the blame of their absence but never falling victim to burnout. A cancer diagnosis set the bar to an Olympic height. If I missed a dose of her meds, if I couldn’t afford her prescriptions, if I found relief in the bottom of bottles instead of in yoga or Zen kōans, it was further evidence of my failures. It didn’t matter if my depression was turning my mind and body to sludge. I could work myself into an early grave, I thought, and someone would still show up to lean over the dirt and whisper, 'You forgot to add money to the school lunch accounts.'”
The Piano’s Choice
by Ellen Notbohm
“I didn’t trust transporting my piano to the general moving company, any more than I might have allowed my family to be crammed into a giant van amidst the other furniture and flotsam of our lives. I called a highly-recommended piano-moving company. On the appointed day, I answered the doorbell that rang on the dot of the appointed time…Handsome and sturdy as a Basque oak, the man on our porch introduced himself as George. My eyes swept the porch, the walkway, the street. He was alone. I asked where his helper was. He said he needed no helper: ‘I’m a piano mover, ma’am.’”
What Went Unsaid: How I Made and Lost a Friendship, Step by Step
by Marcia Yudkin
“Outside of work, Amelia rarely went anywhere without her Australian shepherd, Archie. As a child, I’d tested as allergic to dogs. Amidst the trees, I could smile at Archie’s romps, but in Amelia’s pickup with the windows shut, he made my nose twitch. When Archie climbed onto my lap to see out the front, his claws scratched my thighs and sometimes sent me home with bruises. I said nothing about the bother. I wanted this friendship to work.”
The Renting Life
by Diana Ruzova
“I’ve spent my life grappling with the concept of ownership. How our identity often gets wrapped up in what we own and what we don’t own. How in the U.S., ownership is the pinnacle of success. How there was no such thing as ownership in the failed Soviet experiment. How you could pick apples off any tree because they were there for everybody to enjoy. How owning a home in Los Angeles may forever be out of reach. How impermanent we are in the arbitrary nature of existence.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 Academy’s Summer Writing Workshop: Mastering Personal Essays About Family
Academy is offering a Summer Writing Workshop: Mastering Personal Essays About Family with Kerra Bolton. If you want to craft compelling personal essays about your family without getting caught in the messy middle, this intimate five-week workshop (capped at no more than 10 students) is designed to help writers polish their storytelling and get their pieces published. Starts July 8.📢 Writer/Editor Starina Catchatoorian is Offering Private Coaching…
“I'm excited to announce I am now consulting privately with writers. This summer, set your writing intentions and goals! From June 6 through August 6 I'm offering a $30 discount (normally $125/session) at $95/session for Memoir Monday readers. See website for more details.
📢 Attend “Summer Salons” at Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center:
A lineup of influential figures in the arts and culture scene will host Summer Salons at Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center from May 31st to September 7th. Poets Tracy K. Smith and Major Jackson, curator Helen Molesworth, photographer Catherine Opie, author Sarah Schulman, and journalist Peter Slevin will lead intimate weekend conversations and workshops.
Whether attending in person or via live stream, participants will engage directly with the artists in unmoderated discussions, followed by Q&A sessions and hands-on workshops. Prices are determined based on affordability, and all ticket sales will support the Fine Arts Work Center’s commitment to providing free arts and culture events, including this summer’s nightly readings and artist talks hosted each week Monday through Wednesday nights, open art studios, and open-mic readings on Thursday nights, among other free events. The lineup:
📢 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!
This is so great. I would love one day to have some of my essays included. All the published ones are posted in my Substack.