A Dozen Great New Personal Essays...
Plus: THREE events where I'll talk with Elissa Altman about her new memoir/craft book, "Permission," plus Narratively's True Romance contest, and a call for submissions for Literary Liberation.
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, 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.
Follow Memoir Land on BlueSky: @memoirland.bsky.social
Essays from partner publications…
Loopholes
by Tice Cin
“If you slip away, to the side of that staircase, them man running won’t see. If you pull up that curtain, or knock on this shelf – whoever’s keeping an eye out will let you in. We’re surrealists – like J.G. Ballard says – guides ‘towards a discovery of the secret formulas of reality’. Blending into our environments, rather than consumed, we course through.”
Reconsider the Lobster: On the Persistent, Joyful Cruelty of Bipedal Hominids
by Ron Currie
“Suicide comes in different forms. Or at least it can be argued that it does. My grandfather, for example, packed several lifetimes’ worth of drinking and smoking into just 49 years; his death was, in all the ways that count, a suicide. Ditto for my father, who smoked like a barbecue joint for the better part of four decades, quit too late, and died of lung cancer at 57. I don’t think either of them meant to kill themselves—not consciously, at least—but that’s what they did, in effect. I’ve lost a lot of people to deaths that wouldn’t rate as suicides on a coroner’s report but that, in terms of the quality of grief they inspire, sure feel like the friends and family in question chose to call it quits, often right in front of me, day by day, drink by drink, Big Mac by Big Mac.”
So You Want to Flee to Canada: Revisiting a Classic Guide to Leaving America
by James Folta
“In 1967, House of Anansi Press released Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada by Mark Satin, a practical how-to for escaping the American military draft and moving to Canada. Anansi reissued the guide in 2017, the first time it was back in print since 1971. And now is the moment to read it: a larger exodus to Canada appears to be gaining steam. Some students who are being hunted by ICE over their participation in Palestinian solidarity movements have reportedly sought refuge in Canada. Academics whose work might anger the regime are heading north too: Timothy Snyder, a historian and the author of On Tyranny, and Jason Stanley, a philosopher and author of How Fascism Works, are both moving to the University of Toronto.”
Going to the Beauty Parlor
by
“I was introduced to the power of women getting their hair “done” when I was a little girl. The circumstances could hardly have been more memorable. My mother, as the result of a brain tumor when she was 33, had undergone a frontal lobotomy. The surgery had damaged her irreparably, so she was unable to care for my three older brothers and me.”
Essays from around the web…
Wintering—And Grieving—in Venice
by
“At home, since our stillbirth last Christmas, I’ve felt paralyzed. By 3 p.m. every day, I’m invaded by darkness. In the throes of grieving two boys in one year, my husband Ethan and I must decide if we’re continuing with surrogacy. Our love story is as irreversibly altered as my anatomy, our conversations dominated by bowels and bladder and baby. I can hardly look at him because he reminds me of all that we’ve lost and all that we may continue to lose. So I’ve come to my lagoon for some melancholy me-time. Where better to nurse a severe depression than here, where I’ve always felt most alive?”
The Hedonists’ Checklists
by Daniel Speechly
“The glistening ribs plucked from the broth were like revelation precariously grasped between our chopsticks. With our first bites the world bared its soul, showing us possibilities we had never considered. With the next, we tuned into flavors we would later come to crave. And when we had finished, we knew we would never stop searching for what might come next–each new meal an exclamation mark on a life composed entirely of ellipses."
I Am A USAID Worker Who Lost My Job. Here's What Trump And Musk Aren't Telling You About The Cuts.
by Alex Poppe
“By eviscerating USAID, Trump and Elon Musk are redefining what it means to be American. Musk thinks empathy is ruining Western civilization. We need to ask ourselves if we want to be seen as small-hearted or generous. Do we want to be known as a nation that cares about those in need? A nation that does the right thing because it is the right thing? Or do we want to be known as a transactional country, willing to betray our long-standing allies, inflict intense suffering on the world’s most vulnerable, and embrace those who trample human rights? Who are we as Americans?”
Ode to a Gen-Z Situationship
by Anna Salinas
“During our next date, Jacob dumped me, saying, ‘I think we should roll things back romantically.’ I didn’t get it. Was this about the weekend trip? He said it was everything. I never understood his jokes. We had different interests. And hadn’t we agreed to keep things casual? Didn’t I notice that when I told him I was falling for him, he never said it back? Waiting for the bill, I wanted to cry, but I refused. It was one thing to date a 24-year-old in a faux-fur head wrap; it was quite another to get dumped by one.”
Confessions of a Once-Bearded Lady
by Elisa Albert
“It never occurred to me to leave myself alone, to ‘let’ my beard be. I did not want to be a girl with a beard. I wanted to be a “real” girl, a girl who might someday be inspiring of love, or at the very least, boners. It likewise did not occur to me that a girl could have a beard and still be ‘real,’ still a ‘girl,’ still worthy/inspiring of love (and maybe even lust). There was no way, back then, to see any possibility for a good life as a bearded woman.”
I Know I Need a Small Vacation
by Anna Rollins
“A few months after the baby was born, we tried to go on a vacation. We booked a nonrefundable cabin in the hills of West Virginia, and several days before the trip, my husband came down with COVID. And then the COVID came for me—and well, isn’t that how these things go? I sighed as I put our suitcases back into storage. I said it with the nonchalance of a third-time mom. Exerting more emotional energy than a shrug was more than I had to spare.”
It's Okay, Make Mistakes"
by
“The album forgave me for all the things I held against myself—things I absolutely didn’t need forgiveness for. It was permission to be human and messy. I played it loud and danced in my living room, spinning in circles until I gave myself a headache. From the hardwood floor, room swishing around me, I screamed the words like a feral banshee calling out, untethered. But instead of foretelling death, I was announcing life—a new life, my life, raw and real. My seven-year-old daughter screamed the words with me, our eyes locked, laughing. We sang the lyrics together until she was screaming with me, and I kissed her sweet fairy face.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 THREE Upcoming Events Where I’ll Talk 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’m going to be doing three events with her about it. I hope some of you can make it to one of these!
First up is The Woodstock Bookfest, where on Sunday, April 6th at 11:30am I’ll moderate a panel called “On Permission: Daring to Tell,” inspired by Altman’s book, Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create. Participating will be Altman; Hyeseung Song, author of Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl; and Jonathan Lerner, author of Performance Anxiety: The Headlong Adolescence of a Mid-Century Kid.
The second event is an in-conversation at Bookclub Bar in the East Village on Tuesday, April 8th from 8-9pm. Be sure to RSVP if you’re coming!
Join us for one (or more) of these!!!
📢 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.
📢 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.
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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Thank you for including my essay!!! It was a joy to be published with The Queer Love Project.
❤️✨🙌🏽