Drop Everything and Read These 11 Stellar Personal Essays...
Welcome to Memoir Land—a newsletter edited by
, now featuring three 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.
First Person Singular, featuring original personal essays. Recently I published “The Re-Parent Trap” by
.(***Submissions for First Person Singular are now PAUSED. An overwhelming number of new submissions have 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.)
The Lit Lab, featuring interviews and essays on craft and publishing. It is primarily for paid subscribers. Recently I published, “Life (and Writing Career) After Going Viral,” an interview with Adult Drama author Natalie Beach. A new interview is coming soon.
Essays from partner publications…
Paris or Prague?
by Milan Kundera
“‘May in Paris was an explosion of revolutionary lyricism. The Prague Spring was the explosion of post-revolutionary scepticism.’…When I arrived to spend a few days in the West in September 1968 – my eyes still seeing Russian tanks parked on Prague’s streets – an otherwise quite likeable young man asked me with unconcealed hostility: ‘So what is it you Czechs want exactly? Are you already weary of socialism? Would you have preferred our consumer society?’”
Got Tape?
by BK Loren
“In any other situation, the leaders who came that night — a gay couple, a former Black Panther who is now a conservative Republican, two college kids, a Hmong couple, a right-wing Libertarian, a born-again Christian, and a handful of liberal-leaning Democrats — would never have gathered under one roof. If diversity’s what it’s all about, then our neighborhood is all that and a bag of chips. But without a shared sense of purpose, diversity spells conflict and isolation, not opportunity. I figure that tract of land is what brought us together. None of us is about to give that up.”
On Going to Art School in My Sixties
by Susan Glickman
“I took a sabbatical from the writing gig and in drawing and painting, sculpture and print-making have rediscovered happiness. Because making art is not my profession, I have nothing invested in success: no nagging internalized critics, no worries about satisfying the marketplace. The joys of being an amateur are profound, and real, and intensely liberating. This is play, pure and simple.”
Forget Boyfriends, I’m Reading for Cults
by Mike McClelland
“Cults, overt and implied, have always been stimulating fodder in entertainment. The change has been in me. I have a new understanding of the allure of the cult. I thought, being a thoroughly damaged queer person, that I could never join one—because I don’t trust anyone—but I’ve come to realize, through great recent fiction, that cults can account for that, too.”
Travels with Barbie, from Tehran to Paris to New York
by Porochista Khakpour
“When my family left Tehran at the advent of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980, we left behind an entire room full of expensive toys; the casualties included my beloved Barbie posse. The transition to another life was made easier for me, I think, by the realization that it was a small world. Barbies were to be found everywhere.”
Letter to My Younger Self #6: Rearranging My Nervous System
by Judy Bolton-Fasman
“You were also branded weird because you had no rhythm on the kickball field or square dancing in the gym. Imagine, a Latinx kid who couldn't follow a beat. But please understand, you followed your own beat, especially when you swayed to Cuban music in the living room with Mamá. You were creative, extraordinary. My little Judy, weird is impressive. Weird is weird is weird like Gertrude Stein's rose. You will come to know that Stein captured the beauty and essence of the thing she repeated.”
Essays from around the web…
The Red Stain
by
“My birthmark was a daily reminder of the possibility of being seen as a certain kind of girl. Of course, there are so many daily reminders in our culture; it hardly takes a hickey-like constellation of capillaries to consider the threat.”
My Troubled Mother Died A Mystery To Me. Uncovering Her Story Changed My Life.
by Joya Taft-Dick
“In my early childhood memories, I had two loving parents who were endlessly committed to their three children — two boys and a girl in the middle. We lived in exciting places. I spent my first two years of life in Mauritania. My baby brother was born in the Philippines. We moved every three to four years, and my mother was, according to peers, the ‘quintessential expat.’”
See With Your Heart
by Aisling Walsh
“This September marks 15 years since my mother passed and I miss her everyday. Like Littlefoot I find myself looking for signs of her presence in the world around me, ways to remain connected despite her absence. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of her in my own reflection, other times I see her in my dreams. Most days, I can feel that we are still a part of each other."”
Past Lives and My Family Know the Role of that Almost Mythological First Love
by Iris (Yi Youn) Kim
“Before watching Past Lives, I expected another typical chut sarang storyline: Nora and Hae-sung reunite, and they end up together against all odds. But while certain elements of "Past Lives" did remind me of the K-dramas I'd seen, Song's incorporation of her personal story as a diasporic Korean filmmaker added another layer to the chut sarang trope…In Past Lives, Hae-sung represents more than just Nora's first love. By reuniting with him, she also reunites with the 11-year old girl she left behind in Korea many years ago. And, in saying goodbye, she bids both Hae-sung and her younger self from a past life farewell.”
My Dad’s Life Wasn’t ‘An Easy Journey.’ What I Found After His Death Taught Me Who He Really Was
by Isobella Jade
“My dad had been estranged for most of the time I knew him. After my parents’ divorce he was in and out of rehab programs for alcoholism, struggling to make ends meet, and it seemed all he ever spoke about on the phone were loud roommates, his lack of transportation, and his on again off again sales jobs. In one of his last voicemails I preserved he said that “it wasn’t an easy journey.” Although he had finally gained some stability during the last six months of his life.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 Until 30 July, applications are open for Writing Memoir: Unlocking Memory and Shaping Experience, the second offering from the Granta Writers’ Workshop. Tutor Midge Gillies, an educator with over twenty years of experience, will guide students through the creation of the first 10,000 words of a book-length memoir over a six-month period beginning in September. Applications are also open for an eight-week introduction to nature writing, tutored by Jessica J. Lee. One fully funded bursary place is available on each course in the Granta Writers’ Workshop.
📢
will lead Telling Shared Stories: Writing About Other People in Memoir, a one-day workshop, on July 22nd at 1pm EDT.📢 Writer and book coach Paul Zakrzewski interviews Brooklyn Book Doctor Joelle Hann (The Brooklyn Book Doctor) on the latest episode of The Book I Had to Write. They explore the changing face of Big 5 publishing, and bridging the gap between “the dream and the published book.”
The podcast is out with season 2, featuring interviews to help writers at every stage of the book-writing process. “This is the podcast I have to listen to! Exquisite storytelling and practical wisdom." – Listener Review.
📢 Take my Skillshare workshop in blending the personal and universal in your essays!
📢 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!