Eleven Personal Essays, One Interview, and Five Announcements...
Basic arithmetic for writers and readers.
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. Below is this week’s curation.
First Person Singular, featuring original personal essays. Recently I published “Minda Honey Wants a Millennial ‘Waiting to Exhale’” by Minda Honey. A new essay is coming Wednesday.
*Submissions are currently paused for First Person Singular. I’ll do a limited submission period later this fall. Stay tuned…*
The Lit Lab, featuring interviews and essays on craft and publishing, plus writing prompts and exercises. It is primarily for paid subscribers. Recently I posted “My Bookstore Conversation and Reading with Abigail Thomas,” the latest in that writing prompt series.
Essays from partner publications…
I Loved “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” Before I Loved Myself
by Zefyr Lisowski
“What I didn’t expect was how the film looked, shining bright even through digital grain. Fields of tall grasses rippled slowly in the breeze. A car rumbled down the highway, exhaust exhaling behind it like a ghost. And at the moment that Sally Hardesty, the movie’s beleaguered protagonist, is held captive at the cannibal family’s dinner table, grandfather preparing to hit her with a hammer, the film zooms in unexpectedly on one of her eyes flitting around in fear, and the iris was the most verdant green I’d ever seen.”
Road to Avonlea: On the Transportive Intimacy of Reading and Long Drives
by Amanda Parrish Morgan
“At many times of transition, it’s been long drives have helped me navigate uncertainty, grief, or anticipation. When I left home for college, the manageable pace of driving away, first down our steep driveway, then left out of our cul-de-sac and onto the Merritt Parkway, and finally accelerating into the 800 miles between Connecticut and Chicago made leaving home for the first time feel less daunting. That drive became one I did myself a few times each year, always as one semester was ending or a new one beginning, and with it the attendant feelings of wistfulness or hope for a fresh start.”
Horses, Depression, and Me: How Riding Changed My Life
by Mari Sasano
“The horse world has its own culture, and I worried about fitting in. But I also wondered what my pastime must look like to my friends. Once, when my sister and I were younger, our dad said to us about riding, “We are not the kind of people who do these things,” and I think about that a lot. Horseback riding is still an expensive pursuit and a symbol of privilege. Knowing this makes me feel a little embarrassed: the world is burning, and I choose to do this?”
Ed’s Things
by Robert Glück
“Ed left instructions in his will for the disbursement of certain objects and a great deal of art. I spent an afternoon in his studio in June 1993, helping him make these decisions. We were dry-eyed, strangely festive, even though a PICC that went into his arm, past his shoulder, and then a fraction of an inch into a chamber in his heart, was being replaced the next day by an apparatus that entered his chest. He said, ‘This week the mockingbirds returned. Their song is so pretty, sometimes I hear a robin in it, or a seagull, or a sparrow.’ We made a game of determining who would like a certain painting or drawing. Ed took for granted that my mother would be given something nice. We chose a female torso that was also an ascending spirit, drawn with light instead of shadow.”
Catching the Cat
by
“Due to my mother’s reluctance to leave her home, Bobby and I moved into Mayflower Gardens ourselves, instead. The new plan was, we’d get the apartment ready for mom while we lived in it, work on the house during the days, and when the time came, switch places with her.”
How Stephanie Land Launched Her Writing Career and Became a Bestselling Memoirist
by
“The book proposal for Maid took us 11 months from that time until we had an actual book deal. Man, that proposal… I still can’t really look at book proposals, because by the end of it, every time I opened it to start working on it, I would get physically ill. At one point my agent said, ‘I want you to think about all of the moments during that time in your life that you just started sobbing — and put that in there.’ So it was rough to write that proposal.”
Essays from around the web…
Signs of Ghosts
by
“The usual idea behind a ghost is that they’re someone you shouldn’t normally see, someone who, due to some cosmic accident or injustice left unaddressed, has become visible again. The same, I understood, came to be true of pandemics: they are invisible until they suddenly become visible. The 1918 Spanish Flu had been more or less forgotten by history, a mere footnote to World War I, until we had our own pandemic and suddenly we couldn’t stop seeing the Spanish Flu everywhere. And watching these movies about ghosts as a new and terrifying reality loomed, I realized there were things there all along that I’d never noticed, that had, all at once, become all I could see.”
But the Drugs Keep Me Sober
by Katie MacBride
“I can’t get away from the nagging insecurity, the cold, itchy guilt that I’m not really in recovery anymore, or sober enough, if I’m not sticking to the rules by which they’ve decided to play…Intellectually, I know this isn’t true. Recovery is not about the chemicals running through my bloodstream. Recovery is individual and personal. For me, it’s also inextricably linked to my depression. So, while sobriety might traditionally be defined as the absence of alcohol, my recovery is much more complex: It’s the process of trying to loosen the knot of pain and self-loathing that fueled my addiction and still fuels my depression.”
Visions of Summertime Sadness and Solitude in 'The Green Ray'
by Emma Kantor
“Romance, like film, is in large part projection. Rohmer tried but failed to capture the Green Ray. Instead, he had to simulate it through special effects. It’s a reminder that, however authentic his film may feel, it’s still a film—a fairytale reflection, or refraction, of real life. Even so, I want to believe in the optimistic vision of the Green Ray. I want wide-screened movie magic and unexpected meet-cutes to rescue me from the algorithmic tedium of dating apps. I imagine that love is like finding a book on the shelf, the one you didn’t know was meant for you.”
My Daughter Wasn't Expected To Live Past 31. A New Drug Saved Her — But There's 1 Big Catch.
by Abby Alten Schwartz
“Being one of the lucky ones comes with responsibility. I’m profoundly grateful to the scientists who very likely saved my daughter. I also know it could just as easily have been her receiving posthumous birthday wishes. Every age Sammie reaches that my friends’ girls never will is a blessing and a gut-punch.”
At 42
by Anna Sophia
“Outside of 42’s black picket fence, a patriarchal storm was raging. There was no solid ground out there for me. Inside the fence an alternate universe was thriving. I repainted the walls scarlet red, terracotta orange and sunshine yellow. Each brush stroke moved me closer to myself and gave me a sense of belonging for the first time in my life…At 42 you can become everything you want to be and everything you are meant to be.”
My Driving Problem
by Julie Metz
“It’s not that I can’t drive. I have a license. I can drive a car, and at least some people I know, including my partner, tell me that I’m a pretty good driver, or at any rate, not a bad one. Just too cautious, too slow. My favorite speed limit is 45.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 From November 1st to 5th is running her Essay Camp.
From
:What: Essay Camp: A November Write-Along When: Wednesday November 1st – Sunday November 5th, 2023, plus the option to continue. Where: Online Who: Award-winning writer and author Summer Brennan teaches essay writing and the creative process, with thousands of writers participating. How: Sign up for free emails from A Writer’s Notebook and follow along at home. Why: Reconnect with your writing practice and plant the seeds for future success. Cost: None.
📢 Submissions for ’s second annual Memoir Prize are open now.
“Through Thursday, November 30, 2023, Narratively is accepting entries for our 2023 Memoir Prize. We’re on the hunt for revealing and emotional first-person nonfiction narratives from unique and overlooked points of view. The winning submission will receive a $3,000 prize and publication on Narratively.”
📢 Writing Co-Lab has some new classes on offer…
Writing Co-Lab provides dynamic online classes and workshops in every genre to deepen your craft, sharpen your publishing acumen, and ignite your imagination. Writing Co-Lab is cooperatively owned and run by teaching artists, so up to 90% of your tuition goes directly to the instructor. With free open mic nights, early morning writing clubs, and faculty “ask me anything” sessions, Writing Co-Lab is committed to fostering community inside and outside the classroom. We have upcoming classes taught by acclaimed writers like Edgar Gomez, Bushra Rehman, Omer Friedlander, Natasha Oladokun, Kyle Dillon Hertz, Mila Jaroneic, Amy Shearn, and Alexandra Watson. Check out our full class listings and come write with us!
📢 The Resort writing community is hosting its first IN-PERSON retreat for writers!
Come to Your Senses, facilitated by Resort founder Catherine LaSota, is designed to be an inspiring weekend in NYC on Nov 18-19, 2023 (no overnight accommodations included). For two days, get nourished and reconnect to your creativity with chef-prepared food, soothing acupuncture, art viewing, craft making, lots of generative writing prompts, and more, all in the beautiful plant-filled Resort headquarters. This retreat is open to all genres and experience levels and is limited to eight participants. Registration closes on November 3, 2023. Find out more and sign up here.
📢 Contributing editor is offering an online Music & Memoir Writing Workshop November 7th from 7-8:30 pm EST.
“Whether your goal is to write a personal essay, a book, or simply unlock your creativity, writers of all levels will have the opportunity to write and share their stories using music as a portal for inspiration. The goal is that participants will leave feeling empowered by their own stories regardless of whether they decide to share them and that the workshop will foster a love of storytelling.” All levels welcome.
$55 regular fee, $40 early registration—sign up by Oct 24th Register by emailing starinawrites@gmail.com. Zoom link provided after payment is received.
📢 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!
Thank you for so many delightful reads!
Thank you so much for mentioning Essay Camp!! 🖋⛺️❤️