Eleven Personal Narratives to Read this Week...
Plus: My guest-speaking in Paulette Perhach's 'Posing Naked on the Page' workshop 11/13, Narratively's 2024 Memoir Prize, a Narratively Academy Workshop in reported essays, and more...
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. Recently I published
The Lit Lab, featuring interviews 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) for paid subscribers. Most recently I posted “The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #51: Jonathan Lerner” “The Prompt-O-Matic #39,” and “The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #52: Jennifer Lunden”.
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 “Elegy in Times Square,” by Lily Burana.
Essays from partner publications…
Adrift in the South
by Xiao Hai, translated by Tony Hao
“I walk the alleyways of an urban village in Beijing, gloomy in a late-afternoon thunderstorm. My skin is sticky in the moist air. I recently turned thirty-two, and I’ve been drifting around the country for sixteen years, sixteen dreamlike years that began in China’s land of milk and honey in the early 2000s, the southern border city of Shenzhen. A growing city where tropical steam would evaporate from the asphalt roads and fill my trouser legs, soaking me through to my skin. The heat would snatch at every strand of my hair, and remembering it now pulls me against the current of time, hauls me back to the roaring years of Shenzhen, to my coming of age, the summer I turned fifteen.”
Waiting for War in Lebanon
by Vera Kachouh
“I faced nothingness. A huge blue expanse stretched before me. The sea was so salty, so buoyant, that I didn’t need to swim. I could release all physical effort and let it carry me. I did, for a time, though I wasn’t brave. I stayed within earshot, going just beyond the point where my toes could touch…What word could I give to what I felt then other than love? The sea took my body and threatened to never give it back. Or maybe it was the other way around: A part of me broke off there, in the Mediterranean. All I could do was leave it behind and swim to shore."”
Leftover Love
by Chris J. Rice
“Someone who was helpful, loving and understanding. Dorothy had all those qualities and more. We spent the next eight years attending the opera together, meeting for lunch, texting and talking on the phone. All the leftover love I had to give to a mother, I have given to my friend Dorothy.”
I Can’t Buy a Home, So I’m Fixing up a Decrepit Farmhouse
by Emily Latimer
“I looked at the farmhouse and thought: Hey, here’s a perfectly good home. Sure, there are holes in the floor, raccoons in the crawl space, and water coming in through the roof. But what other choice did I have? I had been living with my parents for three years already, and I didn’t want to continue doing that into my thirties.”
Essays from around the web…
Coping Lessons From My Uncle Howie
by Sara Eckel
“Howie lost his ability to summon words like 'sugar' and 'Florida,' but he retained something far more important. He never lost his ability to see people. The clerks and cashiers we met on his daily errands were not anonymous servers—they were experts, and they deserved his deference. Not because he was frail and a little fuzzy, but because they were working hard and they knew things—about the best cut of meat, the location of the gardening tools, the proper placement of canned goods in a grocery bag.”
Finding Hope in Hopelessness
by Amil Niazi
“The last few days have made the future feel bleak, uncertain, scary, and chaotic. I’m really not sure how to move forward or how to do anything really…But I have these three kids and despite all of my hurt, this mountain of pain that seems to be sitting on my chest, I still have to go on. There are bums and noses to wipe, fruit to cut in tiny pieces, and sandwiches to make that will never get eaten. No matter how badly I want to give up or lie down, I am their shelter, I am their weather vane, I am the levee and I have to keep the storm at bay for them, for me, for us.”
Steal Smoked Fish
by Keegan Lawler
“We talked about how they’d been, what they were up to, the light kinds of things from near-strangers that weddings seem to often elicit. Will was about to leave the Marines, his four years were nearly up. Lee hung cabinets in the houses being built on the disappearing prairies between our hometowns. I had lived in Western Washington for a year and was about to get married on a lavender farm out there. There were no attempts to exhume what had been laid to rest, no attempts to blow out hot breath on cool embers, and by nightfall we all went our separate ways.”
My Inner Critic in Open Water: Is Swimming a Catalina Channel Relay Enough?
by Pia Hinckle
“Crossing this stretch of water has been a secret bucket list dream for me since I started seriously swimming in open water a decade ago, at age 49. Secret because back then, I hardly dared to imagine what my body and mind were capable of, so shaky was my confidence in myself as an athlete and as a person who can admit a goal, prepare, and attempt it. Most of my life I’ve been too fearful of failure and disappointment to declare what I really want, even to myself…Now, here I am, standing in my suit, cap and goggles staring at the inky ocean at 3am.”
Ghost in the Sewing Machine
by Julie Smith Schneider
“Alone in my studio late one Monday night, as I scribbled in my sketchbook, I detected movement out of the corner of my eye. The bright blue cloth cloaking the vintage cast-iron sewing machine rustled, like a restless creature moved within. My breath snagged in my chest. What could possibly be under there?”
Hummingbird Heart
by Eric Boyd
“Pick up the bird in one hand and place the straw—a drop of sugar water glistening at the end like a white opal—near its beak. The bird’s eyes will weakly blink and its tongue will dart out so quickly you won’t be sure if that’s what you saw. A moment will pass. Is that it? It’s not going to drink any more? Suddenly, its eyes will open wide and its tongue will flick out several more times. You’re doing it. You’re actually fucking doing it.”
Troubled Sleep
by Brandon Taylor
“In August 2009, I went away to college, and in December 2009, I came home for winter break, and suddenly, I couldn’t breathe in my parents’ trailer. I couldn’t breathe in my grandparents’ house. I couldn’t breathe outside. Everywhere I went, I sneezed and coughed. My eyes filled with tears and stung so bad. Everything burned and hurt. Even my skin grew sensitive and hot to the touch, as if something in the air were stinging me over and over, everywhere. I had come into contact with something abrasive, and that something was the air itself.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 This Weds, 11/13: I’ll Be Guest Speaking in this Workshop: Dive Deep into Personal Essay Writing with "Posing Naked on the Page"
Ready to bare your soul through words? Consider the upcoming "Posing Naked on the Page" class, led by Paulette Perhach, an essayist who's had two essays go viral to more than 2 million readers each.
This intensive 12-week course will transform your approach to personal essay writing, helping you craft raw, authentic pieces that resonate with readers.
Throughout the course, you'll learn to:
Overcome writer's block and self-doubt
Develop your unique voice and perspective
Master the art of vulnerable, impactful storytelling
Whether you're a seasoned writer or just starting your journey, this class will push you to dive deeper into the emotional work of essay. Use code “PosingNakedWithSari” at checkout for $50 off the course fee!
Spots are limited to 20 students, so reserve yours today!
📢 Narratively’s 2024 Memoir Prize…
Narratively is accepting submissions for their 2024 Memoir Prize. They are looking for “revealing and emotional first-person nonfiction narratives from unique and overlooked points of view." The guest judge is New York Times bestselling memoirist Jami Attenberg. One Grand Prize Winner will receive $3,000, and the two finalists will receive $1,000 each. There is a $20 entry fee and the deadline to submit is December 19, 2024.
📢 Narratively Academy’s Focus on Craft: Reporting the Personal Essay—Wednesday, November 20.
In this intensive 90-minute seminar, Kristina Gaddy — author, essayist and editor at the literary journal true — will lead students in exploring how top nonfiction essayists use sourcing and reporting in their work. We’ll take a close look at a variety of personal essay forms (from traditional memoir to experimental), and dive into how personal reporting (such as family interviews) and academic research can help take essays to the next level. Sign up here.
📢 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.
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Thrilled for Words & Water to be included in this list of great reads. Thank you! 😊 🙏🐬
Thank you for the shout out for Leftover Love!