Essays to Read this Week...
Plus calls for submissions, and workshops from Narratively Academy, Writing Our Lives, and Minda Honey.
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, 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 continue 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.
*While I have you…I could use some more support in the form of paid subscriptions. If I’ve featured your work or that of your publication’s contributors…if you’re a publicists whose clients I’ve regularly featured…if you just want to help me keep doing ALL THIS and paying contributors, please consider becoming a paid subscriber…*
📢 Thanks to everyone who chimed in on last-week’s crowd-sourced edition of Memoir Monday while I was away! You suggested so many great personal essays. Find it here:
Essays from partner publications…
If My Mom Was So Angry Around Me, I Must Have Been the Reason
by
“Like a bee, my mom kept her anger inside, always an instant away from discharging, but never discharging, until it did. It shot out in my direction, a venom-filled spear lodging under my skin. The anger was hers, but its management was mine. It was my responsibility to predict and avoid her breaking point.
A Missing Child of the 1980s, All Grown Up
by Paul C. Robb
“One morning in 1984, the school principal walked into the classroom where I taught fourth grade and whispered to me, “Scott is a missing child!” I looked at 9-year-old Scott, who was present in my class that day. I was quite aware what was implied. The term “missing child” had been seared into the nation’s psyche in the 1980s following a few high-profile cases, including the kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979. None of us at the school had any idea that Scott had been kidnapped from his own home just a few months before Patz.”
I Channelled My Inner Swamp Man for a 1,200-Mile Paddleboarding Trip
by Dan Rubinstein
“Hot, hungry, and exhausted, calves and fingers cramping, I study the shoreline, where a creek spills into the canal I am travelling along. A crumbling concrete wall and jagged sheet of rusty metal edge the far side of the drop. My exit. Glancing down at the map on my phone, which glows in the smoggy twilight of Utica, New York, on a humid July night, I see that my target is close. Very close.”
Final Visit with a Neighbor
by
“A sad if commonplace situation: an aged but sharp-witted man falls, breaks a hip, and his mind starts instantly to erode. Since he’d tripped and gone down in the kitchen the winter before, my friend’s past was sunk so deeply that when memories did crop up, they were always mere fragments of stories, true and otherwise. I had no way to distinguish. He was always a great one for tall tales, after all.”
Essays from around the web…
What John Updike Got Wrong About Katrina
by
“In November 2006, John Updike wrote about Polidori’s exhibition in the New York Review of Books. Updike spoke about how these images captured what he classified as a “black disaster,” which was a curious way to distance himself and white readers from identification with the storm and its aftermath. It jarred me to read his casual assumption about my neighborhood where Vietnamese, Cuban, and Black, but mostly white residents lived side by side. True, Polidori was shooting all over the city; but, as a former magazine factchecker, I wondered how this easy generalization slid into print.”
To Solve a Midlife Crisis, Do This
by
“My relationship with my husband had seen its fair share of ups and downs during our twenty-five years together, but it wasn't until my older daughter, the peacemaker, left for college that I realized how dysfunctional our family system had become. With her out of the house, the problem child (me!) was feeling excluded from the alliance between my younger daughter and my husband. I tried to ignore the knowing looks they gave each other when I walked into the room, or the synchronized eye rolls when I reminded my daughter of her curfew.”
I thought recovering from an eating disorder meant never slipping. I was wrong.
by
“Instead of framing my life as a binary of ‘sickness’ and ‘full recovery,’ I began to think a little differently about the space in between. Perhaps there was a way for that haunted middle space in which I lived—not quite sick, not quite healed—to be defined not by guilt but by growth.”
Happiness Is a Big, Ugly Sofa
by
“It wasn’t long after we moved in that the home I’d dreamed of for a decade was full of warmth and love and pet hair and a Roomba that ran at 1 p.m. on the dot. But the couch, which I’d envisioned would remain in a constant state of artful arrangement, was in a constant state of chaos.”
here's to summer (1994)
by Robert David Clark
“So here’s to summer. Here’s to white pelicans and yellow-headed blackbirds. To dogs that charged but didn’t bite. Here’s to wildflowers that grew along the path to Duck Lake as if they knew we were coming. To cars that gave us the right of way. And to those that didn’t. Here’s to young women on rollerblades with lovely legs and smiles who made us feel stronger. Here’s to summer, 1994, and the way things were, not how they should have been. And yes, here’s to friendship, and life, and that sense of immediacy placed on them both by the swift passage of time.”
My Own Personal Pond: In this tumultuous time in America, a changeless place offers reassurance
by
“This summer, in this tumultuous time in America, I want a body of water I can see the other side of. Sure, at my own personal pond, each day is subtly different from the day before, but by and large my pond doesn’t change. I find that reassuring. You always know where you stand in a pond.”
I'm The Mom Of A Trans Kid. Here's What I Want You To Know About The Minneapolis School Shooting.
by
“Vulnerable communities make for convenient scapegoats. Nothing new there. But the attacks on my [trans] son’s community have added thick, new layers to my fears about his safety. This is why the news from Minneapolis shook me to my core: the perpetrator at Annunciation Catholic School was reportedly a trans woman. Trans people and those of us who love them grieved the victims — and then sucked in our breath.”
My Saudade: He Was the Presence of Absence Made Flesh
by
“Finally, I understood the truth. This was the story of the way we weren’t, not the way we were. We’d shared a few dates and a friendship. The rest had been illusions, an adolescent crush, a shimmering mirage from sun and distance. I was in love with an idea, not a person. From the beginning, the evidence was clear. On the night we first slept together, Fernando asked me to promise to visit Brazil. He didn’t solicit a promise to let him show me his home country.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 At
Jasper “Jaz” Joyner, author of the Richard Wright Literary award-winning work, Pansy: A Black American Memoir, is leading Infusing Memoir Writing with Magical Realism, a 3-hour seminar at Narratively Academy, on Wednesday, September 17.
📢 ’s Writing for the Seasons: the Fall Equinox 9/22 7-9pm ET
A generative writing class.
When: September 22nd, 7-9pm ET
Where: Zoom
How much: $15
To register & ask questions: email writingourlivesworkshop@gmail.com
📢 ’s 6-Week Workshop for Black Women Writers 9/21-10/26
Join Minda Honey in a 6-week workshop built on the seminal anthology Black Women Writers at Work edited by Claudia Tate. This is a space for Black women writers to engage in craft discussions and community. Focusing on the first portion of the book, we will study the life and work of Claudia Tate, Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara and Gwendolyn Brooks (and work our way through the rest of the text in subsequent courses in the series). The last two sessions will be reserved for workshopping. This workshop will meet Sundays on Zoom, from Sept. 21st to Oct. 26th 1P to 3P ET. 7 spots remaining — reserve your spot today!
📢 Call for Submissions for “Freedom Ways,” a Collaboration Between Memoir Land and
Memoir Land and Literary Liberation co-publish an essay series that is now called “Freedom Ways.” Rate: $150. For submissions guidelines, deadlines and more, visit Literary Liberation. Here are the first two essays in the series:
📢 At : Paid Call for Submissions for Personal Essays by Humans About the Human Experience (No AI Writing Allowed)
We are looking for original, unpublished 1,000-2,500-word personal essays that explore transformative, powerful human experiences, especially those that are often kept secret or hidden.
We pay $50 for general essays. Deadline: September 30, 2025 (ET); earlier submissions have the best chance of acceptance.
Object-ives is a new column featuring rotating authors that will run on Fridays in our Stuff-ed section for flash nonfiction essays of 500-999 words about an object you own or have owned in the past. We pay $25 for Object-ives essays.
📢 “Nuts and Bolts” Seeking Sinéad O’Connor essays…
To celebrate the July launch of the anthology Nothing Compares to You: What Sinéad O'Connor Means to Us (One Signal), with contributions from notable essayists including Lidia Yuknavitch, Porochista Khakpour, Rayne Fisher-Quan, Megan Stielstra, and many more, anthology editors Sonya Huber and Martha Bayne will be running a series of additional essays about Sinead on the Substack "Nuts and Bolts." To celebrate and explore the legacy and impact of Sinéad O'Connor's music, protest, spirituality, and example of living her truths. Please send pieces of 2,000 words or fewer to sineadanthology@gmail.com, with a deadline of August 31, 2025. Pieces selected will appear in Summer 2025. All rights revert to the author after publication, and previously published essays are acceptable as long as the author holds the rights. Compensation for those chosen for publication will be one copy of the hardcover anthology.
📢 Call for Contributors to an Anthology about Infidelity
Tentative title: Stepping Out: Writings on Infidelity
Editors: Susan Ostrov Weisser, author of LOVELAND: A MEMOIR OF ROMANCE AND FICTION and Nan Bauer-Maglin, editor of GRAY LOVE and LOVING ARRANGEMENTS
This essay collection explores the enduring and complex issue of infidelity in romantic relationships, a topic that remains taboo and emotionally charged despite the evolving norms around love, commitment, and sexuality. The book will feature personal essays from those with direct or thoughtful insights into infidelity, whether as participants, victims, or observers. Analytic essays approaching the topic through psychological, sociological, historical, or literary lenses are welcomed. Reprints will be considered. Please send inquiries or a 1–2-page description to both Susan at weisser@adelphi.edu and Nan at Nan.Bauermaglin99@ret.gc.cuny.edu by August 31st. Be sure to include a short note about your previous writing, your profession, and any other relevant information about yourself.
📢 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.
Your name and Substack profile link, if you have one, so I can tag you in the post.
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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Oh I am so excited that My Own Personal Pond was selected for this always excellent roundup. True story about how the essay came to be published: I’d been taking little notes on it for weeks and on one of the last days I was at the pond, a man and a woman came to swim, and as we got to chatting, it turned out that they were the editors of my favorite newspaper in the world, The Provincetown Independent. I told them I might have something for them and le voila!
Thanks so much for including "Here's to Summer (1994)" in this week's list (and for including so many our of sneaker wave stories in Memoir Mondays). Robert Clark was a fine writer and a close friend of our Editor in Chief for many years, so this mention means a lot both to our Editor in Chief and to Robert Clark's family. We are so grateful for everything you have done for sneaker wave magazine :)