Got a Fresh Batch of Stellar Personal Essays For You...
Welcome to Memoir Land—a newsletter 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. (Plus an associated quarterly reading series hosted by Lilly Dancyger.)
First Person Singular, featuring original personal essays. Recently I published “Tell Me, What Do You Think About You?” by
.(***Submissions for First Person Singular are now PAUSED. An overwhelming number of new submissions have recently 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, “How I Survive as Writer Through Public Speaking,” an essay by Edgar Gomez.
Essays from partner publications…
Who’s Afraid of the Gender Apocalypse?
by Katherine Packert Burke
“All of the recent gender apocalypse media is, ostensibly, feminist. Most of it does not know what to do with trans people. In Beukes’ Afterland, trans women are killed by the same plague that kills almost all men; in Newman’s The Men, everyone with a Y chromosome disappears at 2:14 on an August morning. References to these trans women, or to the trans men who survive, are fleeting and uncomplicated. But these are books about gender. They’re trying to reckon with something toxic in the structure of society. Why wouldn’t trans people be a part of that? What fears are they reckoning with that don’t include trans people?”
OCD Is Not a Joke
by Lisa Whittington-Hill
“I recently realized that I went three months without using my stove, reasoning that, if I never turned it on, then I didn’t have to worry about checking it. If food needed to be heated, I microwaved it or used boiling water from a kettle, or else I didn’t eat it at all. That lasted until I began to think about checking the microwave and kettle, at which point I switched to sandwiches and cereal. My OCD has cost me so many moments and opportunities.”
Romancing the Crone
by Diana Whitney
“My friend Erin loves the word “crone.” She’s ahead of me on the journey, having already celebrated her 50th eight years ago at a wild, multi-generational dance party at the Stone Church, grooving with friends in a badass jumpsuit, glitter on her cheeks, eyes unadorned, long red hair loose down her back. Erin is puzzled by my crone resistance, says she’s always found the archetype empowering. ”
Letting the Story Go: Field Notes from a Brutal Time
by Janet Steen
“In those first days I moved like a hobbled animal. Everything hurt. I had to somehow get from the chair that I was sitting in to the bathroom but how could I possibly do that. I would have to move, and to move meant feeling something, feeling my body, and it was unbearable to feel anything. I sat in the chair by the woodstove downstairs and hugged myself and bowed my head and I stayed that way for long periods of time.”
The University of Nigeria
by Ike Anya
“The Margaret Ekpo Refectory at the University of Nigeria is named after one of Nigeria’s few prominent female pre-independence nationalists. It sits at one side of Freedom Square, the gathering point for innumerable student demonstrations since my childhood, and is a fifteen-minute walk from our house on a tree-lined avenue where many professors live.”
Spell Me
by Bre’Anna Bivens
“Say my name, say my name suggests movement. Say my name, say my name a summon. Say. If you call me everything to get my affections, my response to you is just echous phantom acknowledgment to someone I don’t resonate with. From mouth to speak, mouth, speak — hope that it reaches me. My name. Hope that it reaches me.”
Essays from around the web…
I Made A Decision At 17 That Completely Changed My Body. I Kept It A Secret — Until Now.
by Amy Scheiner
“I shrunk back into my body. They couldn’t believe my parents would do that to me. They couldn’t believe I was that bad as to require weight loss surgery. They looked at me differently, as if their perception of me had changed.
But they don’t know the whole story.”
A Personal History of Breastfeeding
by Lacy Warner
“How much of the breastfeeding debate is really about the health of the child, and how much is about the control of women’s bodies and, moreover, about the performance of successful womanhood?”
This is For Me: Dear Mom
by Christina Vo
“When you passed away, I did not know you. You did not speak of your history—of your upbringing in Cambodia, of your life in Vietnam…As a kid, I would look through old black and white photos of you—the ones hidden, very much like your personal history, in a box in the basement…In those photos, you looked so alive, so beautiful, so different from the woman that I knew as my mother.”
How Motherhood Changed My Relationship to Fear
by Britany Robinson
“It’s important for her to understand that people can hurt her. But also that most people don't have that intention. I want her to know that she lives in a world that is deeply flawed and sometimes dangerous, but that we can do more to change that if we try to see the good worth fighting for: the sunsets; the dogs who will love us unconditionally, even when we don’t hike with them anymore; the friends who will help us find the lost dog.”
In the Sunrise Hour
by Cassie Mattheis
“When I am ten, I take down the photos of my sacred childhood morning hours and pretend that my aunt was always my mom. When I try to throw away these pictures and memories of the mother I lost, the mom I gained is the one to tell me no. She packs them away in a box instead, because she knows me better than I know myself.”
Remembering My Troubled Mother on Mother’s Day
by Dianne Jacob
“But I missed the food of home. Once I was far away, I wanted a taste of the familiar. I wanted that familiarity and recognition at the taste of a Chinese preserved plum or Kubbah Hamuth - dumplings cooked in a flavorful soup. Like my mother, I missed the dishes that told me who I was and where I came from.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 Looking to meet some writing goals and build your community this summer? Summer of Support is an 11-week, online group coaching program for writers of all genres and experiences, facilitated by Resort founder Catherine LaSota. This low cost program starts on June 5, 2023 and includes new mini workshops every week, plus live group coaching and Q&As with this star-studded guest list: K-Ming Chang, Matt Ortile, Greg Mania, Tajja Isen, Denne Michele Norris, and Leigh Stein. All live programs are recorded, so you don't have to miss a thing, even if you've got a busy schedule! A payment plan is available for sign up by May 24. More information and sign up here.
📢 From Writing Class Radio: Join our First Draft writing groups Tuesdays 12-1 (ET) and/or Thursdays 8-9 p.m. (ET). Participants will write to a prompt and share (if you want) what you wrote. Sign up to get the Zoom link. First session is free.
📢 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!