Memoir Monday Roundup 1/12/26
11 Great personal essays. PLUS: Workshops from SVWC; How I Learned; Off Assignment; Best American Essays; Ministry of Words, Literary Liberation. And a call for subs from Queer Love Project.
Happy New Year, and 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.
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…*
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Essays from Partner Publications…
Better Than the Spa: Why I Dive Into Iqaluit’s Icy Waters
By Laakkuluk Williamson
The purposeful walk into cold water is different from a sauna or spa experience, because it takes courage to enter the water without the cushioning of coming from or returning to a warm environment. I’m learning a new sense of control and release, a new understanding of sitting in discomfort, and a new way to flood my system with self-generated warmth.
No More Cows, an excerpt of Mega Milk
by Megan Milks
“Did the cows watch in judgment as we buried their bodies in ours? Did they strain in protest within the confines of their paralysis? Perhaps they preferred this new domestication to the lives they would have lived on a farm, popping out calves and pumping out milk. Perhaps they grasped it wasn’t their milk in our mouths. Perhaps they possessed no sentience.
How Back to the Future Made Me a Misfit Skateboarder
by Sean Mortimer
“If you’d stopped thirteen-year-old me—anxious and lacking confidence—before I entered the theater for Back to the Future and said that if I chose skateboarding I would have to run from cops and even get tackled and put in headlocks by the boys in blue, become a walking target for empty bottles and worse thrown by strangers, and have school guidance counselors laugh in my face, I would have said no thanks.”
Finding My Mom Again, On the Page
by SUSAN GREGG GILMORE
“My mother called herself a homemaker as so many women of her generation did. She raised four children—a boy and three girls. She starched my father’s shirts, even ironed his handkerchiefs. She cooked our meals. She sewed many of our clothes. She was patient, thorough, anxious, creative, studied, even though she never earned her college degree. But more than all of that, she was an artist.”
Essays from Around the Web…
Balthazar, 1997
by Heather Bursch
“I’d been working at Balthazar for a few months when Debra pulled me aside to tell me they knew I’d lied on my resume. Was I fired? I was not. Debra said, “You’re unusually nice to the customers, so we’re keeping you. The customers think your niceness is genuine. They love you.” Was I nicer than other people at the restaurant? I was. Was it genuine? That depends on what you mean by “genuine.” I’d kind of grown this personality, or I thought I had. Sometimes, you become the thing you’ve found you’re good at.”
My Dad is Homeless and I Just Keep Going to Sunglass Hut Like a Damn Fool
by Edgar Gomez
“What’s currently troubling me is that, a couple months ago, I found out that my dad started squatting in an abandoned house in Puerto Rico. I hadn’t heard from him in a while. He’d been in jail over the summer and lost his cellphone and had to wait for a new one from the government, and I was honestly already an emotional mess after two family deaths this year and hadn’t done enough to check in on him. When I eventually learned about his situation, the news was almost more confusing than it was shocking. He was doing what? Why? What can we do? Was he ok?”
The Humble Potato
by Diana Ruzova
“To tell you my story I have to start with the history of the potato because the history of the potato is the history of imperialism and poverty and perseverance. Thanks to 16th century Conquistadors, potatoes made their way across the Atlantic Ocean from their home in South America and soon were adopted across the European continent. And across Russia. That’s where I come in.”
Counting Down
by Susan Moldaw
“Now that two of my sons are engaged, planning weddings and families, I find myself counting down—wondering how many years I’ll have with future grandchildren before I die. If the first grandchild is born in two years and I live to the age of my mother, now ninety-five, I’ll have more years than my father had with my children. If I live to my father’s age, that will get me to my grandchild’s elementary and middle school years.”
When my mom died, I didn't know if I could sing for her even though I do it for a living
by Lauren DePino
“Somewhere along the path of letting go and becoming, I had decided to source my energy from somewhere else — from the mysterious, magical place where grief lives — the same place where awe lives, which is where my mom probably lives.”
Phantom Pains
by Rochelle L. Johnson
“The doctors spoke of these sensations as far-off possibilities. As if they might occur for a moment or cause a mild distraction one day. As if those doctors didn't quite believe in ghosts. Those doctors did not realize the power of apparitions. The phantoms came quickly and fiercely, and they stayed. They are with me still. They taught me something I dared only to hope in the weeks leading to my surgery: a body never forgets what it has been.”
How I Got My Groove Back at the Senior Center
by Laura Sturza
“At first, I couldn’t imagine that it would be as much fun to bust a move with a bunch of my fellow oldsters as it was when I went to clubs and checked out the hot guys who burned up the dance floor.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 Only 4 spots left!: Want to work on a personal essay with me in Vermont in April? Registration is open for the Southern Vermont Writers’ Conference, at which I am leading a workshop…
For the second time, I’ll be leading a personal essay writing workshop at The Southern Vermont Writers’ Conference. It was a great group last time. Maybe this time you’ll join us?
📢 All February, at Blaise Allysen Kearsley’s How I Learned: 28 x 20: Daily Prompts for Writing Super-Short Personal Essays in 20 Minutes
“28 X 20 is an invitation to dive into the daily rhythm of crafting short pieces. 28 days. 28 prompts. 28 micro-stories. 20 minutes each. No time to overthink it. No toe-dipping. Grab momentum, sharpen your skills, blow out your range, and end the month with a richer, more confident practice. Y'all. February is the shortest month. You can do this.”
For paid subscribers to How I Learned. (Save 25% on subscriptions now…)
📢 The Queer Love Project is seeking personal essays and creative nonfiction
THE QUEER LOVE PROJECT is a digital platform dedicated to exploring love and commitment among queer relationships, whether that’s romantic, platonic, among friends and found family, or with oneself.
We accept personal essays on a rolling basis that reveal heartbreaks, happiness, secrets, reflections on coming out, sexual encounters, and the contemporary realities of dating. The intersection of families and other versions of “love” all make sense as we investigate the question: “What do we know about love?” Your nonfiction piece should have a clear take away from the experience, so it’s not just an anecdote but shows that there was some growth or lesson learned. Think “Modern Love”—but only queer stories.
Along with our general call for submissions, we are also seeking essays that are focused on the theme: SECOND CHANCES. How do you define a second chance? What did you learn from a second chance? How did someone give you a second chance? The topic is open to your interpretation, and we look forward to reading what it means to you! Deadline: February 14th
📢 Register now for Winter 2026 workshops at Literary Liberation
Our Winter 2026 workshops are open! Accessibility matters to us. Our workshops have supported-rate seats automatically built in at 30% off—reserved for community members facing financial barriers. Can you afford the standard rate? We’d love for you to grab a regular seat instead, helping us keep these supported spots open for those who need them. Want to do even more? Choose our pay-it-forward option to sponsor access for others.
Sliding scale • First come, first served • All workshops recorded!
Also from Literary Liberation: Support NOURISH, a mutual aid project.
NOURISH is an ongoing mutual aid project created by Literary Liberation. I’m partnering with Lit Lib to help increase awareness and encourage sponsors to pledge support to community members who need help feeding their loved ones. The goal is to raise at least $25,000, and any amount helps. We want to send a minimum of $150 to each household in the form of grocery store gift cards.
To learn more about how it works and to support this cause, read here:
📢 From Best American Essays Editor Kim Dana Kupperman: The Art & Practice of the Essay Workshop
Guided by Best American Essays series editor and award-winning author Kim Dana Kupperman, open the doors to the art and practice of the essay through an immersive, generative process of reading to write and reading to re-vision.
Dates: Mar 24, 2026 – Apr 14, 2026 View session dates & times Levels: Beginner, Intermediate Workshop Fee: $450 Workshop Duration: 12 hours over 4 sessions (Tuesdays, 1-4 pm ET) Workshop Location: Online Class Size: 8
📢 Last Day to Sign Up for Off Assignment’s Generating the Personal Essay with Brian Benson
The hardest part of writing, often enough, is just getting started. And for those of us who write creative nonfiction, the problem is usually a glut, rather than a lack, of ideas. We essayists can choose to write about exactly everything we’ve ever done, thought, imagined, feared, regretted doing, celebrated not doing, etc. These limitless choices can be paralyzing. And whenever we’re feeling paralyzed, one of the best remedies is to simply reduce our choices. Constrain them. Channel them. Through a mix of close reading, craft talks, guided exercises, and weekly table reads of works-in-progress, we’ll generate reams of new writing, and we’ll work together to polish that writing via in-depth, strengths-based feedback. This six-week course, offered over Zoom and limited to 16 students, is all about overcoming decision fatigue, getting words on the page, and getting surprised by what we produce.
Dates: Mondays: January 12 - February 16 | 6 - 8:30 p.m. EST Price: $530 (Memoir Monday readers can use code MEMOIR20 for 20% off)
📢 Apply for R. O. Kwon, Fatimah Asghar, and Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ Ministry of Words Teaching Collective
The Ministry of Words is a teaching collective offering courses in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Fatimah Asghar and Ingrid Rojas Contreras are brilliant, award-winning writers and teachers whose work and minds I wildly admire, and I’ve learned so much from them for my own writing and teaching. They’re also excellent, kind instructors. Our work has been recognized by institutions including the Pulitzer, Lambda Literary, the National Book Awards, the Carol Shields Award, the National Book Critics Circle, and more. We’ll bring to The Ministry of Words what we’ve learned from teaching at places including Stanford University, Tin House, Sewanee, Community of Writers, Scripps College, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and elsewhere.
The classes will each be four months long, and will start 2/4—the first spring semester will focus on generating work, and the fall semester will be workshop-based (with help, for those who want it, on working toward publication). The application deadline is 1/20. You can sign up for one or both, and there are limited partial scholarships for writers of color. We’ll offer cross-disciplinary lectures open to all participants, as well as space for shared online writing sessions that bring together all 3 classes on the weeks we’re not meeting. In addition, we’ll have opportunities to form long-lasting community—many of our former students have been meeting regularly for years.
By putting this together, we wanted to create a structured place outside of academia for people to work on their writing and craft, a place that’s nurturing and community-fostering and generally supportive and fun. If you have any questions, we’d love to hear from you.
📢 Call for Submissions for “Freedom Ways,” a Collaboration Between Memoir Land and Literary Liberation
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:
📢 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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The best part of every single Monday. Thank you for all you do, Sari.
Another great line-up, Sari :) My reading is set for a few days :)