Personal Essay-Palooza...
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 “Abortion Abortion Abortion” by Natalie Beach, and “My Hysterectomy: A Love Story” by…me. A new essay is coming soon.
(***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, “From Memoir to Movie Script,” an interview with The Same River Twice author @Pam Mandel. New interviews and essays are coming soon.
Essays from partner publications…
Black Women Are Being Erased in Book Publishing
by Jennifer Baker
“On August 29th, 2022, after 19 months and 18 book acquisitions, I was informed that my position as senior editor at Amistad 'was no longer necessary.' (Imagine being told your role was unnecessary less than two years after being assured of the necessity to nurture more Black editors.) One of the first things I thought upon hearing those words was erasure. Erasure as colleagues reached out congratulating me on a new job. (They’d been told I was “leaving” and not that my company account had been disabled five minutes after logging off the virtual meeting in which I was let go). Erasure came to mind when my authors, and their agents, told me they hadn’t heard a word from anyone at the company until I publicly announced my departure two weeks later.”
Notes on Craft
by Natasha Calder
“When I started bouldering, I thought it would be a good way to get some exercise. I certainly wasn’t expecting to get a new perspective on writing. But then I got slightly obsessed, enough to start watching Reel Rock videos and listening to Climbing Gold, and I’ve been regularly struck by the similarity between how climbers and writers discuss their disciplines. We all have our projects, we prize the flow state, we value aesthetics – climbers being admired for their style as much as their power – and we struggle with the realities of making a living from our disparate crafts.”
Seven Swims: Omar El Akkad Chronicles a Life In Water
by Omar El Akkad
“It must have been the fall of 1988 or the winter of 1989. We were first-graders at a pool party: we lost our minds. For a few hours it was all cannonballs and sugar and squealing, and maybe somewhere on the periphery a grown-up in the employ of the embassy was watching to make sure none of us drowned, but they were invisible to us then, or invisible in my recollection now.”
A Dispatch of Smoke
by Eric Dean Wilson
“Wouldn’t it be nice to dress up as if for the city itself, to have a drink on the water? We called ahead to get a table. We invited a few friends. It’s not every day one descends into hell.”
Haircut, 2016
by Rebecca Moore
“I was turning 50 and I wanted to enter this new decade with dignity and on my own terms. I did not want to cling to some notion of beauty or youth. I got rid of all my uncomfortable shoes and padded, underwire bras. I still remember the thrill of my first heels in middle school, but by the time I had reached an age when it was appropriate to wear them, I didn’t want to. I was going to own 50, not feel diminished by it.”
Looking Back on My Montreal Kitchens
by Heather O'Neill
“I shut the kitchen window because there was a cat in heat outside and she was crying. She sounded like she was pleading for her life. It was hard to believe that she was just horny. You could always hear women begging not to be left in the summertime. It had nothing whatsoever to do with love; they were just terrified of being alone.”
Speaking to Men at Parties
by Emilia Copeland Titus
“There are moments when the light passes just right over the high point of someone’s cheekbone and I imagine my whole life as it would have been in a different universe, tracing the events of this imaginary life from that spot on their face to my death.”
Abortion Abortion Abortion
by Natalie Beach
“In this line of work, the failures stack up until your knees buckle. And so next time around, when Roe falls and we lose the legal right to an abortion, you will be prepared for the bad news, little good that will do.”
Essays from around the web…
Womb
by Kristina Kasparian
“I wonder if they gave her as hard a time as they gave me. Maybe a husbandless mother is more easily forgiven than a childless wife…The pressure feels heavy even when unspoken, like snow on a sleeping lake, spreading invisible fissures across the ice. I disappointed our never-give-up culture. We tried too few cycles and had too few miscarriages to pull the plug. I was too young to give up on my own eggs and too gifted to quit academia. Anything worth doing had to be done until the edge of forever.”
My Father Retired as an Investigator. Then He Began Investigating Our Family Tree.
by Will Dowd
“When my father retired as a federal investigator, we all chipped in to buy him a kayak. We assumed he’d spend his autumnal years at the center of a lake, fishing line rippling the water. But the kayak has been moored in the backyard, and unless you count the rain, it’s never touched water. Instead, my father set up an office in our unfinished basement and dedicated himself to a new case: tracing our family tree.”
Metallica Made Me a Mother
by Joy Victory
“When it came time to deliver my baby, I had planned for an absurdly ideal setting: The comforting glow of fake tea lights flickering in the background as Fleetwood Mac streamed from a wireless speaker by my hospital bed. Stevie Nicks would sing about gold dust women and players only loving you when they’re playing as my baby arrived and was handed to me like a gift, wrapped in a soft swaddle blanket and pink-or-blue cap.”
Do You Dream in English?
by Yi Xue
“Do you remember your dreams from last night? Do you dream in color or black and white? I am sure you have been asked questions like that. For me, I have also been asked, ‘Do you dream in English or Chinese?’ Hm, I was actually not sure, until I decided to sit down and write about my experiences.”
Fake Handbags
by Brian Truong
“Designer bags sat in open air atop wooden pedestals, secured only by a metal coil around the handle. Mom gingerly picked up a Fendi tote from its base as if it could sense her touch. “Feel the weight,” she said as she let it fall into my outstretched hands. It was heavier than it looked. I ran my hands over the cool, pebbled leather. We studied the clasp for marks and stitching, then clicked it open. We peered inside, counting the pockets, noting the branded lining, the tag’s shape and font, the metalware on the zippers. It was exhilarating to know the bag was worth nearly as much as our car. ”
Voce
by Nick Walker
“I walked in here as a man, confident and cocksure, put my things on stage, did my sound check, and loaded my own amp. It’s hot in this club; the moment I take that crushed purple velvet jacket off I am revealed, and none of the revelations are to my glory. These giant sacks of fat that sit in front of me are weighing me down, revealing a side of me that isn’t me. It’s like living inside a bubble, or inside skin that doesn’t fit. I used to say people were irritated with me ’cuz they could see my balls ’cuz they’re on my chest.”
🚨Announcements:
📢
has some new workshops on offer! On Thursdays from 7/20 through 8/31 there’s The Braided Essay, a generative workshop. On 7/22, there’s Telling Shared Stories: Writing About Other People in Memoir, a one-day workshop. There are other options, too!📢 Aaisha Bhuiyan, a Bangladeshi-American writer and former AAWW Open City fellow (2021), is launching an intimate writing workshop series. “I’ve been facilitating workshops since 2017 for different spaces including UNESCO, USOW, AAWW and the Met.” Bonus: the Memoir Monday community saves 10% with the Promo Code: MM10.
Re-imagining family stories
Virtual, July 16th 12-2pm ET
This virtual creative writing workshop will take a closer look at individual family systems, allow room for deep reflection and have an option to imagine alternative stories with inspired characters.
Write Outside
Central Park, NY, July 30th 3-6pm ET
This in-person writing workshop focuses on using environment and mapping tools to reflect on the self. I will draw from my learnings in grad school, where we leaned heavily on intrapersonal dynamics, and my experience with meditations to guide writing prompts.
📢 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!