Some Great Personal Essays to Read this Week...
Plus: A free class at Narratively Academy, our partnership with Literary Liberation and new workshops there, 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.
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’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.
~Oh, hey: The crowd-sourced edition of Memoir Monday a few weeks ago was a hit. Thanks to those of you who suggested so many excellent essays. I’m going to make it a regular feature, like this: You are welcome, each week, to suggest to readers one essay you loved—***by someone other than you.~
Essays from partner publications…
God in a Pickup Truck
by Donna Morrissey
“A squall struck us broadside, and I bit back a cry of fright as we near fish-tailed over an embankment. Dad kept going. Clinging nervously to the door-handle, I leaned forward, straining to see through the white rain slamming against us. Dad switched the lights to high beam, then back down again, hunching forward as I was, his nose an inch from the windshield. Suddenly, the wipers stopped. Just stopped.”
Envy, Obsession, and Instagram: On My Mental Breakdown at an Esteemed Writing Conference
by Brittany Ackerman
“I want to be the type of wife, the type of writer who goes to a conference and comes home with stories galore, with writer pals forged forever and ever. I want to buy a t-shirt from the conference and wear it to bed. I want to wear it so often that the laundry makes it soft and special. I want to someday give the shirt to my daughter, maybe also a writer, who will also attend this conference and be like “Hey, my mom went here in 2021,” and everyone will remember me and tell tales of my greatness. But I am crumbling, here, now. I take a shower and discover that somehow a mosquito has bitten me right between my breasts.”
Beating Around the Bûche (de Nöel)
by
“Last December my mother, June, then 95, requested a Bûche de Noël. We are Jewish and celebrate neither Noël nor most Jewish holidays, but we never miss a nosh-up. Traditionally, when I was growing up, we gathered on Christmas in our Manhattan apartment for Szechuan East takeout, before catching a movie. I am now 58, and Szechuan East is long gone.”
My Spiritual Evolution
by Tao Lin
“I was born into American materialism in the 1980s. My Taiwanese parents weren’t religious or openly spiritual. When I was three, strapped into a child seat in my parents’ car, I repeatedly cried, ‘I don’t want to die!’ after my dad braked hard to avert an accident. At three, I seem to view death as a painful transition to a lonely oblivion – a belief I’d likely absorbed from TV. My parents didn’t mention death to me until I was six, when my mom’s dad died.”
Essays from around the web…
It’s Okay If You’re Not Ready
by A.J. Daulerio ()
“My first sober New Year’s Eve was in 2015. After almost two months in a Florida rehab, I finally returned to my Brooklyn apartment in early December. It was no longer an apartment, though — it was a museum of failure: every room had full ashtrays and thousands of dollars of dead plants. The outdoor deck had a rusty grill and a propane tank I had never filled. The expensive grill cover I bought for it was upside down a few feet away, filled with more cigarette butts. It was a big wet mess.”
“Babygirl” Starts a Conversation Every Gen X Woman Needs to Have
by
“I wasn’t planning to see Babygirl. The trailer made me uncomfortable in a way I couldn’t put my finger on, and after reading Glynnis MacNicol’s critique, I made up my mind to skip it, dismissing it as anti-feminist—a patriarchal fantasy of a woman with power being, quite literally, brought to her knees. But the awards buzz around Kidman’s performance, and the fact that the movie is written and directed by a woman, made me wonder if it was a mistake not to find out what the fuss was all about for myself.”
Momma's Love Itch
by Elizabeth Woody
“In the worst snowstorm in the High Mountain Desert of the Navajo Nation, your father and his brothers sat in the truck back under sheepskin. You are kicking away in my womb in the cab. Your uncle-in-law navigates blind in the snow as Aunt Bessie directs us on the rough unpaved roads. No signs anywhere. On every bump I scream. We get stuck over and over.”
The Sinner Amongst Us
by Michael Cannistraci
“Jesus didn’t save me from junior high school. I prayed fervently and asked the Holy Spirit to make me invisible in gym class and the hallways, but Satan always fanned the flames of humiliation…None of my friends had transferred to John Muir Junior High. In elementary school I’d played dodgeball with neighborhood friends. But they lived just on the other side of the wide, sunlit suburban street that divided our school district, and I began junior high with no tribe to call my own. I tentatively attempted to make new friends but got off to a bad start.”
Souls on Deck, Alright
by Susan Hata
“To light a lamp and sit on a boat was a small thing to do in a vast ocean. But to the crews sailing by it was not a small thing. How many presidents came and went in the century that sailors guarded the shoals? They weren’t the ones who sat anchored out on those boats. It was ordinary people with families needing to be fed. Men who trained their restless hands to weave ways to hold things. We still need to be those people for each other. Humans who go out on the dangerous waters rather than come in. Souled vessels keeping other souls safe, by radiating light.”
To Steal a Whale Bone
by Devon Fredericksen
“Encountering a whale, even a dead one, can summon a swell of awe. The sheer size of whales recalibrates our sense of scale, the blood vessels of an average blue whale so considerable a mature trout could swim through them. For me, the Long Beach whale dredged up a deep ache—maybe because whale populations have dwindled so considerably. Or maybe because it reminded me that someday I, too, will be gone.”
Maternity Ward. Psych Ward. Repeat.
by
“By design or otherwise, the air in the maternity ward felt warmer, the lights more dim, the halls more welcoming. Every few minutes, a gentle lullaby echoed quietly through the halls, signaling the birth of a new baby boy or baby girl, the start of a new life. The hushed repose of the maternity ward’s hallways stood in stark juxtaposition to the cold brightness and abrasive volume of the psych lockdown.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 Narratively Academy is kicking off 2025 with a free class…
This Wednesday, January 8th at 1pm ET, don’t miss The Keys to Writing Exceptional Creative Nonfiction. In this 60-minute seminar on Wednesday, January 8 at 1pm ET, Creative Nonfiction magazine founder Lee Gutkind will talk through what he’s learned over 30 years of editing and publishing the magazine.
📢 Call for Submissions for a Collaboration Between Memoir Land and Literary Liberation
Memoir Land and
will co-publish an essay series called “Writing A Liberatory Practice.” Rate: $150. For submissions guidelines, deadlines and more, visit Literary Liberation.📢 Write with Literary Liberation this January!
Check out Literary Liberation’s 2025 writing class schedule featuring new classes centered around removing creative blocks, telling your truth and embodiment. We now offer sliding scale! Our first workshop begins Jan 5th!
📢 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, NEW, the author’s Bluesky Handle.
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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Thanks, Sari!