Some Great Personal Narratives to Dive Into this Week...
Plus: Workshops from Lilly Dancyger, Rae Pagliarulo, Rosie Schapp, and Reedsy; a women's writers' group upstate, and a call for submissions for our collaboration with Literary Liberation.
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’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.
*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 this and paying contributors, please consider becoming a paid subscriber…*
Memoir Land is on Substack Notes and BlueSky: @memoirland.bsky.social
Essays from partner publications…
The Line between Canada and the US Cuts through the Haskell Free Library
by
“I remember the line. It ran diagonal to the grain of the library’s hardwood floor. It escapes me whether the line was black paint or black electrical tape back in the ’80s and ’90s, but it’s tape today—scuffed and trodden upon, as though it were just some line to be stepped on that didn’t matter very much. Which it is. Or was, anyway.”
Losing My Dad in Installments
by
“My dad was cremated in Birkenstocks. He wanted his toes to breathe. The sandals were brown, size nine, shaped after his stride. Many years later, I picked out a pair—to find my steps without him. I can still smell him on me. Manuel, Mané, dad. I remember him well, or at least I think I do. My memories and home videos look the same; I don’t know if the footage is from my head or from the tape.”
To Adopt a Grandparent
by Josiah Roberts
“The bank declines her card in case of fraud, and I wait as she calls them to sort things out. She tells me afterward how she lacks patience, but from my experience, she’s quite the saint. When I say this, she reaches her hand softly up to my shoulder and looks at me squarely as if to tell me to listen carefully, ‘In every interaction there’s someone with power and someone without. If you are the latter, your two most important virtues are patience and persistence.’ For a second, I imagine what it would’ve been like had Nana had the brainpower to give me advice like this.”
Word Games
by
“I inherited my mother’s spirited, wavy ideas and intellectual curiosity, and my son has my father’s hyper-logical, Mensa-like puzzle brain. You’d think I’d know better than to play anagrams with a child whose father is in the elite leagues of Scrabble online and about to go on Jeopardy.”
Essays from around the web…
Barry & Diane: The truth about us, after all these years.
by
“I have never questioned my sexuality’s basic authority over my life (I was only afraid of the reaction of others). And when my romance with Diane began, I never questioned that its biological imperative was as strong in its heterosexuality as its opposite had been. When it happened, my initial response was ‘Who knew?’ I’m well aware that this part of my life has caused confusion and lots of speculation. A relationship that began with indifference, then exploded into a romance as natural to us as breathing, surprised us and everyone else. It really is the miracle of my life.”
Today’s Young People Need to Learn How to Be Punk
by John Cameron Mitchell
“‘Your homework is to stop canceling each other, find out about punk, and get laid while you’re at it,’ I told them. ‘Punk isn’t a hairstyle; it’s getting your friends together to make useful stories outside approved systems. And it’s still happening right now, all over the world.’ MAGA has adopted an authoritarian style of punk that disdains what Elon Musk calls our “greatest human weakness,” empathy. But O.G. punk, while equally free of trigger warnings, is constructive and caring.”
What makes me mad about AI in education
by
“So what you have are educators howling into the dark, frustrated at what they can no longer even imagine teaching. Or you have educators who have just given up, realizing that they can choose between selling out and burning out. These are the people who slam a low pass onto computer-produced work and save themselves the headache… Two years ago I published an essay in The Walrus in which I argued that people misunderstand the purpose of writing assignments in school. The aim is not to produce a product, it’s to learn how to formulate questions and think about their readers, to internalize a body of knowledge, and to develop their creative potential in the broadest sense”
Road Trip
by Michael Cannistraci
“We drifted through Mexico, driving down arid roads, past scrub brush and snake cactus. The gray sand foothills rolled for miles. Driving back from San Vincente, we pulled into Ensenada. It was late afternoon, around four, and we parked the car on a main street lined with cantinas and small bodegas. Scotty spoke a little Spanish, so he went into one of the bodegas and got us a six-pack of beer. We borrowed an opener from the store owner and sat on the curb, just relaxing, watching the locals walk past and soaking up the late-day sun. The honeyed sunlight glazed the street, and I was thinking how hip we were when the federales pulled up in military vehicles with their rifles drawn and circled us like we were fugitive serial killers.”
The Housemate
by
“Looking back, I think she was lonely even when we were housemates; I think she felt invisible, a feeling I later came to understand after packing on nearly fifty pounds myself. I wish I could tell Sandy, “I get it now,” but a thread of apprehension holds me back.”
My child was defiant from the start. I wouldn't have it any other way.
by
“Every eye roll and slammed door from my son made me feel powerless. Some parents began judging us, even discouraging their children from playing with mine, fearing he would be a bad influence. I had to ask myself some tough questions: Did I want to raise a minion who simply followed orders or an individual who could think for himself?”
My Mom, Julia Child and Me
by
“Recently, my sister passed along Mom’s beat-up copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I had not laid eyes on the book in decades — at least since my mother’s death in 1997. And yet, leafing through its stained pages, Mom and her cooking returned to me.”
What My Ancient Six-String Guitar Taught Me About Daily Writing Practice
by
“Why don’t I want to practice the guitar the way I never tire of prose revision? I’ve long told my students that daily writing fuels momentum and new ideas, minimizing writers’ block. Long breaks mean it will be harder to rebound, like sore muscles after an absence from the gym. So it follows that my guitar finger exercises, warm-ups, strumming patterns—all have to be repeated. Again. And again. When I feel like quitting, I remind myself how I’ve always emphasized to my students that they must hunker down in revision until they feel proud of their polished prose.”
I Was Devastated by the Loss of My Newborn Baby. This Unexpected TV Show Helped Me Feel Alive Again.
by Lisa Mazinas
“I've discovered that the all-consuming grief does pass. That doesn't mean that we love the person that we lost any less. Or that we forget what they meant to us. Yet, we can exist again in the world. The edges of our pain become less sharp, like a piece of sea glass tossed around in the surf. What was once jagged is now smooth.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 Apply by June 4 for the next session of 's Essay Collection Incubator! (July 19-Dec 6)
Generate, revise, and prepare your essay-collection (or memoir-in-essays) manuscript for submission—with guest authors and industry professionals, craft lectures and exercises, and multiple rounds of workshop feedback.
📢 What’s a Hermit Crab Doing in My Essay? Tuesday, 5/13 With at Hippocampus.
In this How-To Tuesday, we’ll talk about one of the most fun experimental forms of creative nonfiction: the hermit crab essay! These forms can also be an effective way to approach sensitive topics with levity and wit. Your essay could take the form of anything, from a recipe or personals ad to a corporate memo or a weather report! Think outside the box!
Together, in this session we will:
talk about what they are and how they work
look at great examples of hermit crab essays
start thinking about how to create our own
If you’ve always been curious about experimental forms creative nonfiction — or you just want a refresher! — this session will leave you inspired and ready to write.
📢 Life Writing: On Food & Drink, a 6-Week Remote/Online Workshop with , beginning May 20th
“When is a dinner more than a dinner? When it’s also a lens through which to see a world, a framework within which to consider ideas and relationships, even a platform from which to advocate for justice. When we write personal essays about food and drink, we are also telling the stories of our lives, and the lives of others. This is a creative nonfiction course, appropriate for essayists, memoirists, journalists— any writer who has ever considered the meaning of a meal.
In this six-week course, we will read and discuss works by Ciaran Carson, Jessica B. Harris, David Foster Wallace, Colson Whitehead and others, which, taken together, convey some sense of the breadth, depth, and creative range possible in writing about food and drink. Workshop discussions of students’ writing will be at the core of our two-hour sessions.” Via Irish Writers Centre.
📢 Reedsy’s “Writing a Bestselling Memoir” in 2025
Whether you’re writing a memoir for those near and dear to you or seeking commercial success, join us for a masterclass with memoir experts Amanda Nell Edgar and Rebecca van Laer. You’ll walk away with an understanding of the memoir market and what it takes to write a bestselling memoir in 2025.
In this packed double-session, you’ll learn about the internal and external elements you need to create a memoir with wide appeal – from finding your voice and narrative arc, to identifying your purpose and target audience, and selecting the publishing path that is right for you.
There will be a 15 minute break between sessions, plus a Q&A with the instructors at the end of the event.
Date: May 22nd, 2025 Time: 15:00 - 17:00 EST Cost: $49 Location: Online (gain access to Reedsy’s event space when you register)
📢 New Women’s Writers’ Group Forming at Inquiring Minds Bookstore in Saugerties, NY
📢 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.📢 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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Thank you for including “The Housemate” in your selection of Great Personal Narratives. I want to give a shout out to Mike Magnuson and his team at Sneaker Wave– an amazing group of editors!