The best first-person writing on the web, all in one place
Welcome back to Memoir Monday—a partnership between Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Longreads, Tin House, Granta, and Guernica. Time to cool down from that heat-wave weekend with some hot new non-fiction!
The Man with the Golden Airline Ticket
by Caroline Rothstein
I’m not saying Dad was a saint. Just that his AAirpass was about more than solipsistic travel. It allowed him to build relationships. Make connections. Form meaningful bonds. And it allowed other people to access the world like he did. That’s what Dad’s AAirpass and ultra-elite flying status yielded for him: lifelong bonds.
Inside Stories, Outside Books
by Joseph Osmundson
I wrote first for me. And then I edited for a reader I imagined. And then, with a reader in mind, I had to explain my impetus to write in the first place. Why air my dirty laundry, and his, and ours? So the story became also about writing the story, or turning pain into art. The book asks whether writing, and art, can heal, or at least be a step forward on that journey.
Trudging Down Death Road
by Tega Oghenechovwen
I weep, too. I shouldn’t have accepted it—the job in Chika’s school. If I hadn’t accepted it, Papa Chika wouldn’t have come to my house with Chika on the Suzuki. If he hadn’t come to my house with Chika on the Suzuki, then a single-minded, never-slowing, four-wheeled coffin of a Jeep wouldn’t have come anywhere near the Suzuki when they were returning home. I weep, too.
On Eve's Temptation and the Monsters We Make of Hungry Women
by Nina Coomes
I first began to think of Eve as a woman punished for hunger in college. At the time, I was a recovering Atheist relapsing into her own disordered eating patterns. One evening, I struck upon this epiphany while staring intensely through the crosshatch glass of my apartment’s oven, willing the verdant kabocha squash (lower calorie count than sweet potatoes) I’d placed there to roast faster.
Whole 60
by Laura Lippman
It has taken me more than 40 years, but the singular achievement of my life may be that if I am attacked by a serial killer on a deserted Lovers Lane, I almost certainly will have had dessert. Not cheesecake, because I don’t like cheesecake. Possibly some dark chocolate, preferably with nuts or caramel, or a scoop of Taharka ice cream, an outstanding Baltimore brand, or one of my own homemade blondies, from the Smitten Kitchen recipe.
Writers’ Resources
I’m teaching a 4-week online nonfiction seminar, “Writing Personal Essays with Substance” through Catapult in August—there are a few seats left!
Barrelhouse is open for craft workshop proposals for their fall conference in Pittsburgh, PA
The Emerging Writers Festival in Alexandria, VA is accepting fellowship applications until August 1
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