Too Many Great Essays to Count...
PLUS: A free grantwriting workshop from Grant Consultings, storytelling events and more from Literary Liberation, and a fundraiser for Raising Mothers in the announcements at the bottom.
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, Guernica, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub, Orion Magazine, The Walrus, and Electric Literature. Below is this week’s curation.
First Person Singular, featuring original personal essays. Recently I published “Last Wishes” by
, guest-edited by .The Lit Lab, featuring interviews and essays on craft and publishing. There are also week writing prompts and other exercises from, ahem, a New York Times bestselling ghostwriter of memoirs (that’s me) for paid subscribers. Most recently I posted “The Prompt-O-Matic #26,” “The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #27: Gina DeMillo Wagner” and “The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #28: Rachel Somerstein.”
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. Recently I published “Washington Square” by
. A piece by is coming on Weds.
*Please note: I am no longer posting about these roundups on X/Twitter.*
Essays from partner publications…
Holding the Line
by Rosanna Xia
“I’ve covered the aftermath of so many floods. Documented the repeated attempts to rebuild. I’ve seen waves crest and surge over a sea wall like it was nothing and sweep eight people off their feet in one blow.”
My Brief but Fruitful Career as a Smut Peddler
by Christina Myers
“I was a peddler of smut, a purveyor of sex, a teller of tawdry tales. And I was damn good at it. I’ve never added this to my LinkedIn profile, which is a shame, but it’s tough to find the right words to describe this role, wedging it somewhere in between ‘staff reporter’ and ‘school volunteer.’”
Frankenstein of Migration
by Christina Cooke
“My wife and I, we stayed. We had somewhere else we could’ve gone but we didn’t. Leaving now would be irresponsible, we told ourselves while thinking of the City’s high viral load, of specks of dark sickness hitching a ride on the hems of our shirts. What about all the strangers upstate who might’ve been fine, I wondered, who maybe could’ve survived if it hadn’t been for us? It wasn’t empathy I felt then but terror. I was frightened by the possibility of blame.”
In Memoiriam: Lesley Lenore Pitts
by
“The afternoon in 1991 when I met Lesley Lenore Pitts, the love of my life, I was only 28, but had already damn near given up on love. Though I was young, I felt weary beyond my years, thanks to a few failed relationships throughout the 1980s. These were perfect conditions, in hindsight, for Cupid to step in and take me by surprise.”
Essays from around the web…
The Tail End
by
“The cat is very sick, so a veterinarian whom I have never met is coming over to kill her. She arrives at 10 A.M., which feels wrong. Murders and breakups, these are not interactions for God’s hours. On the phone the afternoon before, she tells me of her pastoral childhood in New Zealand. Her mother once put a cat down by feeding it Valium…’Like, a local cat?’…’No, our cat. So, very local.’”
Was I Capable of Killing My Cat for Bad Behavior?
by
“I had to choose between an enraged middle-aged cat who hated me versus an adorable kitten who loved me or at least acted that way. The more I thought about it, the more natural it seemed to … end the misery. I couldn’t believe what I was thinking of doing: taking Suki to the ASPCA, where she would almost certainly die. I remember saying to someone, ‘If a person acted toward me the way that Suki has, I wouldn’t tolerate them in my home either.’ Of course the person said, ‘Yes, but you wouldn’t have them killed.’”
Strawberry Lipgloss
by Marisa Cadena
“Did he have his guitar with him? The one he would later carve my initials into? I don’t remember where the first kiss happened, just the lightning—my chest unable to contain my hammering heart beating against my ribcage, my lungs not big enough to hold his breath that I inhaled as if my life depended on it—and the taste of my strawberry lip gloss.”
Who Tends the Brokenhearted?
by
“My mind was trying to recover from surgery and make sense of the weeks of complications that led to us losing our daughter at 21 weeks gestation. I also felt the impulse to be a dutiful writer and document everything in the moment. Even in life-shattering grief, I still wanted a project to drag along with me.”
What Do You Know About Love
by
“Now I realized, despite their best intentions, it set up an unrealistic expectation. We all had that same romantic notion embedded in us that we should find someone who we loved while young and stick by their side for the rest of our lives. If I’d been allowed to legally marry a man when I was in my twenties, I’d probably made the same choice. That’s what I wanted with Brandon. Thankfully, I was spared that mistake.”
Dungeons & Dragons is 50. Almost as many years ago, it saved my life.
by Ethan Gilsdorf
“I discovered the transmogrifying portal of D&D in 1979, when I was 11, the same year my mother returned from the hospital after an aneurysm ruptured in her brain at age 38. The game became a safe haven — the place where I could achieve feats and victories beyond my reach in real life.”
Strangers and Kin
by Lisa Grunberger
“As an adopted gal, I can’t say I have not wondered who I resemble. I can see my eyebrows on Leon’s face as he eats his crab cakes. When I was mistaken for my parents’ biological daughter which was all the time, for I looked like their child, my mother would say, ‘People see what they want to see.’ My father would say, ‘Of course you look like me, you’re my daughter, bubbeleh.’…Now I have met my birth father, the Y chromosome that contributed half of my DNA. Strange how much power we give to this imprint, the biological one. I am here at Thalia’s with my half-brother and my birth father only because a genealogy test told me we were related.”
Seven Minutes to Grieve with ‘Bluey’
by Caitlin Flanigan
“In the Apple TV+ show, Shrinking, Harrison Ford’s character recommends a grieving daughter set a timer, pick a sad song, and feel deeply for 15 minutes. I could and should try this, but keep forgetting. What I don’t forget? My own kid’s screen time — he wouldn’t let me. That’s how I found myself one weekend watching the “Bluey” episode, ‘Relax.’”
Gold Medal Uterus
by Ellen Cliggott
“I scheduled my hysterectomy so that I could sit at home for two weeks and watch every minute of my favorite sporting event while I recovered. After the procedure, I thanked my doctor and told her I was off to spend two weeks enjoying the Olympics, like a great vacation, except with slits cut into my abdomen and horrible pain when I sneezed.”
To the Señora on the First Floor
by Evelyn Fok
“You had lived through the great earthquakes of 1957 and 1985 and 2017, and now you took your time reaching the ground while our street shifted and staggered beneath our feet. You were 101 years old, you told me later, and I marvelled at the physical shape you were in: thin but not frail, slightly hunched but not stooped. You had your long silvery hair gathered in a braid. Elaborate cardigans hung on your shoulders, dabbed rouge on your withered lips. And I thought there was even a smudge of foundation on your high cheekbones. You must have been beautiful in your day; you still were. Another time, you told me you were 89.”
Skin in the Game
by Nina B. Lichtenstein
“Holding the baby’s tummy with one hand I bend to pick up the dirty diaper from the floor; my fingers accidentally slip into the now cold and wet poop. Benya begins to squirm, I begin to sweat again, and I hear his brothers squabble in the den, accompanied by Big Bird and Cookie Monster singing their fucking happy song on TV. The dogs bark at something outside—their acute hearing their biggest (pain-in-the-ass) asset. Waves of nausea provoked by the stench of my own unbathed pits and shit-covered fingers roll through me, at the same time as a deep longing for my family in Norway overwhelms me.”
Trying To Do This In My Late 40s Is A Heartbreaking Process
by
“Every time my boyfriend and I aren’t picked, I wonder if the birth parents — often more than two decades younger than we — see us as less worthy, less agile, less competent because of our ages. I hope to convey that I’m actually at the peak of my maternal instincts, putting them to use by planning our household’s meals, making sure my boyfriend is hydrated and rested, being a caretaker for my elderly mother, and, thanks to walking five to 10 miles a day, I’m in better physical shape than I’ve ever been.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 Free Grant Strategies Workshop for Artists Friday, August 23rd
Grant Consultings, is hosting a free virtual workshop, Grant Strategy for Artists, August 23rd, Friday at noon. With this free webinar, "Grant Strategies for Artists" grant consultants, educators, business owners, and artists Alison Erazmus and Sari Caine, will demystify the grant process (we'll also touch on applying to residencies too). Artists can come prepared to create or edit a Mission statement, define values and goals, learn how to search for grants, understand terms like "eligibility" and "criteria," and leave feeling more confident with tools under your belt.
📢 Literary Liberation is hosting their first virtual KIN KEEPERS Live Storytelling on Saturday, August 17 at 10AM EST.
KIN KEEPERS is a live storytelling series gathering emerging and established voices to make the invisible, visible.
FIRST GENERATION & FIRST BORN DAUGHTERS takes a look at what it’s like to navigate two cultures and/or the heft of being the first born daughter. Registration is required. Donations help to build the workshop scholarship fund.
Here’s a rundown of their August events!
📢 Raising Mothers celebrates their 9th year with an annual FUND-Raising Mothers fundraiser.
This year, the first goal is to reach 100 annual subscribers to help build and increase their monthly contributor budget. Help them get there!
📢 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.Nope…not doing Twitter anymore! Read and share the newsletter to find out/spread the word about whose pieces are featured.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.