Why Do They Call 13 A Baker's Dozen? (Related: That's How Many Essays Are In Today's Newsletter)
Welcome to Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter featuring the best personal essays from around the web, and a quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Granta, Guernica, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub, and Orion Magazine — plus many additional publications.
In addition to the weekly curation, there are now original personal essays under the heading of First Person Singular, for paying subscribers.
The latest original essay, published in the First Person Singular series in November, is “Listen, and You Will Hear Pain Speak” by Liz Iversen. The next original essay is coming this Wednesday.
***Submissions for First Person Singular are now PAUSED. An overwhelming number of new submissions have recently come in (I think because some websites have posted my submissions guidelines and email address?). There are way 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. (Welcome, Katie!)
Going forward, there will be specific submission periods, which I will announce here. You can find submissions guidelines and more on the “About” page, but, again, submissions are currently PAUSED.
In other news, recently, I launched a new video interview series for paying subscribers. Check out “How to Be Your Own Agent,” the latest video interview with Chloe Caldwell, author of four books including The Red Zone: A Love Story, published last April. Chloe and I talk about how she has acted as her own agent, for the most part, in publishing her books with indie presses.
Essays from partner publications…
Who Is the “Noted Writer” Buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery?
by Nicky Beer
“The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery seems nearly empty today—of the living, anyway. I’ve seen a few cars go by the paved curve that wraps around this section, but I’m the only pedestrian. There was no one to take notice of me as I made my way past the acres of plots marked MOTHER MOTHER MOTHER WIFE, carrying the two long-stemmed roses I’d bought in the market at Grand Central Station.”
Plastic Mothers
by Lauren John Joseph
“My mother lay on her back in the water, pink amid mountains of foam, as steamed as a dumpling, dictating her thoughts to me. I was sat on the loo, taking notes with a biro, a secretary, a familiar, aware that elsewhere children my age were at their school desks studying Living Things and Their Habitats, glad I was not among them.”
Snow
by Linda Hogan
“Much is unknown and unremembered by us. I was told by Navajo elders that a Forest Service representative, working on a ski area proposed on a sacred mountain near Flagstaff, asked, ‘Just where is the line where the sacred mountain ends?’ As if there were a map that could show where something ceases to be sacred.”
U.T.I. 101
by Corinne O’Shaughnessy
“I’m awake, because who can sleep with a UTI and a hidden tryst situation that may make me a puta in most of Mexico, but a liberated woman in some parts of the world. This doctor and I text with emojis and Please and Yes, I’ll let you know, but I still don’t know if I’ll let him know. I tell myself--Try. Try to embrace the idea of letting people know. ”
As a Black Woman, I'm Learning that Rest Is Resistance
by Michelle Chikaonda
“The emotional connection between self-worth and productivity is one I’ve struggled to break for years. Intellectually, I know that my value as a person is intrinsic regardless of how much or how little I have achieved on any given day. But I grew up constantly chased by the feeling that I had to prove myself worthy of the spaces I occupied . . . I decided early in my life that at least if I could universally win—conquer everything, in any space—people might grumble at my obnoxious determination but they couldn’t deny me my place in whatever system I was in: school, work, country, all of it. The downside of that kind of life theory, though, is that simply not winning quickly comes to feel like abject failure.”
Essays from around the web…
Are You Too Young to Write a Memoir?
by Jessica Gigot
“When I told my mother about my new book project, a departure from poetry, her first response was, ‘Aren’t you too young to be writing a memoir?’ The question was jarring. I was in my late thirties at the time and had been writing and publishing poetry for several years. Prior to that I had been a researcher, penning scientific articles for journals like The American Journal of Potato Science and The International Journal of Fruit Science. I was, by all accounts, ready to write a book.”
What My Father’s Martial Arts Classes Taught Me about Fighting Racism
by Adrian de Leon
“In Scarborough, in eastern Toronto, my family held Filipino martial arts classes from April 1999 to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of martial arts is to practise self-defence. According to one of my father’s many adages, “Self-defence means to protect yourself, to protect others around you, and to protect your opponent from committing a crime.” Self-defence, which comes out of practices like martial arts, is an ethical responsibility to keep yourself and others safe. What does self-defence mean, then, when the violence against your communities isn’t an acute condition but is as atmospheric as racism itself?”
I Read to My Baby About Abortion
by Hannah Matthews
“‘You grew in my belly,’ I tell him, among so many other things. ‘Your eyes are brown and green. Oh! Look at those toes. Let’s count them. You’re so beautiful. That’s my belly. Sometimes people have babies, and sometimes they don’t. Lots of different people have abortions. Families look all different kinds of ways. I love you and I’m so happy that you grew in my belly and that you’re here now.’”
To the Kid Who Drove Too Fast
by Sylvie Baggett
“I’m 15 when you’re pronounced dead. It’s just five days after Christmas. The knowledge radiates from the TV downstairs, carried up to my bedroom like vapor. My sister is upset—she’s older, and she knew you. On the news segment, I recognize a girl’s voice, metallic and transmitted through however many wires. She is—was?—your girlfriend, even though she’s my age. Sometimes I count her blonde highlights in science class and wonder why she wears your camouflage-patterned coat even though the classroom is stuffed with artificial heat. “If he had been wearing his seat belt and going the speed limit,” she says, “all of this could have been avoided.” The news segment ends. My parents shake their heads, change the channel.”
We Were Hungry
by Chris Dennis
“Afterward, too high to even speak, I cupped my hands under the ice machine. The cubes dripped between the gaps of my fingers as I walked — annihilated — out the door into the parking lot, where the sun bounced off the hoods of a dozen Ford Focuses.”
My Best Friend and I Would Go Clubbing and Dream of a Glamorous Destiny. But then She Died.
by Amy Fleming
“Alison and I were 15 when we decided to leave our school, fueled by that heedless, unstoppable force peculiar to teenagers. Any qualms we might have had about a wasted education were hushed by our impatience to bypass boys our own age, find true love and fulfil our glamorous destiny. We would write comic poems about these quests and each other, which showed at least some self-awareness about how gloriously lost we were. My mum – a teacher – knew that there was no rationalising with teenagers. She made the wise decision to keep me close and let things play out.”
Three Reflections on Trying to Get Pregnant in My 30s
by Mary Mathes
“Reflecting on these three incidents that have stuck in my memory, there is a common theme of optimism. Of concerns being raised and then downplayed. Of societal or familial norms and expectations being proven wrong, or outdated. Of reassurance that there was no need to worry, no ticking clocks or cliffs to be avoided, it was just media hype. And at first, staring at a Clearblue Digital test unambiguously displaying the word “Pregnant” one February morning a few months after turning 36, that optimism seemed well-placed.”
New Careers for Drug Dealers
by Debra Ryll
“I would not be caught dead in polyester. I never wore heels because I didn’t like to be taller than Nick, and the last time I’d worn pantyhose was when I smuggled hash from Morocco. I clasped and unclasped my hands nervously as the counselor studiously reviewed my resume. I left off drug and diamond smuggling, listing just salesclerk, waitress, and the stint in a mental hospital… ‘I was an employee, not a patient at the hospital,’ I joked.”
🚨Announcements (galore!):
📢 Through February 5th, Memoir Monday founder Lilly Dancyger is considering memoir and essay collection submissions for Barrel House. Per the Barrel House site: “We're interested in full-length memoirs and essay collections that combine personal narrative with... something else. That could be reportage, criticism, history, etc. We're especially interested in projects where the external element has something to do with pop culture, and projects that do something unexpected and original with form and structure.
📢 Lilly Dancyger also has some new workshop offerings: The Braided Essay, Memoir as Detective Novel, Essay Revision Intensive.
📢 Intimacy, Permission, & the Heart of the Story: A 4-week online workshop with award-winning memoirist Elissa Altman, via Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass. January 30th - February 24th.
What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? How do we navigate the minefield of story ownership and permission-to-write when crafting a narrative that involves others (which it inevitably will)? What makes a great memoir what it is versus simply a recollection of experience or an information dump? In this rigorous, generative, asynchronous online workshop, award-winning memoirist Elissa Altman will explore issues of curation, permission, and clarity in the crafting of memoir and creative nonfiction. Class is limited to fifteen attendees.
📢 Marlene Adelstein, author of National bestselling novel, Sophie Last Seen, and professional freelance editor of memoirs and novels, is now accepting new editorial clients. She offers developmental editing, critiques and coaching. Her authors have published with mainstream, small presses, and hybrid publishers. I highly recommend working with Marlene!
📢 Today is the last day of the latest submissions period for The Rumpus’s ENOUGH series. “We publish people who identify as women who have encountered rape culture or domestic violence,” says editor Katie Kosma.
📢 “Cross-Pollination: Poets Writing Memoir” On March 18th, poet and author Jessica Gigot will be leading this workshop at Hugo House in Seattle.
📢 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!
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