Your Monday Digest of Essays, Workshops, and Calls for Submissions...
Including workshops from Literary Liberation, Off Assignment, Margaret Juhae Lee, Paulette Perhach; and calls for submissions: essays on Sinéad O’Connor, infidelity, and 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 continue 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 ALL THIS and paying contributors, please consider becoming a paid subscriber…*
Memoir Land is on Substack Notes and BlueSky.
P.S. You might like an essay I wrote for my personal blog last week, about brushing up against Conde Nast excess back in the aughts...
Essays from partner publications…
I’d Prefer Not to Mind My Own Business
by Jean Marc Ah-Sen
“In my twenties, I rediscovered the gift of the gab and the spark of malicious energy it rode in on—only this time, instead of the new direction someone’s comb-over was facing or the distant Mauritian relation who might have accidentally married their second cousin, we pored over the details of grad students sleeping with their supervisors and the student groups peddling drugs to their attention-starved members.”
Searching for Meaning in What’s Been Broken and Repaired
by Katherine Larson
“According to Kyōto kintsugi practitioner Kiyokawa Hiroki, “The fractured part where kintsugi is applied becomes a new landscape in itself.” In this landscape, an artifact’s unique history is honored. “Our imperfections,” he says, “can be the birth of something new.” There are times that this metaphor seems almost like a living thing to her—a cipher to be captured and held close like a rare and lovely moth. And then there are times when she finds toilet paper piled up so high inside the toilet bowl it resembles a wedding cake, and her pockets are full of mangy gift-feathers and Band-Aid wrappers, and while she’s brushing the children’s teeth, there’s a voice inside of her that’s sobbing and little fragments of poetry burning in incandescent images that she can’t decipher, much less write down. There are times during the COVID-19 pandemic that she falls asleep in her clothes for the fourth night in a row.”
How I Survived the Toxic Cult of America’s Next Top Model
by Sarah Hartshorne
“A few days in, the shine had worn off a little, and the show started to feel like a cult, from the undisclosed filming locations in international waters to not being allowed to speak for days at a time. The language that they hammered into us over and over again urged us to be grateful for this opportunity. And the reality is… it was a cult. I got suckered into a cult.”
I Wanted to Watch Him Take His Last Breath—But She Said No
by Jen Shepherd
“My first marriage was a fail. His second marriage was a fail, although none of us would say it out loud. My relationship with my father was unique. Our closeness had always been envied by my friends, by most people really. It was not, however, envied by Wife Number Two. I sensed she disliked me from the start, that she was jealous. But this was never discussed in our family, though it was always the elephant in the room. The poor man was stuck in the middle, forever navigating the icy waters between the two of us. “Why can’t everyone just love each other?” he’d ask. But I couldn’t love someone who pulled him away from me. Who went out of her way to keep him all to herself like a special secret.”
Gay Marriage
by
“A hundred and four years later, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, far from San Francisco or Oakland or Paris, Deena’s and my mutual friend Candace tried to play our Michael Stein. She invited us both over for a poker game in El Dorado. I put on my red lipstick, but Deena didn’t show up. She had a pretty good excuse. Deena was burying her father back East. Doctors had given him a year to live (cancer), and he’d made it exactly 365 days. My mother, Eve, coincidentally, started hospice the day of that poker game, too. Doctors had given my mom a year to live (cancer), and she’d already made it three.”
A Supposedly Close Friend I Might Never See Again
by Audun Mortensen
“We must have been best friends throughout primary and secondary school, though we never said it aloud – that would have been unbearably awkward in our world. P was an only child who regularly invited me over after school and on weekends, and I’d walk in without knocking. He was tall, loud, white, social, unathletic, and was elected president of our senior class celebration. To many, I might have seemed far removed from him, yet we shaped each other, both in ways I recognized and in ways that I’m likely still unaware of and unable to fully understand. It’s nearly ten years since we last met.”
Essays from around the web…
Mark’s House Is Gone. Heather’s House Is Gone. Eddie’s House Is Gone.
by Joshuah Bearman
“There are places and then there are the places you grew up. I moved to Altadena in the ’80s as a child. My brother and I landed there with my father, after my parents went through a protracted, acrimonious divorce. (Courtroom. Murder. Very complicated.) In Altadena, my father raised me and my brother by himself. He was a newly hired physicist at the Jet Propulsion Lab, a massive NASA facility in the Arroyo Seco on the edge of town.”
All the Sundays: Lauren Aliza Green on Multigenerational Friendships
by Lauren Aliza
“For nonagenarians, Shirley and Walter get around. They drive to visit their son out of state; they fly abroad. When they leave, I take care of their plants and gather their mail. They bring me back tokens from their time away: a beautiful scarf made overseas, a whimsical pair of art-themed socks. I, too, am a traveler. When I went to Tokyo last winter, Walter asked me how I planned to communicate. “Have you heard of Google Translate?” I asked, pulling up the app to show them.”
The Silver Golden Goose Score: On Richard Stark and a Harlem Heist
by
“Bob and I quickly became friends, which in turn meant I had access to his vast knowledge and cultural artifacts. When he discovered my weakness for all things noir and pulp, he began schooling me on various entertainments I needed to check out including the 1986 BBC series The Singing Detective, the NYPD novels of Jerome Charyn and the texts of Brooklyn, N.Y. born crime writer Donald E. Westlake along with the writer’s more famous pseudonym Richard Stark. “I can’t believe you never read the Parker novels,” Bob sighed as he slid me a plastic bag stuffed with vintage paperbacks from his vast library. We were sitting on the 5th Avenue side of Rockefeller Center. “I had some duplicates, so I brought you a few.” Brother Bob was good in that way.”
Crossing Alone
by
“On school mornings my head-of-household mother left early to get to her classroom down the mountain in Santa Cruz. My job was to finish my breakfast, pack my lunch and dash across the highway in time to get the school bus. ‘You’re nine! A big girl! You can cross alone,’ she said. Long shadows of the redwoods cut across the highway. I glanced down the southbound lane. Maybe I didn’t look both ways? Cars in the northbound lane careened around a blind curve on this stretch. I dashed. How this happened I cannot imagine, but I was hit on my elbow. I didn’t fall.”
Bees, like people, need each other
by Linda Button
“When Linda Button's other half decided to become a beekeeper, he transformed their backyard. He cleared a space for the hives, lining it with rocks and building trellises with flowering vines to guide the bees away from the kids next door. This is who Peter is, a nurturer, she writes. It’s what drew me to him.”
Dear Jesus, Am I Broken Enough Yet?
by
“Self-criticism became a bid for divine attention. The more I reiterated my sins, the more aware I was of my need for forgiveness, which meant the more grateful I would be for salvation. ‘Today at church,’ I wrote, ‘Mark the Youth Pastor said we’re not fully dependent on your grace because we don’t understand how badly we need it. God, I do not know the depths of my own depravity!’ An internal voice grew strong in my mind, meticulous and insistent. The sin monitor had one job: surveillance and recordkeeping of my sins, to protect me from the risk of thinking I didn’t need Jesus.
Without realizing it, I had instrumentalized my self-criticism. Shame operated as a tool that allowed me to approach God correctly, as a humble recipient of undeserved grace. Self-abasement became my religious practice.”
Echoes of a Miracle
by Mina Marsow
“I went to my childhood synagogue for High Holiday services recently. It has been two decades since I last identified as a Hasid, yet I still find myself retracing my steps. Why did the kid who once loved this synagogue so much choose to leave it?”
Notes on My Grandpa's Senninbari and the In-Between of Art and Politics
by
“Every mark on Mel Tominaga’s senninbari, both handmade stitches and stains, evokes its past and makes this piece what it is now: that a mother would, in the imposed conditions of her time, marshal this kind of community care for her son; that a thousand people would take small but meaningful collective action to insist that this person’s life has value to them; that this son would then carry with him, through the war and over many arduous military campaigns, that object of care. This piece holds the tension between the beauty of acts of care and the systems of violence that necessitate them.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 “Nuts and Bolts” Seeking Sinéad O’Connor essays…
To celebrate the July launch of the anthology Nothing Compares to You: What Sinéad O'Connor Means to Us (One Signal), with contributions from notable essayists including Lidia Yuknavitch, Porochista Khakpour, Rayne Fisher-Quan, Megan Stielstra, and many more, anthology editors Sonya Huber and Martha Bayne will be running a series of additional essays about Sinead on the Substack "Nuts and Bolts." To celebrate and explore the legacy and impact of Sinéad O'Connor's music, protest, spirituality, and example of living her truths. Please send pieces of 2,000 words or fewer to sineadanthology@gmail.com, with a deadline of August 31, 2025. Pieces selected will appear in Summer 2025. All rights revert to the author after publication, and previously published essays are acceptable as long as the author holds the rights. Compensation for those chosen for publication will be one copy of the hardcover anthology.
📢 Geography of Joy: A Workshop from :
For the inquisitive and joy bound: Geography of Joy invites you to trace the sacred coordinates of your becoming. We're archaeologists of delight, mapping the places where we discovered our power, felt our beauty, found our sanctuary.
Four sessions. Personal joy-maps woven with community celebration. The corner store conversations. The park bench revelations. The dance floors that held our freedom.
We're not just writing stories—we're honoring the landscapes that shaped us, celebrating the communities that held us, resisting narratives that forget our joy.
Dates: Saturdays, July 19-September 6, 11a-12:30p ET. Price: $175. 10 seats available.
📢 "Writing the Book Proposal" with Off Assignment (Starts today!)
A book proposal must do the seemingly impossible: Pitch a project that doesn’t fully exist, while anchoring it in practical details like structure, audience, and timeline. It must function as sales document, project plan, and creative vision—all at once. How to craft such a thing? This five-week Masters’ Series course, led by essayist and journalist Raksha Vasudevan and featuring guest authors Elisa Gabbert, Anni Liu, Noelle Falcis-Math, and Lauren Markham, will unpack why proposals matter, how publishers evaluate them, and how this strange hybrid document can actually support the creative process rather than stifle it.
The course includes close readings, structured assignments, and sample proposals that led to book deals. By the end, students will have a working draft or detailed outline of their proposal (25–35 pages, not including sample chapters), and a deeper sense of how to shape it into something that excites agents, editors, and themselves. Open to writers at any stage, this course is designed to transform the proposal from a daunting publishing requirement into a generative, guiding force for the book to come. Scholarships are available, and asynchronous participation is welcome.
Dates: Mondays July 14 - August 11, 7-9 p.m. EST. Price: $400 (Memoir Monday readers can use code MEMOIR20 for 20% off)
📢 Eliciting Stories: how to talk to your loved ones about the past with Margaret Juhae Lee via Corporeal Writing
Workshop Sunday Aug. 17, 2025, 11 am to 1 pm (PST) over Zoom (a recording will be made available to all registrants for a limited period)
In this workshop, we will explore how to approach and speak to loved ones about the past, especially when painful memories are involved. Designed for writers in all genres, we will delve into creative approaches to opening up real (and imagined) conversations with family members, in particular, reticent elders—and even those who are no longer with us. A combination of writing exercises and practical advice from a seasoned journalist, this offering focuses on eliciting stories from those who might not want to remember, including ourselves.
📢 Call for Contributors to an Anthology about Infidelity
Tentative title: Stepping Out: Writings on Infidelity
Editors: Susan Ostrov Weisser, author of LOVELAND: A MEMOIR OF ROMANCE AND FICTION and Nan Bauer-Maglin, editor of GRAY LOVE and LOVING ARRANGEMENTS
This essay collection explores the enduring and complex issue of infidelity in romantic relationships, a topic that remains taboo and emotionally charged despite the evolving norms around love, commitment, and sexuality. The book will feature personal essays from those with direct or thoughtful insights into infidelity, whether as participants, victims, or observers. Analytic essays approaching the topic through psychological, sociological, historical, or literary lenses are welcomed. Reprints will be considered. Please send inquiries or a 1–2-page description to both Susan at weisser@adelphi.edu and Nan at Nan.Bauermaglin99@ret.gc.cuny.edu by August 31st. Be sure to include a short note about your previous writing, your profession, and any other relevant information about yourself.
📢 Paulette Perhach’s Harnessing ADHD’s Wild Horsepower program
If you’re a writer with ADHD, you know the struggles. You can now learn more about how to work with your mind to get your writing done with the upcoming class, Harnessing ADHD’s Wild Horsepower, taught by Paulette Perhach. Paulette has had 20 pieces in The New York Times, wrote two essays that went viral to millions of reader, and authored Welcome to the Writer’s Life, one of Poets & Writers’ Best Books for Writers. Her class will help you find community, a structure that works with your mind, and a system for finishing your work that will last you the rest of your writing career. Use the code OLDSTER to get $50 off.
Wednesdays, 12 - 2 p.m. EST Starts: July 23, 2025 Ends: Oct 15 Skip week: Aug 13
12 sessions total. $1,195.00
📢 Call for Submissions for a Collaboration Between Memoir Land and Literary Liberation
Memoir Land and Literary Liberation 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 Sari