Your Weekly Batch of Excellent Personal Essays...
Welcome to Memoir Land—a newsletter edited by
, now featuring three 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.
First Person Singular, featuring original personal essays. Recently I published “Abortion Abortion Abortion” by Natalie Beach, and “My Hysterectomy: A Love Story” by…me. A new essay is coming Wednesday.
(***Submissions for First Person Singular are now PAUSED. An overwhelming number of new submissions have come in. There are 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. *Going forward, there will be specific, limited submission periods, which I will announce here. You can find submissions guidelines and more on the “About” page, but, again, submissions are currently PAUSED.)
The Lit Lab, featuring interviews and essays on craft and publishing. It is primarily for paid subscribers. Recently I published, “Life (and Writing Career) After Going Viral,” an interview with Adult Drama author Natalie Beach. A new interview is coming soon.
Essays from partner publications…
From Music to Fiction: How Artistic Callings Shift Across Generations
by Keziah Weir
“One of my earliest memories is of being held upside down by my ankles on a fast-moving train. My captor was a clarinetist, a fact that didn’t matter or even register at the time; I was three years old and interested only in the fact he was willing to entertain me during a long day of travel. My parents were there, too. I can picture them sitting across from each other in the dining car, my dad’s bassoon case beside him, my mom’s flute beside her.”
I Learnt About Masculinity From a Colombian Telenovela
by Manuel Betancourt
“The series was an answer to an incongruous-sounding question: What would it mean to write a male-centered telenovela? To write a melodrama about men? What emerged was a bold offering, a series that took men’s inner lives seriously and dramatized that clichéd and endlessly recurring concept of the “crisis of masculinity.” Though perhaps, given its plural title, we should amend its take on such a theme. Maybe Hombres was a series about the crises of masculinity. Or better yet, about the crisis of masculinities.”
Mothercare
by Lynne Tillman
“Mother was a smart, resourceful, attractive, tactless, competitive and practical person. She was what was called a girl with promise, and if times were different, she might have fulfilled that promise. She had wanted to write and paint, but instead she married and had children. She worked for a while before marriage but as soon as my father was making good money, as they called it, she quit, fulfilling an American 1950s ideal – women whose husbands do well will stay at home with their children, content to be wives and mothers. Mother was not, and she was angry, and for that I don’t blame her.
Me, My Dad, and His Old Clothes
by Michael Lista
“I only wanted to wear what I’d seen him in when I was young, and turned down anything too new. To a party in the Plateau, I wore the dinner jacket I remembered him in at our front door, in the house I’d never see again but still dream about, as he and mum headed out for the night. I wore one of his work suits to a Wu-Tang show, baffling my buddies. I relaxed in what he used to relax in. There was the old Gap denim button-down, whitening at the elbows, and the old green Gap T-shirt, shearing fashionably along the seams, which I was afraid to wash for fear of tearing it. I watched Jeopardy! in the shabby peach sweatshirt he used to watch Jeopardy! in, wondering if I could beat him now.”
Animal Rescue
by Asha Dore
“The morning I found Gaspard and Vincent, I had just visited the punk house where the ex boyfriend had been staying. He had some things of mine that I couldn’t let him keep . . .”
Too Fucking Late For All That
by
“The one with both certain talents and an ability to self-destruct like nobody's business, David's daughter for sure. And how could I have missed it?”
Essays from around the web…
The Little Despairs of Despedidas
by Andrew Zubiri
“I came to accept that the circumstances behind a despedida—the parents’ salary that couldn’t make ends meet; a country that exports its people as seamen, domestic workers, and healthcare professionals; or a life one could only live fully elsewhere—or understandably its absence, comes from a certain kind of despair. We share felicitations to honor people facing the uncertainties of a foreign land, a fête before a leap of faith.”
I Intend To Treasure These Days: My Winter of Trying to Create A New Life
by Nat Cotterill
“We need stories in the winter more than we do in the summer, don’t we? This was just the kind of January evening for it, with the Wolf Moon rising. In Shakespeare’s time, the phrase ‘a winter's tale’ meant a tale borne of a dark, cold night of storytelling to while away the hours. It's a tale only to be half-believed, to be indulged in, like Father Christmas when you’re too old for him. This is the tale of my winter of wanting to create a new life. ”
Am I My Pen Name?
by Ben Goodwin
“A pen name is a strange thing…It’s a shield, it’s a personality, it’s a disguise, it’s freedom, it’s a limitation, and it’s a character. At times it’s all of those and none of them. In my case, it let me write erotica without worrying about someone from the rest of my life finding out about it and asking awkward questions. It also let my family avoid the same awkward situations.”
Venetian Red and Other Fates
by Dian Parker
“A brief history of the Venetian Red color, two paintings, and two abortions. The color permeates all our lives, deep into the past and deep into the psyche.”
When You Call His Mother from the Psych Unit
by Rebecca Grossman-Kahn
“You’ll be tempted to use speakerphone, to type notes as you talk or to relieve your hand from holding the phone. Don’t. Bring the receiver to your ear and feel your arm work to keep it there. His mother will notice the difference in the sound of your voice, in the proximity, in your attention.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 Until 30 July, applications are open for Writing Memoir: Unlocking Memory and Shaping Experience, the second offering from the Granta Writers’ Workshop. Tutor Midge Gillies, an educator with over twenty years of experience, will guide students through the creation of the first 10,000 words of a book-length memoir over a six-month period beginning in September. Applications are also open for an eight-week introduction to nature writing, tutored by Jessica J. Lee. One fully funded bursary place is available on each course in the Granta Writers’ Workshop.
📢
has some new workshops on offer! On Thursdays from 7/20 through 8/31 there’s The Braided Essay, a generative workshop. On 7/22, there’s Telling Shared Stories: Writing About Other People in Memoir, a one-day workshop. There are other options, too!📢 Writer and book coach Paul Zakrzewski interviews Brooklyn Book Doctor Joelle Hann (The Brooklyn Book Doctor) on the latest episode of The Book I Had to Write. They explore the changing face of Big 5 publishing, and bridging the gap between “the dream and the published book.”
The podcast is out with season 2, featuring interviews to help writers at every stage of the book-writing process. “This is the podcast I have to listen to! Exquisite storytelling and practical wisdom." – Listener Review.
📢 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!