Your Weekly Dose of Compelling Personal Narrative...
Welcome to Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter and a quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Granta, Guernica, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub — and now many additional publications.
*Soon, there’ll occasionally be original work as well, likely behind a paywall—the more subscription money that’s raised, the more original pieces we can publish. So, if you haven’t become a paid subscriber, please consider becoming one!
Read about our expansion plans here. Subscribe and follow us on Twitter at @memoirmonday for updates!
Essays from partner publications…
The Flowers You Left Us
by Annelise Jolley
"Looking at the two stems housed in a water glass on my kitchen table, it strikes me that “in the ground” means opposite things for flowers and people. As long as a flower remains in the ground, it lives."
How to Apply Makeup
by Nicole Shawan Junior
"I dig at my face, my chest, my arms, and my back as deep as I can. I squeeze every swollen mound, no matter how full or slight. When I finish, I curse myself for how ugly I am, for how ugly I make myself, for my open sores, for the blemishes that pock my entire body, for the money I spend every month on makeup, for picking without washing my hands first."
Reading Myself Into, and Beyond, Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Pek
“That summer I fell in love with a college friend who was also in London on another program. She was from Shanghai, and possessed a kindness, and a poise, that reminded me of my high school best friend, although that only struck me afterward. I battled my growing feelings as valiantly as Darcy does his for Elizabeth, then gave up, with a mixture of relief and dread, and declared it. She was as floored as Elizabeth is by the news—not because she found me hateful, thankfully, but because, she told me, she didn’t know what to think; the possibility of such an affection had never occurred to her.”
Who Actually Wins (and Keeps) the HGTV Dream Home?
by Amanda Paige Inman
“If you think about something often and hard enough, it eventually calcifies into a belief that it is already yours. We actually believed those walls would house us. We called our cousins telling them that we would host them for the holidays, and that our new house had enough beds that no one would need to sleep on the floor. I cried in front of the television when the screen showed the view from the living room: rolls of heaving earth covered in the strong trees I saw in children’s books—not the melted trees of Florida, reaching out of black brackish water, dripping in Spanish moss. At night, I focused my eyes on three bubbles on my popcorn ceiling and pictured the Dream Home in my mind: its walls of layered stones, the wooden columns in the ceiling.”
The Trip to Rose Cottage
by Cal Flyn
“When he drops me on the island, Hamish the boatman has a last piece of advice: ‘Stay in the house at night,’ he says, ‘and lock the door behind you.’”
Keeping Up With Dad
By Jane Ratcliffe
“‘Wait up, Dad,’ I call as we venture down the steep meandering cobbled lanes of Clovelly, a historical fishing village, once owned by the wife of William the Conqueror and perched precariously on the edge of a sea cliff…The cobblestones are large and shiny. The decline audacious. Every few feet, the path swerves sharply, and I find myself gripping the stone wall as I make my way forward. Ahead of me, my dad takes the corner with ease, passing other pedestrians also headed to the breathtaking cove below.”
Essays from around the web…
The Numbers in My Phone
By sheena d.
“I tried for a long time not to have a smart phone. I embraced printing out and drawing maps when I traveled and having to talk to a human to find out if the barber shop was open. Reading books when my mind was empty. It felt good to judge others who spent their bus rides hunched over, scrolling. To worry about their spines but think my own would be fine. Surely I was superior; I noticed faces and sunsets and the occasional dollar bill on the ground. I liked it when I moved to Chicago in 2013 and, over sushi, a woman I met on OkCupid, asked “What are you, a spy? Criminal? Why do you have a flip phone?” I thought it made me mysterious. Unconventional. Someone who, if this were a novel, would be a time-traveler with a very important message.”
On the Pleasures of Hand-Writing Letters You’ll Never Send
by Anandi Mishra
"Over the years, I continued to nurse this hobby as a private neurosis. It afforded me immediate disconnection, a semblance of closure and it helped me sleep better. Though occasionally, when moving house or city, I’ve thrown away some of these letters, lest they are found and embarrass me, I continue to write them, basking in their private glories, born of the need to express myself but not always be heard."
Amends
by Samantha Mann
"My glaringly inaccurate sentence up for reexamination refers to an assault I experienced my junior year of college. I’ve never named it that before, an assault. In the past it was an incident or that time when. I want to use more accurate language when reexamining this story and insert the moments I previously omitted. Painstakingly, I crafted a story whereby leaving out portions I’d changed the impact, on paper anyway…Writing about violence is difficult. To edit is human nature.”
📢 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.
Writers’ corner:
🚨Memoir Monday founder Lilly Dancyger is launching a new series of virtual nonfiction writing courses! Subscribe to her email list by tomorrow for early access to courses on Writing and Publishing Addiction Narratives, Memoir as Detective Novel, Women's Anger in Memoir, and an Essay Revision Intensive. Sign up for Lilly’s newsletter to learn more!
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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