Your Weekly Dose of Personal Essays...
Plus: Our partnership with Literary Liberation, Electric Literature's annual fund drive, Narratively's 2024 Memoir Prize and upcoming workshops...
Welcome to Memoir Land—a newsletter edited by Sari Botton, 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’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.
~Oh, hey: Last week’s crowd-sourced edition of Memoir Monday was a hit! Thanks to those of you who suggested so many excellent essays. I’m going to make it a regular feature, like this: You are welcome, each week, to suggest to readers one essay you loved—***by someone other than you.~
Essays from partner publications…
Doing the Work
by Geoff Dyer
“In the mid-1980s a bunch of us who were living on the dole in south London got work with a market research company specializing in train travel. Half the time we were at the offices in Richmond, collating data in what was basically a very large cupboard that smelled of the fried egg sandwiches we ate for breakfast. The rest of the time was spent on trains collecting that data: conducting interviews, handing out questionnaires or using little clickers to count the numbers of passengers who got on and off at a given station. We went all over the country, travelling first class with all-station passes. Because the working day often began in places far from London we had to stay in hotels. If we had to work in Scotland the company reduced costs by booking compartments on the sleeper train. They also saved money by booking two people to a room so if you were part of a couple, as I was, this meant we could have hotel and sleeper sex: a lifestyle beyond our financial dreams at that point.”
How a Lost Buoy Brought Me Home
by Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory
“‘Johannes Aqqalinnguaq’ was scrawled across the sturdy plastic, along with a six-digit cellphone number preceded by a plus sign. With a name and phone number like that, without a doubt, this object had travelled from Greenland all the way to our cabin area.”
September: An Excerpt from Come By Here
by Neesha Powell-Ingabire
“I’ve had conversations with my Rwandan spouse where they say, 'African people are always left out of conversations about indigeneity in the United States, but we are Indigenous, too. We are indigenous to our different regions of Africa.' I may be an Indigenous African, but still, I have no claim to the native dances, songs, food, and customs of my ancestors. I am indefinitely unmoored. When I wear the mushanana of my wife’s culture for special occasions, a sash draped over one shoulder and a wraparound skirt, I’m not sure if it’s an act of appreciation or appropriation. But I am sure it makes me feel beautiful and makes my wife happy.”
I Still Give My Ex-Husband Great Gifts and I Don’t Know Why
by Laura Lippman
“I am a great gift-giver even when not motivated by spite. But I am, alas, competitive. Once, during my marriage, I crowed in a group chat that I had “won” Hanukkah. A friend observed that I was not bringing the right spirit to the holidays, or even to marriage. Fair. But I sincerely love giving gifts, especially when it involves finding things that people don’t even realize they desire or need.”
Opera in the Amazon
by Marcia DeSanctis
“My decades-ago viewing of Fitzcarraldo had planted in me a sapling of curiosity for the otherwise preposterous notion that there may be an actual, European-style opera house deep in the Amazonian jungle. When I learned I would be passing through Manaus, I realized that verifying its existence was a sort of obsession of my own. Travelers, especially those who do it for a living, often seek phenomena we are not certain are real.”
Wilder’s Mozzy
by Mac Crane
“Claiming parent as my identity means accepting that it may displace all other parts of me. At writing conferences, people I only know from the internet ask, “How is your kid?” and for some reason, it aggravates me and puts me on edge—even though, of course, I’m thinking of him, asking Ash to text me updates from home every few hours: What did he eat for dinner? Did he have fun in the tub? Am I angry that these internet people are correct? That I am, some days, more parent than person?”
Essays from around the web…
Things I'm Bad At: Residencies
by Carmen Maria Machado
“The thing about residencies is this: if you tell a non-artist about them, they make no fucking sense. The same is true of MFAs. When I told my scientist father that I was going to school for writing and they were paying me to do it, he simply did not believe me. He said, “I’ve never heard of such a thing.” I’m pretty sure he still has the vague sense that the entire enterprise is a scam. And I guess it makes sense, if you live in a country where we do not collectively give two shits about art, that the idea of anyone being paid or otherwise supported to make it seems laughable.”
The Beast in Your Head
by Cynthia Marie Hoffman
“During the day, in the classroom, it often occurred to me that I might stab myself in the eye with my mechanical pencil. Eyeballs seemed to me the most delicate of membranes, as easy to puncture as pressing a straw through the meniscus of a glass of water. Gripping that pencil in my fist, trying to pay attention to the lesson, careful to shade the correct ovals on the Scantron, I saw the pencil rushing toward my eye with its silvery graphite point. Each moment ticked past in which I could have done it but didn’t. Each moment led to the next in which I might. What if just thinking about it made me do it? In my forearm, a muscle twitched.”
Notes From an Adult Child of Alcoholics
by Anna Held
“Once, when my brothers and I were ten or so, my parents drank too much at a neighborhood party and things got out of hand, a little worse than typical (cops) but not that different from any other Saturday. The house was quiet when we woke up, unusually clean. My mom gathered the three of us in the kitchen. She put an empty water glass on the counter and listed all of the things the three of us had done to stress her out the previous day. With each item, she poured water into the empty glass. We tried to defend ourselves and she talked over us, kept pouring water into the glass until it overflowed onto the counter, onto the floor.”
Hot Rod Angel: On Ghosts, Friendships and Very Fast Cars
by Michael A. Gonzales
“When I was shot three times in 2011, I met an angel in the ER who introduced himself as Raymond. It was a name he shared with my best friend from grammar school, another Ray who saved me and was also one of my best friends. In my hospital delirium I became convinced that the two Raymond's were actually one angel, sent down to protect me.”
The History of the Holocaust Survivor
by Brooke Randel
“The term Holocaust survivor is a backwards-facing term, grounding identity in the past. It pronounces the violence over, the act of survival complete. It is shorthand for sob story, for too terrible to talk about, for what luck, for deep guilt. It frames a person as unwanted, unlikely, inspiration for others. It means lesson.”
13 Ways of Looking at The Mothman Prophecies
by Abigail Oswald
“"I’m learning that I write to understand—to figure out what I think, what I believe. There’s that persistent impulse to dig meaning out of tragedy, to investigate our fear. Some might approach fear or grief as something we can 'solve.' And sometimes I do write to solve mysteries, even just for myself. But sometimes the answers evade you. Sometimes there’s no answer at all.”
How Bob Dylan and Timothée Chalamet Helped Heal a Rift with My Son
by Elaine Masters
“As I learn more, the sensitive young man he once was strikes a chord. Watching a documentary about Dylan's rise to worldly status, I glimpse how much success demands. Clinging fans and idiotic interviewers, sycophants, and would-be lovers clamor for his attention. The Minnesota boy rides through waves of concert tours, strives to give audiences what they want, and, daring to change, goes electric. Complaining and booing, their reactions mystify him. “I want to go home,” he repeats to a promoter in one scene of Martin Scorsese’s early documentary, then Dylan bolts. I think about his mother. Hers wasn’t the home he ran to.”
Plastic Water Bottle: Origin Story
by Ethan Gilsdorf
“A month earlier [the bottle], liberated by a boxcutter from a pallet of Jenga-stacked boxes and shrinkwrap, slammed onto the shelf in aisle 18, “Bottled water,” one 12 pack at a time by Ronaldo (aka “The Ronmeister”) working the night shift, his eighth straight shift in a row, because one of his kids goes to community college and the other one wants to be a nurse and $18.00 an hour don’t cut it.”
I Was Just A Bartender. Then One Of My Regulars Began Posting Suggestive Photos Of Me Online.
by Molly Wadzeck Kraus
“With a thick camera strap slung around his neck, Eric appears to know everyone. Other men notice the air of importance with which he carries himself. They engage in jovial conversations, bandying about opinions on the Mets’ season and criticisms of the mayor. But the regulars give each other knowing looks—almost pitying expressions that suggest they sense something is off.”
🚨Announcements:
📢 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.
📢 Contribute to Literary Liberation’s End-Of-Year Fundraiser
At Literary Liberation we are building something vital—a space where activists, artists, and writers from the global majority come together to create, to learn, and to imagine futures rooted in freedom and justice. This work is powered by community, and it’s only possible with you.
When you join Literary Liberation as a paid member before December 31, you’re securing our 2024 rates before they’re gone for good. More importantly, you’re making a powerful commitment—to your creative growth, to the shared journey of liberation, and to ensuring this space continues to thrive.
Share this campaign, donate subscriptions, or join us so we can continue to forge a laboratory path towards the future.
📢 Contribute to Electric Literature’s Annual Fund Drive
Electric Literature is a nonprofit organization with 8 staff members and 3 paid interns. We publish 15 articles per week—essays, reading lists, short stories, flash fiction, poetry, graphic narratives, interviews, and criticism—by over 500 writers per year.
Our work costs $500,000 annually, and last year, 33% of that was donated by 2,000 of our readers—people like you! The average donation of $65 made a difference. We depend on you to keep the lights on.
Electric Literature may be free to read, but the costs are real and going up. We need to raise $25,000 by December 31, 2024 to keep Electric Literature going into next year. In these uncertain times, the only thing I know for sure is that we cannot afford to take the organizations and institutions we care about for granted. If the continued existence of Electric Literature means something to you, please make a contribution today.
📢 New Workshops at Narratively Academy:
Narratively Academy just released their Winter 2025 writing class schedule featuring 12 new classes this January to March, from a free seminar with Creative Nonfiction founder Lee Gutkind to a Deep Revision workshop with author Katey Schultz.
📢 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, NEW, the author’s Bluesky Handle.
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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Me and my Angel thank you.
Thanks for including me! Can't wait to check these out! :)