Category: ACEs
Adverse Childhood Experiences
The Body History by Jessica Marks
My body is a series of numbers. I weigh 204, I wear a size 16. My waist is eight inches smaller than my hips, my breasts are 38B. I should probably go up to a 4...
Drowning by Natasha Williams
He was disheveled and smelled like cooked grease and cigarettes. It was an odor I associated with his being poor and hemmed in. There was so much about our life...
Frankenstein’s Daughter by Sherry Shahan
Maybe I should tell her that Daddy drives with his knees while poking triangle holes in beer cans? Or that he once fell out his car door while rounding a corner...
The Peppermint Kid by Jeff Veazey
In short order, I went from liar to thief. I took my brother's silver dollar collection. No one spent old silver dollars, so when I tried, the manager of the 7...
Panama, 1994, The Jungle by Mishele Maron
As a girl coming-of-age in the late 1980’s, I was told I could go anywhere and be anything I wanted to be, but of course, no one could tell me how to do this, o...
Beautiful, Disturbing, True by Heather Caliri
But senior year, Katie’s talent moved from talent to sorcery. She drew what was real and unimaginable. Where did she get these ideas? How did she dare to put th...
An Excerpt from The View From Breast Pocket Mountain by Karen Hill Anton
A memoir in the finest sense of the genre! An easy read, packed with astonishing events that flow into one another like water, The View From Breast Pocket Mount...
How 90 Day Fiancé Helped Me Tell My Story as the Child of a Mail Order Bride by Katya Suvorova
I don’t have a mom who fell in love how I was able to fall in love. My mother is a survivor in a way most Americans won’t ever understand. I am honored to be th...
Walking Home by Kate Zobel
I am twelve years old and, between fifth grade and seventh grade, I have gone from flat-chested to a Double D cup. Some girls envy me, and gossip, but they don’...
Permission by Diane Gillespie
She was frequently absent from my class, sat in the back with another African American student, and never participated. I wrote notes on her papers to come to ...
How I Discovered America by Sharmila Voorakkara
My voice climbed an invisible staircase until at the top step of my skull it jumped up and down and waved its arms in the air. “Wake up, mom! Wake up!” I said. ...
Doctors and Torture: A Child’s View by Diane de Anda
As I watched this soft-spoken, self-effacing elderly man repeatedly humiliated by his wife, all the venomous rancor I had held for years completely dissipated. ...
Playland by Jacqueline Regan
On the way home, he took me here, to this place under the Tappan Zee Bridge, on the shore of the Hudson, on the front lawn of an apartment complex where neither...
Haunting Words by Emma Rose
I am lazy, fat, asinine, stupid. I still feel his red hot anger, the spit on my face, and the insults flying toward me. The feelings and labels remain, despite ...
The Cycle of Time One and Two by Desiree Woodland
In presentations for Breaking the Silence NM, a program to teach mental illness and suicide awareness to youth, I wanted to reach young people before suicide be...
Tremolo by D.M. Henning
I opened my mouth; my entire body becoming a scream that ripped open the night, a scream so heavy it was mercurial, filling every corner of the room with a blue...
Love Sick by Charlotte Wilkins
Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately, an elemental life not “frittered away by detail.” He wrote about the essentials of life, “I do believe in simpli...
Our Family Walks by Nick R. Robinson
An Excerpt from The Memoir Prize 2021 Honorable Mention: Our Family Walks by Nick R. Robinson; unpublished manuscript.
Bereavement by Lauren Teller
A friend, or a date, or a stranger who spotted him lying in the street, a person brave enough to touch a seizing, unconscious man, would search Eric’s pants for...