Featured Archives - Page 2 of 3

How 90 Day Fiancé Helped Me Tell My Story as the Child of a Mail Order Bride by Katya Suvorova

Posted on May 8, 2022

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...

Black Memoirs Matter/Contests and Prizes/Featured/personal essay/Race Matters

Black Memoirs Matter. The Anthology

Posted on March 18, 2022

Now Open for Submissions: Black Memoirs Matter. The Anthology.

1 minute Read/ACEs/Being Body/Featured/Girls & Women/Justice/#MeToo/MeToo/nonfiction/Sexism/Society/trauma

Walking Home by Kate Zobel

Posted on December 1, 2021

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’...

3 Minute Read/Anorexia/Featured/Family/Health/Identity/Literature/Mental Health/Mental Illness/nonfiction/trauma

Harrowing by Natalie Coufal

Posted on November 17, 2021

In the black-and-white photo I hold, Dad delivers his salutatorian speech to a small crowd. Dated May 1959, the picture is unremarkable except for Dad’s skeleta...

5 Minute Read/Domestic Violence/Featured/Girls & Women/Justice/Loss/nonfiction/Society

True Crime by Hilarie Pozesky

Posted on November 17, 2021

Melissa was killed six years ago. A couple of years after, I learned a TV show was to feature her story. I felt compelled to watch it. The show opened with the ...

7 Minute Read/ACEs/Aliens/Childhood/Featured/Family/Funny/Girls & Women/Immigrants/Mental Illness/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction

How I Discovered America by Sharmila Voorakkara

Posted on November 3, 2021

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. ...

10 Minute Read/Featured/Faith/Institutions/morality/nonfiction/Religion/Spirituality

Finding Satan on the Road to Damascus by Spencer Soule

Posted on November 3, 2021

Considering most Latter-Day Saint missionaries build their faith on a manifestation of God and Jesus to a 14-year old boy in upstate New York, many young Mormon...

5 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Featured/Faith/Family/Fathers/Grief/Inspirational/Loss/Man in The Mirror/Memory/Mental Health/nonfiction/Parenting/Relationships/trauma

Haunting Words by Emma Rose

Posted on October 28, 2021

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 ...

10 Minute Read/Featured/Family/Grief/Guns/Inspirational/Justice/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/Society

Name is a Four-Letter Word by Chris Parent

Posted on October 27, 2021

*Featured Image by Rollin Jewett A few days after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, I received a call from an organization ...

15 Minute Read/Adversity/Escape/Featured/Incarceration/Inspirational/Loss/nonfiction/Refugees/Survival/trauma

From Mauthausen to Freedom: A Story of Resolve and Assimilation, chronicled by Louis Arthur Norton

Posted on October 27, 2021

This is how the Holocaust ended for me, a solitary Polish-Jew liberated by American soldiers from the infamous death camp Mauthausen. I was at the time an emaci...

7 Minute Read/AIDS/Featured/Health/HIV/Identity/Inspirational/LGBTQ/nonfiction

1 in 300 by Cephas Barbosa

Posted on October 27, 2021

Formally coming out at 19 in the mid-’80s was a catastrophe ruled by fear. Fear, fear, fear. Fear of HIV and AIDS. It was a panic that molded my life and ruled ...

5 Minute Read/Aging/Alzheimer's/Being Body/Featured/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Identity/Inspirational/Loss/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction

Telephone Booth by Molly Bashaw

Posted on October 20, 2021

Working with the bees, I am not just looking at the same insects my mother once looked at, I am also becoming her. I am lying down in her body and standing up. ...

10 Minute Read/Adversity/Being Body/Featured/Girls & Women/Health/Inspirational/Love/Man in The Mirror/Mental Health/nonfiction/personal essay/Sexism/Society

The Shock of Self Love by Sylvie Beauvais

Posted on September 19, 2021

I traveled between France and the United States every summer, and in France I was beautiful, and in America I was ugly and people told me so. Beauty as a cultur...

5 Minute Read/Adoption/Featured/Faith/Identity/Inspirational/nonfiction/Religion/Spirituality

Mammalian Diving Response by Olivia Swasey

Posted on September 18, 2021

I step out of the water. I have not drowned. I am new, just born today. The scars that mark my body and my heart have not been rinsed away, but I feel so new an...

10 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Books/Black Memoirs Matter/Childhood/Contests and Prizes/Featured/Family/Funny/Memoir/Mommy Dearest/Mothers/nonfiction/Race Matters/Society/Survival/The Memoir Prize for Books

Our Family Walks by Nick R. Robinson

Posted on April 20, 2021

An Excerpt from The Memoir Prize 2021 Honorable Mention: Our Family Walks by Nick R. Robinson; unpublished manuscript.

10 Minute Read/Adversity/Being Body/Featured/Family/Fathers/Funny/Gender Non-conforming/Identity/Inspirational/LGBTQ/Love/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/Parenting

Morning Boy by Stephen Palgon

Posted on February 8, 2021

Before my wife and I got married, my mother told me that my father had expressed concern about my future brother in law’s gayness being passed along to our chil...

10 Minute Read/ACEs/Aging/Childhood/Featured/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Loss/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/Relationships/Secrets/Sexism/Society/Survival

My Mother’s Back by Mary Zelinka

Posted on November 26, 2020

Her admission that her diagnosis was terrible news showed a vulnerability in her I had never before witnessed. I had believed that nothing ever weighed on her,...

Adversity/Featured/Health/Inspirational/Justice/LGBTQ/Love/men/nonfiction/personal essay/Relationships/Society

In Sickness and in Health by Scott Bane

Posted on November 26, 2020

Right in the middle of some everyday activity, I’m overtaken by a sense of joy, peace, or contentment. The window often closes up just as quickly as it has ope...

10 Minute Read/Adversity/Art/Escape/Featured/Family/Fathers/Identity/Justice/Loss/nonfiction/Refugees/Society/Survival

KGB search, Chop Train Station, The Promised Land By Ella Reznikova

Posted on November 25, 2020

My father and mother are trapped in this country, waiting for many years for permission to immigrate. Every six months he patiently goes alone to the Soviet Vis...

Healing Through Storytelling by Melissa Zook

Posted on August 1, 2019

The practice of medicine is based on the physician’s ability to gather story from the patient. Our story is our human identity and our humanity. It is also the ...