Ripple Effect by Janis Butler Holm
As a little girl reading fairy tales, I came across the word “replied.” Though a bookish child, I somehow read “replied” as “rippled,” as in “Because I said so,...
As a little girl reading fairy tales, I came across the word “replied.” Though a bookish child, I somehow read “replied” as “rippled,” as in “Because I said so,...
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. ...
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. ...
An Excerpt from The Memoir Prize 2021 Honorable Mention: Our Family Walks by Nick R. Robinson; unpublished manuscript.
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...
I grew up in the Jewish version of The Wonder Years, an alternative universe where just about every person I interacted with was a Jew.
In a second union, things you took for granted during those years with your first spouse float in your unconscious like twigs along a clear or muddied stream, o...
I am over 50, feeling 70 and used to being semi-invisible in big, sexy Chicago and currently dressed for something as far from clubbing or prostitution as anyon...
A humorous glimpse of boyhood, “Pincushion” is an audio personal essay written, narrated, and produced in March 2018 by Kyle Stedman.
Hell hath no fury like an 8 year old about to not get Western Barbie. Christmas was not our strong suit. Easter—that my parents could pull off. It all happens i...
When the seventies arrived, I began to learn about feminism. Men could be intimidating. We were intimidating with our physical size, our attitude. I began to pi...
I’m not sure if my mistake was in joining together reality and fantasy or if I simply was treading someplace where I didn’t belong.
His quiet Southern lilt didn’t match what he was saying. There should have been magnolia petals falling out of his mouth or some exhaustive yarn about his mothe...
By episode 20 or 21, I started thinking of cooking in a new, sacred light. I felt a profound need to honor Mom and Grandma by finally learning to cook.
After hip surgery, my father’s memory is all over the map. As he recuperates in rehab, he tells us he’s been to Spain, England, Oakland and even Kabul, all in t...