Mammalian Diving Response by Olivia Swasey
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...
Category: Identity
10 Minute Read/Family/Identity/Justice/Literature/Loss/Man in The Mirror/Memoir/Mental Illness/nonfiction/personal essay/Race Matters/Religion/Society/trauma
Main Street Madness by Mary McBeth
But I don’t say that, instead I will say that I’m going to build a Tiny House, and ditch the double-wide. That way they will be awed instead by my quirky ingenu...
10 Minute Read/Adversity/Being Body/Family/Fathers/Featured/Funny/Gender Non-conforming/Identity/Inspirational/LGBTQ/Love/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/Parenting
Morning Boy by Stephen Palgon
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...
15 Minute Read/Adversity/Childhood/Escape/Family/Identity/Inspirational/Institutions/Justice/Man in The Mirror/morality/nonfiction/personal essay/Race Matters/Society
Turning Left: The Case for Social Democracy by N. S. G. Holm
Leaning Left, 2:1, millennials want America to be an “us” society. They call it socialism, but this is incorrect. They do not want state ownership and control o...
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...
The Shocking Truth About Jews in Sports by Jim Sollisch
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.
Grand Prize Winner/Identity/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/Race Matters/Society/The Memoir Prize for Books/war
Relief by Execution: A Visit to Mauthausen by Gint Aras
An Excerpt from The Memoir Prize 2021 Grand Prize Winner: Relief by Execution: A Visit to Mauthausen, by Gint Aras.
10 Minute Read/Adversity/Art/Escape/Family/Fathers/Featured/Identity/Justice/Loss/nonfiction/Refugees/Society/Survival
KGB search, Chop Train Station, The Promised Land By Ella Reznikova
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...
10 Minute Read/Aging/Alzheimer's/Escape/Family/Identity/Loss/Love/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/Relationships
The Mermaid By Jean Sheppard
Only when the moon rises do I see it, see her—the glint of silver and then green and silver, the flash of scales. Only then do I know: my mother is a mermaid, a...
Journey By Gail Aldwin
"It's taken years of drafting and redrafting novels, playing around with poetry, structuring short stories, to come to a point where I feel entitled to call mys...
10 Minute Read/Aging/Being Body/Childhood/Fathers/Girls & Women/Identity/Loss/nonfiction/personal essay/Relationships/Sexism/Society
Laguna Main by Clementine Moss
Jim Morrison lolls on the beach in my mind, and I let go of the day and follow him down to this other world. Do women get to be so free, lounging, writing, owni...
Brands and Promises by Author Fajer Alexander Khansa
This short experimental piece of approximately twenty four hundred words explores questions of belonging from the perspective of a Syrian boy who lives in diffe...