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...
Category: Identity
5 Minute Read/ACEs/Art/Being Body/Childhood/childhood sexual abuse/Family/Fathers/Girls & Women/Grief/Identity/Loss/MeToo/nonfiction/Rape Culture/Secrets/Society/Survival
Evolving Body Language:Five Photographs by Toni La Ree Bennett
My left leg is stuck out as if I was on the verge of going somewhere. My mother will meet him for the first time three months from now.
7 Minute Read/Art/Being Body/Childhood/Family/Fathers/Funny/Girls & Women/Identity/Inspirational/Memory/nonfiction/Society
@clotheslinetimeline by Maud Kelly
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...
My Alexander Head by Beverly Pimsleur
Like everyone in our family, I cut Uncle Ben a lot of slack. He’d returned from the Second World War a paraplegic. He would spend the rest of his life on the si...
10 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Being Body/Domestic Violence/Featured/Girls & Women/Health/Identity/Inspirational/#MeToo/MeToo/Mental Illness/nonfiction/Rape Culture/Relationships/Sexism/Society/Storytelling/Survival/trauma/2018 #MeToo Selected Shortlist Essay
Healing Through Storytelling by Melissa Zook
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 ...
3 Minute Read/ACEs/Being Body/childhood sexual abuse/Escape/Family/Identity/Man in The Mirror/#MeToo/MeToo/PTSD/Rape Culture/Secrets/Survival/trauma/2019 #MeToo Award Winner
2019 #MeToo Essay 2nd Prize Winner: A Face in the Mirror by Sue Gano
In his place is a little girl with ragged clothes and a dirty face. She has my blue eyes and a cowlick that sits above the peak of her forehead. It has been a l...
10 Minute Read/Being Body/Divorce/Domestic Violence/Escape/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Identity/Inspirational/Institutions/Loss/Love/On Memory/Recovery/trauma
What To Wear To Bankruptcy Court By By Nan McKernon
How does one find self-worth standing before the evidence of broken dreams, unrealized potential, and past mistakes? This is what plagued me as I stared at the ...
5 Minute Read/Health/Identity/LGBTQ/Literature/Man in The Mirror/Memoir/nonfiction/personal essay/Society
T-Minus 20 by Will McMillan
His Grindr profile showed he was nearby; less than 1000 feet from where I was walking. He was in a hotel. Was visiting town. He was looking for now, and now wor...
Waterbabies by Heather Diamond
When he arrives, I am holding the paper bag (because the woman is always holding the bag) they gave each of us in the recovery room where one brash young woman ...
10 Minute Read/Girls & Women/Identity/Institutions/Justice/LGBTQ/Literature/Memoir/nonfiction/Rape Culture/Sexism/Society
Three Women Walk into a Bar By Annie Krabbenschmidt
As a gay woman, I have acquired a quick bar banter that cuts men loose before they can get my name. In response to their drunken prattling, I cut to the chase. ...
5 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Childhood/Escape/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Identity/Literature/Loss/Memoir/Mommy Dearest/nonfiction/PTSD/Secrets/The Life/trauma
They Don’t Live in Dallas by Anna Mullins
Sometimes you lie so much you begin to believe what you say. Sometimes you don’t even have to say the lies out loud to believe them.
10 Minute Read/Aging/Family/Funny/Girls & Women/Identity/Literature/Love/Memory/Mental Health/nonfiction
It’s Not Much of a World Without Unicorns by Jillian McKelvey
I think these people mean to say, that my mother with Alzheimer’s, behaves differently from the mother I knew without Alzheimer’s.
Lessons Learned by Diane Malk
“there’s no such thing as the Easter Bunny and there’s no Santa Claus—remember, we’re Jewish!”
2018 #Guns And People Runners Up/3 Minute Read/Aging/Contests and Prizes/Guns/Identity/Memoir/On Memory/war/The #Guns and People Award Winners
Boys With Guns by Jacob Paul Patchen
Now, this gun, slung tight around my neck, is heavier than I thought it would be. And it’s loud. Louder than thoughts of home....
L Y D I A by Anne Hosansky
"She confided that she’d actually been divorced twice. “Now I’ve switched to women,” she added, as if it were another accomplishment. I was suddenly aware of th...
2018 #MeToo Runner Up/10 Minute Read/Adversity/Girls & Women/Identity/LGBTQ/#MeToo/Mental Health/Rape Culture/Religion/#SAAM/Society
Discovering Electricity by Abby Cummings
I’d be lying if I said my interest in forensic psychology wasn’t partially fueled by a need to prove I no longer feared men like him, at least in the beginning,...
10 Minute Read/Identity/Literature/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/On Memory/personal essay/Secrets/Society
Life is a Fiction By Brandon Daily
I must face my own hurt and my own past, and I must continue on, not a fictional being at all, but one of blood and sweat, and that makes me capable of anything...
Myths, Lies and Matches: A Quest By Mary Ellen Gambutti
At 6, I suddenly knew I was adopted by the telling of a fairy tale. Not only did I belong to my parents, but also someone else! The myth of the adoption agenc...
Flood By Erin Murphy
They did not think: moonlit bank where my ancestors were unloaded from ships or branch from which bodies once swung. They did not have to...
Waiting in the Clinic for Nameless Lovers By Dwaine Rieves
When the clinic called for physicians, I volunteered. Of course, I wasn’t gay—all I needed was proof. I needed to find the clinic and its patients repulsive.