The Question of Spilled Milk: A Short Parable by Tracy Ross
I started to think maybe I failed the test, the spilled milk test, that I had answered the analyst’s question wrong and that is why they secured me in a room fo...
Category: Literature
Memoir, Nonfiction, First Person, True Stories, Personal Essay, Travel Writing
Car Date, 1972 by Stacy Pendergrast
That was all I needed to hear. I pushed aside the images of what had happened: their taunting faces, my bruises and twisted glasses, the leaves in my torn under...
20 Minute Read/Addiction/Family/Grief/Institutions/Literature/Loss/Mental Illness/nonfiction/Recovery/Survival
Please Survive by Catharine Lucas
For years, I believed I could FIX my son, control, restrict, protect him, by sheer force of will. When that didn’t work, I’d throw up my hands in despair and tr...
ACEs/Adversity/childhood sexual abuse/Contests and Prizes/Domestic Violence/Literature/Memoir/#MeToo/MeToo/nonfiction/PTSD/Rape Culture/#SAAM/Society/Survival/The Life/trauma/Writing Classes
The 2019 #METOO Trigger Warning Nonfiction Essay Contest \\ Win $500 + Publication
The #MeToo Nonfiction Essay Contest is back! What’s more, our judge is that champion of #MeToo memoir writers, Tracy Strauss! Deadline for Submissions is April ...
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...
7 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Childhood/Escape/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Literature/Loss/Memoir/Mommy Dearest
And Away She Goes by Renee C. Winter
Gradually Mother’s cooking faded, along with her tan. No longer in the kitchen when I rushed home from school, she’d be lounging on the cushions of our faux vel...
7 Minute Read/Aging/Being Body/Childhood/Escape/Family/Girls & Women/Grief/Health/Inspirational/Literature/Loss/Man in The Mirror/Mental Health/Mental Illness/nonfiction/PTSD/Spirituality/Survival/trauma
Savasana by Heather Gemmen Wilson
When I was slim, I communicated with my whole body in large, confident gestures; I enjoyed being front and center. But I’m no longer thin. To deal with difficul...
15 Minute Read/Cancer/Escape/Family/Funny/Girls & Women/Grief/Literature/Loss/Memoir/Mommy Dearest/nonfiction/Relationships
Anyway – A Memoir Excerpt by Barbara Tyler
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...
10 Minute Read/Craft Essays/Family/Fathers/Grief/Inspirational/Literature/Loss/Love/Memory/nonfiction/On Memory/personal essay/Storytelling/writing
Burying the Cat by Teresa Sutton
Stories are my past. They bob along a lazy river waiting to be plucked up, cherished, and set back down to drift. But they are images, merely snapshots in free ...
All That Carry On…: Oktoberfest by Ellen O’Donnell
After August 31, the good mornings and goodnights disappeared. In the push/pull of bipolar, as he muddled through the anhedonia, ambivalence, and anxiety, his c...
At Long Last, I Can Cook: Lessons from Ina Garten and Grandma Ida by Karen Galatz
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.
12 minute read/ACEs/Adoption/Adversity/Childhood/Family/Girls & Women/Inspirational/Literature/Memoir/nonfiction/trauma
Loving My Attachment Challenged Daughter by Bari Benjamin
Liliya had been abandoned at six months by her birth mom, left in a baby carriage in a train station in Moscow. The Russian police took her to an orphanage wher...
7 Minute Read/ACEs/Adversity/Childhood/Family/Fathers/Grief/Literature/Loss/Mental Health/nonfiction/PTSD/trauma
Very Important People by Gina DeMillo Wagner
You want to tell him you wish you could have gone too. That your mother never picked up the pieces. That there was never enough after he left. Not enough love, ...
3 Minute Read/Environmental/Inspirational/Institutions/Literature/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/Regret/Society
Complicit by Author Michael Parker
I once tried to make a crude estimate of all the oil and gas I had a hand in coaxing from the ground. For sure more than 100 billion ft3 of natural gas, and may...
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 ...
OUR 2019 PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEES
Memoir Magazine is proud to announce our first #Pushcart Prize nominations! Congratulations to Michele Gutierrez @michelegutz,@samuelautman, Sara J. Sutler-Cohe...
5 Minute Read/Adversity/Black Memoirs Matter/Family/Institutions/Literature/Loss/nonfiction/On Memory/Refugees/Society/Survival
Memoir of a DREAMer by Magda X
When collateral damage becomes acceptable, the room dims. The brokenness of the world is no longer the problem of others.
10 Minute Read/Girls & Women/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. ...
20 Minute Read/Aging/Alzheimer's/Featured/Family/Funny/Grief/Health/Inspirational/Literature/Loss/Love/Memory/Mental Health/nonfiction/On Memory/personal essay
Debris by Cindy Bradley
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...
Fifty Miles by Sheryl St. Germain
If I were a religious person, I would say something blessed me that day. But I’m not a religious person. Perhaps some part of me believed, as I still do, in the...