Monkey Island by Dorothy Rice
At ten, it sounded way worse than what I’d imagined. Tugging the chenille bedspread close beneath my chin, I wondered how her new friend talked Tiny into it. Th...
Category: nonfiction
Books/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.
15 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Escape/Family/Fathers/Girls & Women/Love/men/Mommy Dearest/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction/Relationships/Society/Survival/trauma
I Am My Longing by Susan Ostrov Weisser
There were my mother’s stories, and there were my books. Books were imaginary but some books could be true; Betty’s stories were neither true nor not-true, they...
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
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
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...
15 Minutes by Katherine Flitsch
* Artwork: “Mirror” by Ann Marie Sekeres “Are you staying here tonight?” Aunt Mary asks me as she takes my hand and pulls me into our pyramid of sol...
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
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...
2020-2021 Memoir Prize Winners
2021 Grand Prize Winner: Relief by Execution: A Visit to Mauthausen, by Gint Aras. Homebound Publications, Little Bound Books, October 2019. 94 pages. —&...
10 Minute Read/Divorce/Family/Funny/Girls & Women/Inspirational/Love/Memoir/men/nonfiction/Relationships
But There Were Daffodils by Marian Rogers
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...
Bombardment by Julie Benesh
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...
5 Minute Read/Addiction/Childhood/Family/Fathers/Grief/Loss/Love/nonfiction/Parenting/personal essay/Regret/Relationships/war
King’s X and Cabbadoni by Marguerite Welch
Life with Dad was an endless game. We shot candles out of Mother's silver candelabra on the picnic table. I learned to drive racing the jeep around hay bales in...
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...
10 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Escape/Family/Fathers/Institutions/nonfiction/Refugees/Society/Survival/war
Passages by Rebecca Jung
My mother pressed her cheek to Leslie’s cold face and cried. She rocked back and forth, holding my sister’s limp body close to hers. And those Congolese women r...
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...
#Recovery Runner Up/15 Minute Read/Adoption/Contests and Prizes/Domestic Violence/Grief/Inspirational/Loss/nonfiction/Recovery/trauma
Little One by Lisa Hayes-Minney
I rubbed the outside of my own hip, remembering what a kick from a steel-toed boot felt like when I was once curled up in a ball on the ground. I had old injuri...
Ned by Author Madison Welborne
An audio memoir exploring anorexia. Madison is not gaining weight and must be subjected to the tube.
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...
A Week Among the Rest by Thomas Kirk
“Have you taken anything or had a drink in the last twenty four hours?” Tim, the intake nurse asked. “We’re going to take a sample, so no need to lie.” I lied a...
1 minute Read/Addiction/Art/Audible/Audio Visual/Black Memoirs Matter/Incarceration/Institutions/nonfiction/Society/Survival/trauma
A Poem in Prison: A film by Daniel Cantagallo (and Etheridge Knight)
Sometimes a voice stops you in your tracks. For me, such was the case with Etheridge Knight. During the past few years, I have been remixing old footage and aud...