Wish You Were Here by Sam Watermeier
By morning, there were no pauses left to count. The winter chill crept into the room as Dad lay lifeless.
Category: nonfiction
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...
Surviving With Grace by Judith P. Bullis
It is not what I expect. Lined up side by side are chairs with patients already hooked up to IVs, and one empty chair for Katie, a giant vacuum of space waiting...
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...
10 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Family/Health/Loss/Man in The Mirror/Mental Health/nonfiction/On Memory/Regret/writing/2018 Recovery Essay Award Winners
How to Write a Healing Story by Author Cameron Shenassa
I have a student who is failing my class. He wants to be writer, but he comes to me and tells me that he can’t write because he is depressed. He is wearing paja...
15 Minute Read/Family/Grief/Inspirational/Loss/Love/Memoir/nonfiction/On Memory/Recovery/Regret/trauma/2018 Recovery Essay Award Winners
Losing My Words by Author Evelyn Krieger
If recovery means you are no longer sick, or even that you are simply functioning again, then perhaps I have recovered.
12 minute read/Addiction/Funny/Inspirational/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/On Memory/personal essay/Recovery/Society/2018 Recovery Essay Award Winners
Being the Lie by R.J. Roberts
Everyone in rehab has a very serious neck injury. It’s the hardest injury for doctors to accurately diagnose, even with modern MRIs and cat scans, the neck is ...
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...
10 Minute Read/Girls & Women/Grief/Health/Loss/Memoir/#MeToo/MeToo/nonfiction/Rape Culture/#SAAM/trauma/2018 #MeToo Selected Shortlist Essay
Smeared by Rachel Carson
"Did you know some hospitals have an entire department dedicated to rape victims?"