One Year After the Fire by Kevin Taylor
I’d talked with firefighters about extension — how a fire spreads — all the while constructing, mentally rehearsing and refining an elaborate plan for my own de...
Category: nonfiction
5 Minute Read/Girls & Women/Literature/#MeToo/nonfiction/On Memory/#SAAM/Society/2018 #MeToo Selected Shortlist Essay
Avocado by Sophie Trevitt
I am eight. I am eight, and I am an avocado in a flock of magpies and I want to be a magpie so badly that it makes my fingers curl. I want to know what it feels...
Lies My Mother Told Me / Lies I Told My Mother by Daniel Uncapher
You must go to school. I’m too sick to go to school! I have eyes on the back of my head. I missed the bus! We can’t afford cable. I wasn’t watching TV!
Recovery Essay Contest
Now accepting nonfiction submissions of 3,000 words or less on the theme of Recovery. All kinds of addiction and trauma require recovery. For example, one might...
She Could not be Happy By Julie Ann Wenglinski
"Diana could not be happy because her mother was a grizzly bear and Diana was a human and they could never understand each other. From the time she learned to s...
20 Minute Read/ACEs/Featured/Justice/Literature/Loss/Memoir/#MeToo/nonfiction/On Memory/Pedophile Priests/Religion/#SAAM/Secrets/Society
A Quiet Exceptional Depravity By Michael Coolen
I left the seminary upon my conclusion that God was both a psychopath and a myth, and Christ had never existed. I saw no future for a priest who was an atheist.
Addicted to Love: 38 Special By Tanner Ballengee
* Featured Artwork: By Michelle Nguyen Addicted to Love: 38 Special By Tanner Ballengee “I woke up this morning with a piece of past caught in my throat, ...
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...
How My Father Groomed Me For Rape Culture by Sheryl Burpee Dluginski
My newly developed curves seemed to give me a dangerous power over my father and other men, which troubled me because I couldn’t seem to discern its appropriate...
Putting On Eyeliner With PTSD by René Ostberg
does this makeup make me look smokey slutty sophisticated safe soft weak or like a raccoon like a ghost a victim should I wash it off can I not just wash ...
Skylark in Tawny Mist BY Julie Ann Wenglinski
Before surgery, a rabbity young man in a white jacket hurried by and put his hand down the front of my dress, then bustled away. On my gurney to the OR, a chatt...
The Desk By Sara J. Sutler-Cohen
My room was the base of operations for Dad’s drug dealing enterprise, a career he must have selected—I imagine in hindsight—to sustain his life as a musician
#Guns and People Essay Contest
*Featured Image: “Stop The Violence- Gun” By Robert Francois #Guns and People Non Fiction Essay Contest! We are now accepting submissions of 3,000 w...
Under Construction By Anthony D’Aries
I sometimes wonder if I’d given Otis a different name, something like Bronson or Butch, he’d have been born with more brawn than soul. Otis is only two, for Chr...
The Truth Tale: A Love Story By Pia Rabin
I sit out in the chill wet evening, all the roses are dead on the bushes, waiting and hoping and knowing, here we are at last and so soon.
Memory As Memoir: Mining Memory For Story
As part of our ongoing commitment to nurturing the voices of marginalized groups and writers of color, Memoir Magazine is sponsoring a free online memoir class ...
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.
Craft With Chelsey Clammer: The Best Way to Tell Your Story Is to Get Out of Its Way
Over-explaining can be especially harmful in regards to nonfiction because we essayists are often accused of doing some serious navel-gazing—where we can’t look...