Ripple Effect by Janis Butler Holm
As a little girl reading fairy tales, I came across the word “replied.” Though a bookish child, I somehow read “replied” as “rippled,” as in “Because I said so,...
15 Minute Read/Adversity/Family/Fathers/Grief/Incarceration/Justice/Loss/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/Parenting
The Sentencing by Wendy Swift
The waiting was unnerving. Alli asked almost daily when Daddy would go to jail. For a second-grader, jail was something imagined from cartoons. We did little to...
10 Minute Read/Adversity/Black Memoirs Matter/Escape/Identity/Immigrants/Inspirational/Justice/Man in The Mirror/Memoir/morality/nonfiction/personal essay/Race Matters/Society/Storytelling/trauma
“Into the Racial Divide, A Story of Hope” by Jerry Waxler
In 2020, George Floyd's sadistic public murder ripped away the grand illusion of universal empathy at the core of the American Promise and vividly demonstrated ...
2022 Memoir Book Prize Winners
With over 300 entries this year and a pool that seems to get stronger all the time, it was a tough job to pick just one winner in each category. We have been ex...
1 minute Read/ACEs/Being Body/Featured/Girls & Women/Justice/#MeToo/MeToo/nonfiction/Sexism/Society/trauma
Walking Home by Kate Zobel
I am twelve years old and, between fifth grade and seventh grade, I have gone from flat-chested to a Double D cup. Some girls envy me, and gossip, but they don’...
10 Minute Read/Black Memoirs Matter/Family/Identity/Justice/Literature/Loss/Man in The Mirror/Memoir/Mental Illness/nonfiction/personal essay/Race Matters/Religion/Society/trauma
Main Street Madness by Mary McBeth
But I don’t say that, instead I will say that I’m going to build a Tiny House, and ditch the double-wide. That way they will be awed instead by my quirky ingenu...
Permission by Diane Gillespie
She was frequently absent from my class, sat in the back with another African American student, and never participated. I wrote notes on her papers to come to ...
3 Minute Read/Anorexia/Featured/Family/Health/Identity/Literature/Mental Health/Mental Illness/nonfiction/trauma
Harrowing by Natalie Coufal
In the black-and-white photo I hold, Dad delivers his salutatorian speech to a small crowd. Dated May 1959, the picture is unremarkable except for Dad’s skeleta...
True Crime by Hilarie Pozesky
Melissa was killed six years ago. A couple of years after, I learned a TV show was to feature her story. I felt compelled to watch it. The show opened with the ...
7 Minute Read/ACEs/Aliens/Childhood/Featured/Family/Funny/Girls & Women/Immigrants/Mental Illness/Mothers/Mothers and Daughters/nonfiction
How I Discovered America by Sharmila Voorakkara
My voice climbed an invisible staircase until at the top step of my skull it jumped up and down and waved its arms in the air. “Wake up, mom! Wake up!” I said. ...
Finding Satan on the Road to Damascus by Spencer Soule
Considering most Latter-Day Saint missionaries build their faith on a manifestation of God and Jesus to a 14-year old boy in upstate New York, many young Mormon...
7 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Doctors/Escape/Funny/Inspirational/Medicine/nonfiction/Parenting/Science/Society/trauma
Doctors and Torture: A Child’s View by Diane de Anda
As I watched this soft-spoken, self-effacing elderly man repeatedly humiliated by his wife, all the venomous rancor I had held for years completely dissipated. ...
5 Minute Read/ACEs/childhood sexual abuse/Family/#MeToo/nonfiction/Pedophile Priests/Rape Culture/Religion/#SAAM/Secrets/trauma
Playland by Jacqueline Regan
On the way home, he took me here, to this place under the Tappan Zee Bridge, on the shore of the Hudson, on the front lawn of an apartment complex where neither...
5 Minute Read/ACEs/Childhood/Featured/Faith/Family/Fathers/Grief/Inspirational/Loss/Man in The Mirror/Memory/Mental Health/nonfiction/Parenting/Relationships/trauma
Haunting Words by Emma Rose
I am lazy, fat, asinine, stupid. I still feel his red hot anger, the spit on my face, and the insults flying toward me. The feelings and labels remain, despite ...
10 Minute Read/Featured/Family/Grief/Guns/Inspirational/Justice/Man in The Mirror/nonfiction/Society
Name is a Four-Letter Word by Chris Parent
*Featured Image by Rollin Jewett A few days after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, I received a call from an organization ...