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,...
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,...
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...
* 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...
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...
2021 Grand Prize Winner: Relief by Execution: A Visit to Mauthausen, by Gint Aras. Homebound Publications, Little Bound Books, October 2019. 94 pages. —&...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
"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...
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...
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...
An audio memoir exploring anorexia. Madison is not gaining weight and must be subjected to the tube.
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...
“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...
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...
This flex-time rehab had been recommended to me by the same doctor who’d prescribed 100 Vicodin every two weeks for fibromyalgia. After a couple of years under ...
A humorous glimpse of boyhood, “Pincushion” is an audio personal essay written, narrated, and produced in March 2018 by Kyle Stedman.
My left leg is stuck out as if I was on the verge of going somewhere. My mother will meet him for the first time three months from now.
Short, sweet and infrequent! Stay up-to-date with curated content, links to book reviews, interviews, craft essays, contest and submission announcements, and other excellent resources for memoir writers! All for FREE!