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Personal Essays

The Fab Five and Hair That Does the Talking

How I Proposed to My Girlfriend

When Williamsburg Was on the Wrong Side of the River

Mayfield, Before and After

Sunday Reading: Personal Reflections

My Failed Attempts to Hoard Anything at All

Stalking a Rustically Hip Family on Instagram

A Dark Ride

Julius: The Story of a Premature Birth

The Nick Cave Song That Changed My Life

Nearby and Familiar: A Strategy for Picking Restaurants

Two Sister-Poets Gone Too Soon: Ntozake Shange and My Sister

The Sordid Necessity of Living for Others

Memories of V. S. Naipaul

I’ve Quit Writing Personal Essays About Quitting Things: A Personal Essay

My Father and Sandy Koufax

The Personal-Essay Boom Is Over

One child’s life.

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17 Personal Essays That Will Change Your Life

Think essays are just something boring you write for class? These masterpieces will make you totally reconsider.

BuzzFeed News Reporter

1. "Goodbye To All That" – Joan Didion

The final piece in one of her two most beloved collections, Slouching Towards Bethlehem , this essay contains everything there is to love about Didion — her sharp eye, her unbelievable concision, her expression of emotions that are real and contradictory. It follows her arrival in New York and her departure eight years later, and in so doing discusses the city and youth — and the romantic lies that both are. She writes: "... I was in love with New York. I do not mean 'love' in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again."

2. "Mr. Lytle, an Essay" – John Jeremiah Sullivan

Sullivan has become one of the most talked about magazine writers of the last few years. This piece, which you can read online at the Paris Review , and was collected in his highly recommended book, Pulphead , is one of his best. It discusses, with such grace, being mentored in his twenties by once-famous Southern Renaissance writer Andrew Lytle. It's a meditation on art and futility, the Old South, and the sheer strangeness that can be relationships between men.

3. "Once More to the Lake" – E.B. White

Recognized for his children's literature (including Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web ) and popularizing Strunk's The Elements of Style , White was also an accomplished essayist. "Once More to the Lake" follows White and his son to Maine, where they spend a week along the same lake White visited with his father as a boy. It is one of the most moving reflections upon fatherhood, summertime, America, and mortality ever crafted. You can find it in many anthologies and in The Collected Essays of E.B. White .

4. "Ticket to the Fair" – David Foster Wallace

Those who knock Wallace for his verbosity — or associate him merely with a liberal use of footnotes — haven't read one of his classic essays through to the end. This one, which you can read online at Harper's or in his collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again , follows him home to Illinois, specifically to the state fair there. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and almost ridiculous in its level of detail, it explores the author's fractured identity, the Midwest versus the East Coast, and the American experience at large.

5. "A Few Words About Breasts" – Nora Ephron

Published in Esquire in 1975, this is the best-known essay by the late, great screenwriter and essayist. While she renders the experience of being flat-chested in the '50s with incredible humor and pathos, it is the essay's ending — the shock of it — that makes this unforgettable.

6. "Self-Reliance" — Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of Emerson's most influential essays, you can read it online or in nearly every collection of his works. While his prose's formality may be a shock at first, what he says he says with great clarity and to the great empowerment of his reader. It is a declaration of the fact that true happiness, in oneself and all relationships, must spurn from self-love and honest expression: "I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should."

7. "Here Is a Lesson in Creative Writing" – Kurt Vonnegut

Though it's collected in his great and final collection of essays, Man Without a Country , you can read an adaptation online at Lapham's Quarterly . While it's a must-read for aspiring creative writers, it's about more than writing — much, much more — despite its brevity and characteristic Vonnegut wit. It opens with the best slam of the semicolon ever.

8. "Notes of a Native Son" – James Baldwin

The titular essay from this collection — which honestly you should just read — is an ambitious and candid discussion of the passing of his father during a time of great racial turmoil. It opens: "On the twenty-ninth of July, in 1943, my father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born. Over a month before this, while all our energies were concentrated in waiting for these events, there had been, in Detroit, one of the bloodiest race riots of the century. A few hours after my father's funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker's chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. In the morning of the third of August, we drove my father through the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed glass."

9. "The Invisible Made Visible" – David Rakoff

David Rakoff died a little over a year ago at the too-early age of 47. Just a few months prior, he read this essay about his cancer, his imminent death, and dancing, aloud as part of This American Life 's live show. As always with Rakoff's work, it was funny, painful, and revealed the author's intense love of the English language. Warning: When you watch this video , you will laugh audibly, several times, and you might cry.

10. "The Death of a Moth" – Virginia Woolf

The briefest — and perhaps densest — essay on this list, "The Death of the Moth," on its face, is about exactly that: Woolf notices a moth caught in her window and witnesses its death. Read it online and then read it again, and again.

11. "Total Eclipse " – Annie Dillard

This much-anthologized meditation follows Dillard and her husband as they drive to a mountaintop in Washington to witness a total eclipse — that rare event when the sun becomes entirely obscured, turning day briefly into night. Dillard's rendering of this experience showcases her enviable abilities to both observe and describe. It's collected in Teaching a Stone to Talk .

12. "Sliver of Sky" – Barry Lopez

Well-known nature writer Barry Lopez shocked many when he published this essay in January, in which he confessed being raped throughout his adolescence by his mother's sometime boyfriend. It is an affecting and horrifying portrait of what it is to be a victim of sexual abuse. Unfortunately you do have to be a Harper's subscriber to read it (for now).

13. "Shooting an Elephant" — George Orwell

Prior to penning 1984 and Animal Farm , Orwell was posted as a policeman in Burma, where he once had to shoot a rampaging elephant. The resultant essay, published in 1936, is a condemnation of imperialism — and his own selfish desire to not be implicated by it. Read it online or find it in the collection of the same title .

14. "Shipping Out" — David Foster Wallace

Yes, Wallace deserves two on this list. Also collected in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and originally published in Harper's , this is another travelogue turned existential rumination that shows unabashedly and hilariously the horrors of society (this time via a cruise ship) and really says more about the author himself.

15. "The Braindead Megaphone" – George Saunders

Saunders is more famous for his fiction (like many of the folks on this list) but that doesn't mean his essays are not fantastic. The first in the eponymous collection , "The Braindead Megaphone" takes on the current political and media climate in America that will make you shake your head in a I've-always-thought-that-but-never-really-put-it-that-way-myself way.

16. "We Do Abortions Here" — Sallie Tisdale

Tisdale was a nurse at an abortion clinic when she published this essay in 1987. She writes honestly and movingly about something she knows few want to think let alone read about. "There is a numbing sameness lurking in this job," she says, "the same questions, the same answers, even the same trembling tone in the voices. The worst is the sameness of human failure, of inadequacy in the face of each day’s dull demands." Read it for free online .

17. "The White Album" — Joan Didion

Of course Didion also gets two on this list. If you have not read this classic, do so now. It tracks our culture's — and the author's — transition out of the cataclysmic era that was the late '60s into something else much darker. It also contains an unforgettable image of Jim Morrison wearing black vinyl pants. Find it in the collection of the same name.

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Best of 2023: Personal Essays

Ahead of Time

Kamran Javadizadeh | The Yale Review | June 12, 2023 | 3,285 words

Grief is unpredictable. Sometimes it stabs you, sometimes it suffocates you; when it isn’t making you weep or scream, it’s leaving you numb. Grief is also unfathomable: we cannot see, much less reach, the edges of the permanent absence of someone we love. “Grief may be the knowledge … that the future won’t be like the past,” Kamran Javadizadeh writes in this exquisite essay about the death of his sister, Bita. “Like water to the page, it spreads in all directions, it thins the surface, it touches what you cannot touch.” Javadizadeh reflects on his grief through the lens of poetry he encountered during the experience of losing Bita: a volume of Langston Hughes he located in their shared childhood bedroom; a copy of The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds, filled with Bita’s notes from college; a Hafez verse that Bita texted to him one day. The best poetry is not unlike grief: it is vast, complex, elusive. And in reading verse, Javadizadeh shows, we can find lessons for mourning. I’ve thought about this essay countless times since I read it last summer, and I suspect I will reread it many times in the years to come. — SD

The Butchering

Jake Skeets | Emergence Magazine | June 22, 2023 | 3,901 words

Consider what it means to truly feel full—with a full stomach and a full heart—when your physical and spiritual hungers are satiated for a time. Diné poet Jake Skeets mulls these layers of resonance in his beautiful essay “The Butchering,” in which he prepares to kill a sheep for “the Kinaałda. . . .loosely translated as the Diné puberty ceremony.” For Skeets and members of his Indigenous community, story is wonderfully entangled with preparing the food that will nourish his family both physically and spiritually. Community members teach and learn interchangeably, switching roles naturally in a space of safety, free from shame. Skeets meditates on the open mindset needed to fully participate; sometimes he is a child, earning knowledge passed on from family and sometimes he is an uncle, offering an example for others. There’s a slowness to savor in Skeets’ writing, a gentle quickening you observe in the essay as he educates you on what it takes to sustain his community and their Indigenous way of life. “The next time I butcher I’ll have my own story to tell, my own memory to share, knowledge to offer. One more voice to add to the chorus on those nights when you’re out in the desert under the night sky, no sound for miles, just the moon and the ground beneath you, reminding you it’s all real. That and your full stomach. Generations heard through wind, the air, the stirring gleaming stars. All that knowledge, all that story, all that beauty,” he writes. Be sure to make time for this piece; it will ignite your sense of wonder and spark your curiosity, feeding you in a way that’s truly satisfying. — KS

We’re More Ghosts Than People

Hanif Abdurraqib | The Paris Review | October 16, 2023 | 3,922 words

Not long after I started at Longreads , I put together a reading list detailing some of my favorite pieces of video game writing over the previous decade. If people could enjoy reviews of movies they haven’t seen, I reasoned, then they could do the same with gaming criticism and journalism—even if they’d never held a controller. That conviction hasn’t wavered in the years since; however, this year brought a piece powerful enough to vault back through time and land on that list. Hanif Abdurraqib’s Paris Review essay (which also appears in the newly published collection Critical Hits ) is nominally about the experience of playing Red Dead Redemption 2 , Rockstar Games’ critically acclaimed title set in the American West in 1899. The word “nominally” carries more weight than usual, though. In Abdurraqib’s able hands, the game instead becomes a portal to grief and salvation, futility and loss. Some characters can’t be redeemed by virtue of their programming. Others can. The trajectory of the character of you is another story altogether. “If there is a place of judgment where I must stand and plead my case for a glorious and abundant afterlife, I hope that whoever hears me out is interested in nuances, but who’s to say,” Abdurraqib writes. “I don’t think about it, until I do.” As with the very best of arts writing, this meditation teases apart its medium’s limitations to find the universal truths and questions embedded within. No virtual revolver necessary. — PR

A Mother’s Exchange for Her Daughter’s Future

Jiayang Fan | The New Yorker | June 5, 2023 | 6,197 words

Jiayang Fan was 25 when her mother was diagnosed with ALS. She writes: “The child became the mother’s future, and the mother became the child’s present, taking up residence in her brain, blood, and bones.” This was the first personal piece Fan wrote after her mother’s death; it’s a devastating tale of the immigrant experience in America, of illness, of the intimate and complicated relationship between a mother and daughter. Fan’s descriptions of her bedridden mother range from exquisite to grim to satisfyingly peculiar. She is “shipwrecked in her own body,” with skin like “rice paper” that will inevitably tear. Even a line detailing how literal shit excretes out of her mother’s body—a “rivulet” down the “limp marble of her thigh”—manages to read beautifully. Fan writes with vulnerability about caring for an elderly loved one, love and sacrifice, the intertwining of two lives, and the story about them that’s ultimately written. I had to pause and collect myself a number of times as I thought about my own aging mother, and the decisions made over the course of our lives that have made us who we are. “One creature, disassembled into two bodies,” Fan writes of their shared life. This is extraordinary writing that hit me in a spot deep within. — CLR

How I Survived a Wedding in a Jungle That Tried to Eat Me Alive

Melissa Johnson | Outside | July 18, 2023 | 4,273 words

A key sentence in this essay goes as follows, “Behold my nightmare: a tick has bitten my vagina.” The incident—relayed with “the gravitas of Obi-Wan Kenobi describing the destruction of planet Alderaan”—occurs in 2017, while Melissa Johnson is enduring a five-day trek in northern Guatemala to attend the wedding of two ex-military women. (She reflects on how during the days of Trump America, the middle of the jungle felt a safer spot for such nuptials.) Johnson embarks on this quest fresh from harvesting her eggs. Single at the age of 39, she is not only wrestling ticks from her “holy garden” but with her fear of missing out on love and motherhood. Trudging along the soggy trails, Johnson dwells on her cloudy future with trepidation. But, by the time she is released from the jungle’s insect-infested innards, she has come to terms with the fact that she is an adventurer—someone comfortable with the unknown. This piece has many layers: an adventure story, a character study of people with names such as “Tent Dawg,” and a thoughtful take on aging and motherhood. It’s also just plain funny. I loved going through the jungle with Johnson, and I also loved the last sentence of her bio: She had a baby girl in March. — CW

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Best Essays to Read

AS I SIFT through the pages of my personal collection of the best essays to read, I can’t help but feel a profound sense of connection to the authors who penned these words.

Essays are often written in the first-person, in which writers use their own personal experiences to reflect on a theme or topic for the reader. Many acclaimed authors I love —like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison—combine these pieces into collections of unique social commentary.

Therefore, each essay on this list holds a special place in my heart, and I’ve curated these essays worth reading based on my own, personal taste.

These essays, handpicked from diverse corners of literature, have left a lasting impression on me. They are more than just ink on paper; they are windows into my own thoughts, emotions, and experiences. These essays worth reading come from different times and places, each with its unique voice and perspective.

Some essays to read have provoked introspection, while others have had me bursting into laughter or shedding a tear. They’ve led me through deep philosophical musings and allowed me to vicariously experience the joys and sorrows of people I’ve never met. Among many things, these essays to read are more than just stories; they are my companions on the journey of understanding, empathy, and self-discovery.

As you delve into this collection of my favorite essays to read, I invite you to embark on a personal voyage of exploration. Let these authors be your guides, just as they have been mine, as we traverse the landscapes of their thoughts and experiences together. Whether you seek solace, enlightenment, or simply a good story, I hope you’ll find it within these pages.

So, without further ado, let’s dive into this collection of my favorite essays to read and the best essays to read which I thoughtfully curated. You can be sure that any book recommended on this page is worth your time as I obviously read every single one of them. Here are some of the best essays to read.

The top and best essays to read

These are the top 5 best essays to read. Click on the buttons for more details about the book: from community ratings to book summaries, reviews, and information about the authors.

Our women on the ground by Zahra Hankir Bol.com | Amazon | Waterstones | Bookshop.org

This essay is a volume of stories describing the unique challenges and advantages of several Arab and Middle Eastern female journalists, reporting from some of the most repressive countries in the world and what it’s like.

Notes of a native son by James Baldwin The Book Depository | Bol.com | Amazon | Waterstones | Bookshop.org

A collection of 10 short essays that recollects the lived experience of a black person in the United States and Europe in the 50s.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion The Book Depository | Bol.com | Amazon | Waterstones | Bookshop.org

This beautifully written essay intimately explores the aftermath of her husband’s unexpected death and her daughter’s critical illness, capturing her emotional turmoil and the complex process of grief and healing.

Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver The Book Depository | Amazon | Bol.com | Waterstones | Bookshop.org

This collection of reflective essays by Mary Oliver explores profound insights on life, creativity, and the enduring connection between humanity and the natural world.

Best personal essays

These are my favorite personal essays to read. In this genre of writing, the writer shares their personal insights, anecdotes, and perspectives on a particular topic, theme, or event. Use the buttons to delve deeper into the details of the book.

Goodbye to All That by Joan Didion The Book Depository | Amazon | Waterstones | Bookshop.org

A personal literary essay about living in New York, United States, while feeling disconnected.

Letters to a young poet by Rainer Maria Rilke Bol.com | Amazon | Waterstones | Barnes & Noble

A collection of insightful correspondence from renowned poet Rainer Maria Rilke, offering guidance and wisdom to a young aspiring poet, exploring themes of solitude, creativity, and the pursuit of an authentic artistic voice.

Why I Write by Joan Didion Bol.com | Amazon | Waterstones | Barnes & Noble

This book explores the motivations and intricacies behind Joan’s writing journey, offering insights into the profound reasons that drove her creative expression.

By specific topic:

Best books on creativity
Best books on writing
The Best Books For Women

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I’ll be regularly updating this roundup to include additional thrilling new offerings..

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Ruth Dawkins Freelance Writer

Copywriting | Feature Writing | Hobart, Tasmania

20 Places to Read Great Personal Essays

There has been a lot of discussion in writing circles recently about the fate of the personal essay. I say recently, but in fact this is a debate that has been going on for a long time. Virgina Woolf, always ahead of her time, was grumbling about personal essays as long ago as 1905 .

Anyway, back in May, Jia Tolentino wrote a piece in the New Yorker arguing that The Personal-Essay Boom is Over (and then, ironically enough, sold a collection of her personal essays to Random House). It spawned many thoughtful and interesting responses, including this feminist defence of the form by New School Professor Susan Shapiro, this wonderful piece about parenting essays by Lauren Apfel at Motherwell , and this piece by Kath Kenny in The Conversation .

If you’ve grown up online, as I have, you will likely have read hundreds, if not thousands of personal essays. It’s true that many of them – the poorly written, exploitative clickbait articles that were the focus of Laura Bennet’s excellent Slate piece back in 2015 – should never have been published.

But it’s also true that a well written personal essay can be a truly beautiful thing. I have a folder on my desktop of saved pieces that I return to again and again: astonishing, illuminating essays about what it means to find your home, to be a mother, to love and laugh and live.

With that in mind, I thought I’d put together a list of my favourite sites for reading personal essays, along with a link to one of my favourite essays on each site. I hope you enjoy exploring them: there’s no clickbait here.

1. Vela: Creative nonfiction written by women, with a focus (although not exclusively) on travel. As well as longform essays, Vela publishes a number of shorter columns on body and identity, books, motherhood and place.

Suggested Read: Mother, Writer, Monster, Maid by Rufi Thorpe

2. Motherwell: A digital publication that tells all sides of the parenting story. Motherwell was only launched in May 2016 but has already established a great reputation for publishing excellent writing on family life.

Suggested Read: What we neglect when the children are young by Lauren Apfel

3. Catapult : Catapult is a book publisher and a provider of online writing classes, but their team also produces an online daily magazine of narrative fiction and nonfiction. It’s the kind of site where you can lose hours to reading.

Suggested Read: Talking to my daughter about Charlottesville by Taylor Harris

4. New York Times : From Lives to Modern Love to Ties , the NYT has long been home to some of the very best personal essays out there. Modern Love is pretty much the holy grail for every essay writer out there – it’s the one that we all want – because as Andrea Jarrell recently wrote in a piece for Lit Hub , it can be a life changer.

Suggested Read: Visiting McDonalds With My Grandmother by Christine Ro

5. Narratively : Launched in 2012, Narratively is a storytelling studio that focuses on ordinary people with extraordinary stories.

Suggested Read: The Women in My Family Had to Be Good With Money by Dena Landon

6. The Manifest-Station : Describing it as ‘personal essays on being human’, founder Jennifer Pastiloff and editor Angela Giles Patel have created a site packed with inspiring, emotional writing.

Suggested Read: On Quiet Resistance by Vivian Wagner

7. Buzzfeed : You may know Buzzfeed best for its listicles and memes, but they also publish a surprising number of really good essays and longreads.

Suggested Read: The Weight of James Arthur Baldwin by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah

8. The Rumpus : Interviews, book reviews, comics, cultural critique… and some truly excellent essays.

Suggested Read: The (Online) Stories We Tell by Amanda Miska

9. Electric Literature : Fiction and creative nonfiction about the intersection of literature and other artforms.

Suggested Read: Trauma, Storytelling and Time Travel by Leslie Kendall Dye

10. Literary Mama : Not only does Literary Mama feature stunning writing, they also publish a comprehensive roundup of submission opportunities at other sites. A great place to spend some time whether you’re a reader, a writer, or both!

Suggested Read: The Care and Feeding of a Carnival Goldfish by Ann Klotz

11. Brain, Child : ‘the magazine for thinking mothers’ is how Brain, Child Magazine describes itself, and in the world of parenting websites their pieces are certainly some of the best.

Suggested Read: Mother as Witness by Melissa Uchiyama

12. Full Grown People : Subtitled ‘The Other Awkward Age’, Full Grown People is about romance, family, health, career, dealing with aging loved ones, and more. It’s a place for those of us who feel like we’re just stumbling along, doing the best we can. They publish a new essay twice a week.

Suggested Read: My Father’s Estate by Melissent Zumwalt

13. The Establishment : Funded and run by women, the Establishment publishes new content every day. With an intersectional feminist slant, they have featured some of the very best Trump-era writing about politics becoming personal.

Suggested Read: I Was Supposed To Have Good Hair by Ijeoma Oluo

14. Tin House : Literary magazine and book publisher Tin House publishes fiction, essays and poetry, as well as a Lost and Found section dedicated to exceptional but overlooked books, and Readable Feast, which is dedicated to food writing.

Suggested Read: The Ice Cream by Kate Vieira

15. Dame : Another site with a major focus on current affairs and politics, but also an excellent First Person section which is worth exploring.

Suggested Read: I Used to Run Toward Danger by Vanessa Hua

16. Aeon : An online magazine of ideas and culture, Aeon publishes essays, articles and videos, many with a philosophical or scientific slant.

Suggested Read: On the lonely midnight trail of Orkney’s corncrakes by Amy Liptrot

17. Refinery 29 : Fancy-pants lifestyle site Refinery 29 has a strong focus on beauty, fashion and entertainment, but dig into it a little and you’ll also find some well written personal essays on everything from politics to motherhood.

Suggested Read: Dinner for One by Donna Freydken

18. Mothers Always Write : Poetry and essays written by mothers. MAW run regular essay writing classes online and many of the pieces published on the site are the result of those efforts.

Suggested Read: The Alchemy of Motherhood by Lisa Lopez Smith

19. Overland : Australian literary journal Overland has been publishing progressive writing on culture since the 1950s. The quarterly mag is supplemented by regular content on their website, and if you’re looking for smart, engaging personal essays with an Aussie slant, this is the place to go.

Suggested Read: Kids are Gross: on feminists and agency by Caitlin McGregor

20. Purple Clover : Targeted at over 50s who are ‘young at heart’ this is a fab site, packed with essays and articles by writers who are comfortable in their own skin.

Suggested Read: Those Wet Noodles are Strands of my DNA by Leslie Kendall Dye

Do you have any sites that you love?

Let me know what I’ve missed by leaving a comment below.

Photo by Dana Marin on Unsplash

10 Essential Essay-Length Memoirs You Can Read Online for Free

Short insights with big impacts.

Photo Credit: Unsplash/Sincerely Media

Are you a fan of anecdotal reading, but lacking the time to dive into a 300 page memoir? Do you love the specificity of short essays? Or are you looking for a taste of an author’s work before you peek any deeper into their psyche? Then you might consider looking into some essay-length memoirs—think of them as memoir examples, rather than full-fledged books.

Whether you’re hoping to find a piece of writing that makes you feel less alone, or you want to expand your understanding of the human race, these true accounts will stick with you. Here are 10 phenomenal memoir examples you can read online right now for free.

Related: The Best Essay Collections to Add to Your TBR List

"Me Talk Pretty One Day"

by David Sedaris

Photo Credit: Chris Karidis/Unsplash

Comedian and author David Sedaris wrote the memoir essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day” about his time living in Paris to learn the French language. While matriculating as a middle-aged man has its benefits—"No one will ever again card me for a drink or demand that I weave a floor mat out of newspapers"—it doesn't spare him, or any of his peers, from the abuse of their teacher. Sedaris recounts carrying a special brand of insecurity, tackling the complexity of language and the thrill of being a humorist going toe-to-toe with a stern and scathing professeure .

For collections of Sedaris’ writing, be sure to check out Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim and When You Are Engulfed in Flames .

Related: 13 Famous Memoirs Everyone Should Read Once

"Age Appropriate"

by Jen Doll

Jen Doll is a freelance journalist—whose credits include articles for The Atlantic , Esquire , and New York Magazine —and author of the young adult novel Unclaimed Baggage . In this anecdotal essay about a summer vacation spent with family, Doll explores what it means to bring your teenage self along into adulthood. Stuck between the frustration of being treated like a child by her parents, and the ever-present desire to run from the strains of adult self-sufficiency, she writes to come to terms with the different selves she houses in the context of her surroundings.

Related: 15 Best Memoirs That Will Change Your Outlook on Life

"The Price of Black Ambition"

by Roxane Gay

In “The Price of Black Ambition,” Roxane Gay interweaves a timeline of her struggles and successes with a frank discussion on the sociopolitical racism inherent in the United States. She speaks on the fact that children of color are often given an inflated sense of “ambition” at a young age, as they must work twice as hard with half as much to achieve opportunities that are more carelessly given to their white peers. And, despite the exceptional amounts of work people of color put in to move forward in life, their efforts are regularly regarded as less than—their presence in “white” circles is considered a fluke or consequence of required diversity. She refers to her ambition as a hunger that can never be satisfied in the current status quo of America.

Gay is most notable for her essay collection Bad Feminist , as well as her fiction novel An Untamed State .

Related: 8 Extraordinary Biographies About Strong Women

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"My Dad Tried to Kill Me with an Alligator"

by Harrison Scott Key

Photo Credit: Karl Bewick/Unsplash

Harrison Scott Key is the author of two memoirs: Congratulations, Who Are You Again? and The World’s Largest Man . Key details one humorous afternoon on Mississippi’s Pearl River, where he believes his brother’s “badass” antics and his father’s gruff and wild nature almost led to his death-by-alligator. Through a consideration of the differences between him and his father, he contemplates how his near-death experience might have shaped his adult life. Remembering his father fondly, Key reconsiders his own path of fatherhood.

Related: 10 Moving Biographies and Memoirs

"Explicit Violence"

by Lidia Yuknavitch

Known for her provocative novels Dora: A Headcase , The Small Backs of Children , and The Book of Joan , Lidia Yuknavitch wrote “Explicit Violence” about the terrible abuses she suffered throughout her lifetime. She talks not just of the physical acts, but the ways in which violence changed her state of mind. Yuknavitch is honest about the ways in which she was made to feel like she deserved the violence heaped upon her—and if how she didn’t deserve it, she should become the kind of person that might deserve it. With a sharp clarity, she condemns the ways in which those who suffer abuses, particularly women, are made to feel as though to talk about it is an inconvenience on those who could never understand.

For more from the life of Lidia Yuknavitch, she has also published the full-length memoir The Chronology of Water .

"Surviving Anxiety"

by Scott Stossel

In the essay “Surviving Anxiety,” journalist and author Scott Stossel opens up about his experience with mental illness. Suffering from anxiety since infancy, Stossel paints a startling and surprising picture of the measures he has to go through to appear unaffected and “normal” due to his internal (and often irrational) worries. In an honest detailing of therapeutic, medicinal, and self-medicinal attempts to get his high-functioning anxiety under control, he expresses the frustrations and constant battle those who suffer from mental illness experience. For a deeper look into Stossel’s experience and the history of anxiety, read his full-length memoir My Age of Anxiety .

"Darkness Visible"

by William Styron

Photo Credit: Ian Espinosa/Unsplash

William Styron, acclaimed writer of Sophie’s Choice and The Confessions of Nat Turner , suffered deeply from bouts of depression. In his memoir essay, “Darkness Visible,” Styron is compelled to speak out about his struggle with mental illness after the suicide of Primo Levi. To combat the ignorance and taboo nature surrounding depression, Styron speaks about his own struggles with dark emotions, as well as the difficult path of healing. In the book of the same name, Styron expands upon this essay in a more complete memoir.

Related: William Styron: A Life in Books

"No Labels, No Drama, Right?"

by Jordana Narin

This enlightening and insightful essay comes from Jordana Narin, the winner of the New York Times 2015 Modern Love College Essay contest. Her memoir account exemplifies how new relationships have changed in the modern era, often careening toward an amorphous understanding between two people. She touches on an inclination to avoid not only labels, but vulnerability. Narin outlines how in a situation where the feelings are no less profound than something “real,” people are putting obstacles in their own paths by embracing an aversion to emotional honesty.

"I Was Pregnant, and Then I Wasn't"

by Laura Turner

Photo Credit: freestocks.org/Unsplash

Laura Turner is a journalist who has written for such publications as the New York Times , The Atlantic , Glamour , and The Verge , with a book in-progress about the cultural history of anxiety. In this tear-jerking short memoir, Turner talks about her recent experience with a miscarriage. Her account encapsulates the worries of burgeoning motherhood put at sudden odds with grief and an overwhelming feeling of suddenly being alone. In an especially poignant and candid moment, Turner writes, “Your life doesn’t change, and that’s the strange part—because it was supposed to.”

Related: 7 Tragic Memoirs That Deserve Your Tears

"After Life"

by Joan Didion

Following the death of her husband in 2003, renowned essayist, journalist, and author Joan Didion penned “After Life.” In her essay, Didion describes the moments leading up to her husband’s sudden death, and continues on in aching detail about the moments following her realization that he was gone. She describes her “waves” of grief which were at the same time both strange and typical, and reaches for an explanation of how different grief can be when it’s unexpected.

More of Didion’s profound writings include Slouching Toward Bethlehem , The White Album , and After Henry .

Fiction & Memoirs From 6 Influential Writers

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Eleven Great Personal Essays to Read this Week...

Plus: workshops from narratively academy and literary liberation, and "summer salons" from fawc.

Welcome to Memoir Land —a newsletter edited by Sari Botton , now featuring four verticals:

Memoir Monday , a weekly curation of the best personal essays from around the web brought to you by Narratively , The Rumpus , Granta , Guernica , Oldster Magazine , Literary Hub , Orion Magazine , The Walrus , and Electric Literature . Below is this week’s curation.

First Person Singular , featuring original personal essays. Recently I published “ The Bargain ” by Frances Dodds .

The Lit Lab , featuring interviews and essays on craft and publishing. There are also occasional writing prompts and exercises for paid subscribers . Recently I posted “ The Prompt-O-Matic #15 ,” and “ The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #12: Carvell Wallace ,” and “ The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #13: Laurie Stone .”

Goodbye to All That , where I’m continuing to explore my fascination with the most wonderful and terrible city in the world, something I began doing with two NYC-centric anthologies, Goodbye to All That , and Never Can Say Goodbye . Recently I published “ You Are Where You Eat ,” by Vivian Manning-Schaffel.

Memoir Land is a reader-supported publication that pays contributors for original essays and interviews. To support this work, become a paid subscriber.

Please note: I am no longer posting about these roundups on X/Twitter.

Essays from partner publications…

Black feminism for beyonce, megan, and me, by jennifer stewart.

“All of this changed when Megan Thee Stallion entered my life after my divorce. My socially conservative world avoided talking about sexual pleasure. It seemed that God prioritized two things: male pleasure and childbirth. The woman’s pleasure was never a consideration, and women responded with humor by positioning sex as a sort of relationship tax. From white housewives to black girls from around the way, sex became a way to get what we wanted out of men, whether it be jewelry or a designer bag, or a new kitchen appliance. Sexual pleasure was demoted to a happy, infrequent, surprise.”

by Lacy M. Johnson

“The spring after the hurricane, when the pool reopened and my children returned to swim team, I watched them every afternoon from the shade on the pool deck: the confidence of each breath above water, the strength and grace of every stroke, how the water almost seemed to part for them…After practice, when all the swimmers and their parents had gone home, I returned to the pool alone, lowered my body into the water, took a deep breath, and tried to remember what I had seen: first one arm and then the other, turning the head up over the shoulder to breathe. It wasn’t as easy as my children made it look.”

Sinking Town

By amitava kumar.

“The reason I came to Joshimath was to see the houses that had developed cracks. I had read reports about a sinking Himalayan town, and understood, in a vague way, that the town’s fate was tied to poor development and ecological disaster.”

What Should You Do with Your Stuff before You Die?

By christina myers.

“A few objects will outlast us; we can imagine our jewellery going on to children or grandchildren, and a solid hammer can be handed down over a few generations. But most of the goods that pass through our hands are short lived in the grand scheme of things. We will always need another one, of whatever we’ve just bought, at some point. Until one day we won’t.”

Loving Renee Back

By [sarah] cavar.

“I don’t know how to look a ghost, this ghost or any other, in the eye. I never learned. Instead, I see Renee––tall, bracelet-laden, jingling––with the rest of my senses. I smell her; she smelled the way every mom except my own smelled, like a stranger-woman whose hugs had teeth. She shared the often-grating accent my grandparents also possessed, situated as we were a mere mistake from Rhode Island, another moment from Massachusetts.”

What My Father Left Me (an excerpt of “Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History”)

By margaret juhae lee.

“When he and my mother moved into Mirabella in 2015, I had urged my father to sell off the land that was still under his name. He was the patriarchal head of the family—the eldest son of the eldest son, the one supposedly in charge…‘Dad, I don’t want to have to deal with land in Korea after you die.’ My father discovered that a family member had forged his name on one of the land deeds, as did another relative from the generation before him.”

Essays from around the web…

Statues and the colonised mind, by farah ahmed .

“But this morning I saw a woman in front of it and cursing. She tore the flowers off the statue, threw them in the bushes and after shaking her fist at Gandhi, walked away swearing. I was shocked by her reaction. Wasn’t the statue just a mound of bronze? And what was it doing aside from reigning over the park so peacefully? Obviously, the statue had triggered something in the woman.”

by Kristen Gentry

“We were on our way inside to call home when Mama pulled up, delivering a quiet apology. She said she’d overslept, which sounded about right. I hadn’t yet learned to question her, at least verbally, though my unease was growing. Why was she always sleeping so much? So deeply? Why did it seem like she was asleep even when she was awake?”

Junior Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

By dave o'karma.

“I started working on a knuckleball…Why, you may ask? Does it have anything to do with the recent loss of a job I've worked for 30 years?…Yep, that was soul-crushing. Still more devastating is knowing that at 56, my life's résumé feels fossilized, typewritten, landlined and snail-mailed in an iPad-Twitter-Android world that demands breakneck speed.”

by Diane Zinna

“The sky is opening up, a slit in the fabric of the night-gone-strange. You turn and your house full of girls is a strobing firefly. So small. They’ve been so mean all night. This was a mean dare. Nicole said gah, just do something for once in your life, you are so boring, so useless. It was your birthday but Jen G. said it was like you weren’t even there. Your eyes are full of sweat, tears, drips of rain. You’re so small in the rain. You were supposed to touch the sign. It was part of the dare. But you need both hands to cover you. You take longer than you should to decide which hand to move. A car appears at the end of the street and slows. Now the night retreats and it’s just you like a butterfly pinned to a black board. You turn away from the car to hide your face, the parts that your hands cover. Like a child who thinks they’re invisible if they close their eyes….From the car, a man’s voice: Young lady, young lady. ”

Borrowed Light

By sai pradhan.

“A series of cables were hooked up to the orb, as if it was all nothing more than a simple construction site. I live in Hong Kong, so I suppose, technically, there should have been unending bamboo scaffolding as well, but there wasn’t.”

🚨Announcements:

📢 this week at narratively academy: how to write a nonfiction book that reads like a novel.

New workshop, starting this week: The Art of Writing a Nonfiction Book That Reads Like a Novel . Author Audrey Clare Farley leads this 8-week workshop for writers working on book-length narrative nonfiction in genres such as memoir, biography, history or true crime.

Learn More/Sign Up

📢 LETTERS FOR REVOLUTION: A Two-Hour Workshop from Literary Liberation on June 8th

Throughout history, Black women have resisted oppression. From colonization to the #metoo movement, Black women have done the labor of building community, seeking justice, and creating safe spaces for others. Letters For Revolution is a historical fiction writing course, where true historical stories of women who resisted oppression are combined with epistolary writing techniques. This story combines the best of history and fiction and gives you the tools to ground yourself in storytelling.

📢 Attend “Summer Salons” at Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center:

A lineup of influential figures in the arts and culture scene will host Summer Salons at Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center from May 31st to September 7th. Poets Tracy K. Smith and Major Jackson, curator Helen Molesworth, photographer Catherine Opie, author Sarah Schulman, and journalist Peter Slevin will lead intimate weekend conversations and workshops.

Whether attending in person or via live stream, participants will engage directly with the artists in unmoderated discussions, followed by Q&A sessions and hands-on workshops. Prices are determined based on affordability, and all ticket sales will support the Fine Arts Work Center’s commitment to providing free arts and culture events, including this summer’s nightly readings and artist talks hosted each week Monday through Wednesday nights, open art studios, and open-mic readings on Thursday nights, among other free events. The lineup:

Poet Tracy K. Smith with Poet Roger Reeves

Curator and Writer Helen Molesworth with Fine Art Photographer Catherine Opie

Writer Sarah Schulman with Journalist Peter Slevin

Poet Major Jackson with Poet Jane Hirshfield

📢 Attention Publications and writers interested in having published essays considered for inclusion in our weekly curation:

By thursday of each week, please send to [email protected]:.

The title of the essay and a link to it.

The name of the author, and the author’s Twitter handle. Nope…not doing Twitter anymore! Read and share the newsletter to find out/spread the word about whose pieces are featured.

A paragraph or a few lines from the piece that will most entice readers.

Please be advised that we cannot accept all submissions, nor respond to the overwhelming number of emails received. Also, please note that we don’t accept author submissions from our partner publications.

You can also support Memoir Monday—and indie bookstores!—by browsing this Bookshop.org list of every book that’s been featured at the Memoir Monday reading series. It’s a great place to find some new titles to add to your TBR list!

Ready for more?

18 Essay-Length Short Memoirs to Read Online on Your Lunch Break

We scoured collections, magazines, and online journals to bring you the 18 best short memoir examples you can read over your lunch break.

Emily Polson

Emily Polson is a freelance writer and publishing assistant at Simon & Schuster. Originally from central Iowa, she studied English and creative writing at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, before moving to a small Basque village to teach English to trilingual teenagers. Now living in Brooklyn, she can often be found meandering through Prospect Park listening to a good audiobook. Twitter: @emilycpolson | https://emilycpolson.wordpress.com/

View All posts by Emily Polson

I love memoirs and essays, so the genre of essay-length short memoirs is one of my favorites. I love delving into the details of other people’s lives. The length allows me to read broadly on a whim with minimal commitment. In roughly 5–30 minutes, I can consume a complete morsel of literature, which always leaves me happier than the same amount of time spent doom-scrolling through my various social news feeds.

What are short memoirs?

What exactly are short memoirs? I define them as essay-length works that weave together life experiences around a central theme. You see examples of short memoirs all the time on sites like Buzzfeed and The New York Times . Others are stand-alone pieces published in essay collections.

Memoir essays were my gateway into reading full-length memoirs. It was not until I took a college class on creative nonfiction that I realized memoirs were not just autobiographies of people with exciting lives. Anyone with any amount of life experience can write a memoir—no dramatic childhood or odd-defying life accomplishments required. A short memoir might be an account of a single, life-changing event, or it may be reflection on a period of growth or transition.

Of course, when a young adult tells people she likes writing creative nonfiction—not journalism or technical writing—she hears a lot of, “You’re too young to write a memoir!” and “What could someone your age possibly have to write about?!” As Flannery O’Connor put it, however, “The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can’t make something out of a little experience, you probably won’t be able to make it out of a lot. The writer’s business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it.”

Memoir essay examples

As the lit magazine Creative Nonfiction puts it, personal essays are just “True stories, well told.” And everyone has life stories worth telling.

Here are a few of my favorite memoir examples that are essay length.

SHORT MEMOIRS ABOUT GROWING UP

Scaachi koul, “there’s no recipe for growing up”.

In this delightful essay, Koul talks about trying to learn the secrets of her mother’s Kashmiri cooking after growing up a first-generation American. The story is full of vivid descriptions and anecdotal details that capture something so specific it transcends to the realm of universal. It’s smart, it’s funny, and it’ll break your heart a little as Koul describes “trying to find my mom at the bottom of a 20-quart pot.”

ASHLEY C. FORD, “THE YEAR I GREW WILDLY WHILE MEN LOOKED ON”

This memoir essay is for all the girls who went through puberty early in a world that sexualizes children’s bodies. Ford weaves together her experiences of feeling at odds with her body, of being seen as a “distraction” to adult men, of being Black and fatherless and hungry for love. She writes, “It was evident that who I was inside, who I wanted to be, didn’t match the intentions of my body. Outside, there was no little girl to be loved innocently. My body was a barrier.”

Kaveh Akbar, “How I Found Poetry in Childhood Prayer”

Akbar writes intense, searing poetry, but this personal essay contextualizes one of his sweetest poems, “Learning to Pray,” which is cradled in the middle of it. He describes how he fell in love with the movement, the language, and the ceremony of his Muslim family’s nightly prayers. Even though he didn’t (and doesn’t) speak Arabic, Akbar points to the musicality of these phonetically-learned hymns as “the bedrock upon which I’ve built my understanding of poetry as a craft and as a meditative practice.” Reading this essay made me want to reread his debut poetry collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf , all over again.

JIA TOLENTINO, “LOSING RELIGION AND FINDING ECSTASY IN HOUSTON”

New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino grew up attending a Houston megachurch she referred to as “the Repentagon.” In this personal essay, she describes vivid childhood memories of her time there, discussing how some of the very things she learned from the church contributed to her growing ambivalence toward it and its often hypocritical congregants. “Christianity formed my deepest instincts,” she writes, “and I have been walking away from it for half my life.” As the essay title suggests, this walking away coincided with her early experiences taking MDMA, which offered an uncanny similarity to her experience of religious devotion.

funny short memoirs

Patricia lockwood, “insane after coronavirus”.

Author Patricia Lockwood caught COVID-19 in early March 2020. In addition to her physical symptoms, she chronicled the bizarre delusions she experienced while society also collectively operated under the delusion that this whole thing would blow over quickly. Lockwood has a preternatural ability to inject humor into any situation, even the dire ones, by highlighting choice absurdities. This is a rare piece of pandemic writing that will make you laugh instead of cry–unless it makes you cry from laughing.

Harrison Scott Key, “My Dad Tried to Kill Me with an Alligator”

This personal essay is a tongue-in-cheek story about the author’s run-in with an alligator on the Pearl River in Mississippi. Looking back on the event as an adult, Key considers his father’s tendencies in light of his own, now that he himself is a dad. He explores this relationship further in his book-length memoir, The World’s Largest Man , but this humorous essay stands on its own. (I also had the pleasure of hearing him read this aloud during my school’s homecoming weekend, as Key is an alumnus of my alma mater.)

David Sedaris, “Me Talk Pretty One Day”

Sedaris’s humor is in a league of its own, and he’s at his best in the title essay from Me Talk Pretty One Day . In it, he manages to capture the linguistic hilarities that ensue when you combine a sarcastic, middle-aged French student with a snarky French teacher.

SAMANTHA IRBY, “THE WORST FRIEND DATE I EVER HAD”

Samantha Irby is one of my favorite humorists writing today, and this short memoir essay about the difficulty of making friends as an adult is a great introduction to her. Be prepared for secondhand cringe when you reach the infamous moment she asks a waiter, “Are you familiar with my work?” After reading this essay, you’ll want to be, so check out Wow, No Thank You . next.

Bill Bryson, “Coming Home”

Bryson has the sly, subtle humor that only comes from Americans who have spent considerable time living among dry-humored Brits. In “Coming Home,” he talks about the strange sensation of returning to America after spending his first twenty years of adulthood in England. This personal essay is the first in a book-length work called I’m a Stranger Here Myself , in which Bryson revisits American things that feel like novelties to outsiders and the odd former expat like himself.

Thought-provoking Short memoirs

Tommy orange, “how native american is native american enough”.

Many people claim some percentage of Indigenous ancestry, but how much is enough to “count”? Novelist Tommy Orange–author of There There –deconstructs this concept, discussing his relationship to his Native father, his Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, and his son, who will not be considered “Native enough” to join him as an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. “ How come math isn’t taught with stakes?” he asks in this short memoir full of lingering questions that will challenge the way you think about heritage.

Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, “I Had a Stroke at 33”

Lee’s story is interesting not just because she had a stroke at such a young age, but because of how she recounts an experience that was characterized by forgetting. She says that after her stroke, “For a month, every moment of the day was like the moment upon wakening before you figure out where you are, what time it is.” With this personal essay, she draws readers into that fragmented headspace, then weaves something coherent and beautiful from it.

Kyoko Mori, “A Difficult Balance: Am I a Writer or a Teacher?”

In this refreshing essay, Mori discusses balancing “the double calling” of being a writer and a teacher. She admits that teaching felt antithetical to her sense of self when she started out in a classroom of apathetic college freshmen. When she found her way into teaching an MFA program, however, she discovered that fostering a sanctuary for others’ words and ideas felt closer to a “calling.” While in some ways this makes the balance of shifting personas easier, she says it creates a different kind of dread: “Teaching, if it becomes more than a job, might swallow me whole and leave nothing for my life as a writer.” This memoir essay is honest, well-structured, and layered with plenty of anecdotal details to draw in the reader.

Alex Tizon, “My Family’s Slave”

In this heartbreaking essay, Tizon pays tribute to the memory of Lola, the domestic slave who raised him and his siblings. His family brought her with them when they emigrated to America from the Philippines. He talks about the circumstances that led to Lola’s enslavement, the injustice she endured throughout her life, and his own horror at realizing the truth about her role in his family as he grew up. While the story is sad enough to make you cry, there are small moments of hope and redemption. Alex discusses what he tried to do for Lola as an adult and how, upon her death, he traveled to her family’s village to return her ashes.

Classic short memoirs

James baldwin, “notes of a native son”.

This memoir essay comes from Baldwin’s collection of the same name. In it, he focuses on his relationship with his father, who died when Baldwin was 19. He also wrestles with growing up black in a time of segregation, touching on the historical treatment of black soldiers and the Harlem Riot of 1943. His vivid descriptions and honest narration draw you into his transition between frustration, hatred, confusion, despair, and resilience.

JOAN DIDION, “GOODBYE TO ALL THAT”

Didion is one of the foremost literary memoirists of the twentieth century, combining journalistic precision with self-aware introspection. In “Goodbye to All That,” Didion recounts moving to New York as a naïve 20-year-old and leaving as a disillusioned 28-year-old. She captures the mystical awe with which outsiders view the Big Apple, reflecting on her youthful perspective that life was still limitless, “that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.” This essay concludes her masterful collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem .

Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried”

This is the title essay from O’Brien’s collection, The Things They Carried . It’s technically labeled a work of fiction, but because the themes and anecdotes are pulled from O’Brien’s own experience in the Vietnam War, it blurs the lines between fact and fiction enough to be included here. (I’m admittedly predisposed to this classification because a college writing professor of mine included it on our creative nonfiction syllabus.) The essay paints an intimate portrait of a group of soldiers by listing the things they each carry with them, both physical and metaphorical. It contains one of my favorite lines in all of literature: “They all carried ghosts.”

Multi-Media Short Memoirs

Allie brosh, “richard”.

In this blog post/webcomic, Allie Brosh tells the hilarious story about the time as a child that she, 1) realized neighbors exist, and 2) repeatedly snuck into her neighbor’s house, took his things, and ultimately kidnapped his cat. Her signature comic style drives home the humor in a way that will split your sides. The essay is an excerpt from Brosh’s second book, Solutions and Other Problems , but the web version includes bonus photos and backstory. For even more Allie classics, check out “Adventures in Depression” and “Depression Part Two.”

George Watsky, “Ask Me What I’m Doing Tonight”

Watsky is a rapper and spoken word poet who built his following on YouTube. Before he made it big, however, he spent five years performing for groups of college students across the Midwest. “Ask Me What I’m Doing Tonight!” traces that soul-crushing monotony while telling a compelling story about trying to connect with people despite such transience. It’s the most interesting essay about boredom you’ll ever read, or in this case watch—he filmed a short film version of the essay for his YouTube channel. Like his music, Watsky’s personal essays are vulnerable, honest, and crude, and the whole collection, How to Ruin Everything , is worth reading.

If you’re looking for even more short memoirs, keep an eye on these pages from Literary Hub , Buzzfeed , and Creative Nonfiction . You can also delve into these 25 nonfiction essays you can read online and these 100 must-read essay collections . Also be sure to check out the “Our Reading Lives” tag right here on Book Riot, where you’ll find short memoirs like “Searching for Little Free Libraries as a Way to Say Goodbye” and “How I Overcame My Fear of Reading Contemporary Poets.”

10 personal essays that will teach you how to write

Mar 9, 2017 | Writing

“How do you learn to write?” It’s a question I ask myself often, particularly when teaching writing classes. Hanif Kureishi, author of Buddha in Suburbia and a creative writing instructor, says you can’t. Does he think the same when it comes to writing personal essays? I disagree with Kureishi. Obviously. How could I spend the last 20 years of my life teaching writing — personal writing, fiction, non-fiction, composition — if I believed such a thing?

But the classroom alone will not teach you to write. You need to practice and you NEED TO READ!

Every month in The Writer’s Process — my online writing academy to build writing skills, find a community and make money with your works — I bring in a guest speaker to teach one aspect of the business of writing. Anjali Enjeti , a writer, editor and also a creative writing instructor, joined us to teach The Art of Writing Compelling Personal Essays. Over the course of an incredible hour, Anjali gave us tips on how to focus your essay. She offered advice on what to do when your emotions are still raw, and she shared her favorite personal essays!

Reading is the very best way to improve your writing!

You nod your head in vigorous agreement. You catch your breath. At times, you clench your fists because you know something awful is coming, but you can’t help but continue reading. Your favorite books and essays are your writer’s toolbox. When you read them, you see new ways to structure your story, uncover creative ideas for dialogue and uncover ways to strengthen your message and reach your reader more powerfully.

“Good writers borrow. Great writers steal,” said TS Eliot.

Or perhaps it was Pablo Picasso who said that. Or maybe it was Aaron Sorkin. I dunno. But the sentiment remains. We writers take what we see, hear, taste, touch, and experience and transpose them to the pages on which we write. The essays below span a wide breadth of topics and represent different styles of writing. At the heart of each, though, lies a truth, a concise mirror held up to reflect a common lived experience. We may be left breathless, moved, laughing, devastated or anything else on the emotional spectrum. Most of all, they leave us inspired to write. Reading one essay is a lesson learned, the ten pieces of writing below offer you a comprehensive course in personal writing. You’ll learn dialogue, structure and character development. They’ll teach you how to build tension and what questions you should ask yourself as you write. For each, I’ve included a brief excerpt from the piece as well as a link so you can read it yourself. And finally at the end, an added gift. I’ve included a recent piece from Anjali, so you can not only revel in her favorite essays but see how her own reading creates the narrative and beauty of her writing.

10 essays that will teach you how to write

1. Claudia Rankine’s Citizen

You are in the dark, in the car, watching the black-tarred street being swallowed by speed; he tells you his dean is making him hire a person of color when there are so many great writers out there. You think maybe this is an experiment and you are being tested or retroactively insulted or you have done something that communicates this is an okay conversation to be having.

I love you like xo. Ever since my brother died, I have dialed his disconnected telephone numbers, tracking where they terminate over time, hoping to cross his ghost voice in the wires. He is finally returning my call. We have a downlink .

3. Ann Beard’s The Fourth State of Matter

I have an ex-beauty queen coming over to get rid of the squirrels for me. She has long red hair and a smile that can stop trucks. I’ve seen her wrestle goats, scare off a giant snake, and express a dog’s anal glands, all in one afternoon. I told her on the phone that a family of squirrels is living in the upstairs of my house. “They’re making a monkey out of me,” I said.

4. Lydia Yuknavitch’s Woven

It was a night I wanted never to end. Or, I wish with all my heart that the story ended there. Mythic youth. But that’s not where the story ended.

5. Roger Rosenblatt’s Making Toast

Bubbies has been attending to his own education—proceeding from one word, to several, to two-word sentences, to three and more. Some say that children learn to speak in order to tell the stories already in them. An early word of his was “back.” He wanted reassurance that when any of us left the house, or even a room, we were coming back.

6. Eula Biss’ Time and Distance Overcome Content warning on this one. It is a difficult read. Lynchings and racism.

The poles, of course, were not to blame. It was only coincidence that they became convenient as gallows, because they were tall and straight, with a crossbar, and because they stood in public places. And it was only coincidence that the telephone poles so closely resembled crucifixes.

7. Mariama Lockington’s What a Black Woman Wishes Her Adoptive White Parents Knew

I know that my hair is curly and thick, that my mother wants me to love it natural. I know that when she drops me off at Jasmine’s to get my hair braided I feel safe. That even though it hurts when she untangles my kinks I don’t mind because she smells so good. I learn that I love the smell of black women. Of grease, flat irons, and cocoa butter. I know I am black and that my parents love me, but I know I am different.

8. Tim Bascom’s Picturing the Personal Essay: A Visual Guide

Contrary to the high school teacher’s oft-repeated maxim—“Show, don’t tell!”—the essayist is free both to show and tell. In fact, I once heard the nonfiction writer Adam Hochschild scold a group of MFA students for being so subtle in their writing that they left out critical signposts that readers needed. “Don’t be so afraid to say what you mean,” he counseled.

9. Laurie Herzel’s But Will They Love Me When I’m Done

Late in her mother’s life, Hampl asked her why she eventually allowed the poem to be published, hoping her mother would say that it was because the poem was so good. Instead, her mother said, “Because I loved you. I’ve always hated it.”

10. Anjali Enjeti’s Drinking Chai to Savannah

I survey the tourists poring over guidebooks, tapping their phones. I worry one of them will mutter something derogatory about this group of seven brown women whose mere presence seems to have doubled the minority population of this historic district.

What’s your favorite personal essay? Leave a link in the comments!

About leigh.

I'm a writer and mentor currently living in Argentina. Want to know how I created my ideal writing life?

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The personal essay.

Photograph of blank Microsoft Word document titled "The Most Awesome College Essay Ever"

Unlike the rest of your application, which primarily consists of filling in boxes, the personal essay gives you the freedom to essentially write about whatever you want. No rules! Show who you are! Which sounds pretty cool, until you’re sitting there looking at a blank Word document.

While the personal essay is a great opportunity to infuse your voice into the application, I think some people (cough, me, cough) can get overwhelmed by it to the point where they don’t know how to begin. What do I write about? What makes me stand out? How can I explain all of this in only a few hundred words?

Well, as someone who eventually managed to get some words down on that blank document and turn out a decent college essay, here are a few words of advice.

1. Start by writing something.

I know, that sounds really obvious. But sometimes the hardest part of writing is just getting started – if you spend too much time criticizing your ideas before you write anything down, you won’t get anywhere. Write a few sentences, jot down some random ideas, note a couple anecdotes that might be interesting… just get something on paper that you can look back to. Maybe one of those ideas will catch, and BOOM you have an essay – or maybe you’ll look back to this list after a few weeks and think of something else that you would rather write about. That’s fine! The beginning of the creative process involves coming up with ideas, judging them comes later. Trust me, I took a class on this (really: it was a psych class called “Creativity: Madmen, Geniuses, and Harvard Students.”)

2. Think about something that has some significance to you.

Many students feel like they have to write about some huge, life-changing, important event in their lives. If you have something like this that you want to write about, that’s great! However, you can also write an awesome essay about something other than The Most Important Thing Ever. It can be the littlest things, if you explain their significance well, that actually stand out. In my case, somewhere in my essay I mentioned that I got up at 5:37am (rather than 5:30 or 5:45) because I liked prime numbers – and the first thing my admissions officer said when I walked into the room for my interview was, “So, prime numbers, huh?” That being said, remember that this is a college essay, so keep this audience and goal in mind as you write. When they finish reading, what do you want the admissions officers to know about you? Does this essay demonstrate something about who you are and what you care about? If not, you might want to go back to the drawing board.

3. Don’t be afraid to start over.

After finishing my first draft, I was glad to have something, but I wasn’t completely happy with it either. A week or two later, as I was reading over my essay again, I had an idea for a totally different topic - so I opened another document and completely started over. The second attempt was so much better, and I felt happy with how it turned out. It can be hard to scrap an initial attempt after spending so much time on it, but think of that time as just part of the process of getting to what you really want to write about.

4. Get an outside perspective.

One of the most useful things I did while working on my college essay was asking a couple people to read it over. At the time, I had two drafts that I was choosing between, and I wasn’t sure which one captured “me” better. When I asked my parents and teacher what they thought, they unanimously picked one option over the other. In the end, it’s important to have an essay that you are happy with – but sometimes having a fresh set of eyes can help you see what that is.

This is an important step! Both you, and perhaps someone who knows you well, should read over your essay and make sure it is in tip-top shape before you turn it in. There should be no grammatical or spelling mistakes – that gives the impression that you did not take your time on it. I know you’ve spent a long time on it by this point, but those last edits are super important!

The personal essay is a snippet of who you are and where you’re coming from – a snapshot for the admissions officers to look at as they read your application. It will never be able to capture everything about you, but you want to make sure that you’re giving them your best angle. So sit down, smile, and get to writing!

Halie Class of Alumni

Student Voices

Dear homesick international student at harvard college.

David Class of '25

A photo of a man in sunglasses looking at blue ocean waters.

My Harvard Monomyth

Denzel Class of '24

Applying to Engineering Fellowships?

Denzel Ekes and Astronaut Benjamin Alvin Drew pictured together smiling at the camera.

6 Steps to Writing the Perfect Personal Essay

Personal essays are easy once you know how!

Tips For Adult Students
Getting Your Ged

B.A., English, St. Olaf College

It is the first day of a new school year and your teacher has just assigned a personal essay. They have good reasons for this assignment—personal or narrative essays allow teachers to assess your grasp of language, composition, and creativity.

If you don't know where to start or feel overwhelmed by the open-ended prompt, this list is here to help you navigate the process from beginning to end. Writing about yourself is easy to do when you keep the key ingredients of a great essay in mind.

Find Inspiration and Ideas

You can't begin a personal essay without a topic. If you are stuck on what to write about, look to some of these sources of inspiration:

Consult lists of ideas to get your brain thinking about the possibilities of your essay. Remember that a personal essay is autobiographical, so do not write about anything untrue.
Try writing a stream of consciousness . To do this, start writing whatever is on your mind and don't stop or leave anything out. Even if ideas aren't connected to each other whatsoever, a stream of consciousness gets everything in your brain on paper and often contains many ideas.
Do a little research. Browsing through whatever interests you can really get the creative juices flowing and lead to small self-reflections. Grab onto any of these that you think you might want to write about.

Don't be afraid to ask your teacher what they are looking for. If you still aren't sure what to write about, go to your teacher for suggestions or a more specific prompt.

Understand the Composition of an Essay

Before you start writing, remind yourself of basic essay composition. Almost all essays are made up of three parts: an introduction, a body of information, and a conclusion. The five-paragraph essay is a common iteration of this and it contains an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. Use an outline, or general essay plan, to jot down your ideas before writing.

Introduction : Start your personal essay with a hook, or an interesting sentence that grabs your readers' attention and makes them want to read more. Select a topic that you know you can write an interesting essay about. Once you have a compelling topic, decide on the main idea you want to communicate and use it to capture your readers' interest in the first sentence.

After the hook, use the introductory paragraph to briefly outline the subject of your essay. Your readers should have a clear understanding of the direction of the rest of your piece from the introduction.

Body : The body of your essay is made up of one or more paragraphs that inform your readers about your topic, each paragraph accomplishing this in a unique way.

The structure of a paragraph resembles the structure of an essay. A paragraph contains an attention-grabbing topic sentence, several sentences elaborating on the point of the paragraph, and a conclusion sentence or two that summarizes the main idea. The conclusion sentence of a paragraph should also be used to transition into the next paragraph by smoothly introducing the next topic without going into too much detail.

Each paragraph should have its own idea that is closely related to the topic of the whole essay but elaborates on the main idea in a new way. It is important that topics flow logically from one to the next so that your essay is easy to follow. If your paragraphs are not related to each other or the main idea, your essay may be choppy and incoherent. Keeping your sentences concise also helps with clarity. Feel free to break a large paragraph up into two separate paragraphs if the topic changes or goes on for too long.

Conclusion : Close your essay with a final paragraph that summarizes the points you have made and states the takeaways. When writing personal essays, conclusion paragraphs are where you talk about the lessons you learned, ways that you changed as a result of your subject, or any other insights that were gained from your experience. In short: restate the ideas from the introduction in a new way and wrap up your essay.

Use Appropriate Voice for Essay and Verbs

In English grammar, there are many elements of writing that determine the quality of your work and voice is one of the most important. There are two types of voice: the author's voice and the voice of verbs.

Author's Voice

One of the things your teacher will be looking for when reading your personal essay is the use of voice in your essay, which is your own personal style of telling a story. They will be looking for features of your writing that make it unique, analyze the pacing of your essay, and determine how you establish your authority.

Because personal essays are works of nonfiction, your voice must be reliable. Other than that, you are free to play around with the delivery of your essay. Decide how formal or casual you want to be, how you want to keep the attention of your readers, how you would like your readers to feel when reading your essay, and how you would like your story to come across as a whole.

Voice of Verbs

Don't be confused—verbs have their own voice that is entirely separate from the author's voice. The active voice occurs when the subject of your sentence is performing the action or verb and the passive voice occurs when the subject is receiving the action.

The subject is italicized in the following examples.

Passive : An essay was assigned by Ms. Peterson.

Active : Ms. Peterson assigned a personal essay about summer vacation.

Generally, the active voice is most appropriate for personal essays as it is more effective at progressing a story forward. Using verbs in the active voice also tends to come across as more authoritative.

Be Consistent With Point of View and Tense

Personal essays are about yourself, so it is important that your point of view and tense be consistent with this. Personal essays are almost always written in first person tense, using the pronouns I, we, and us to tell what happened. Readers need to know what something was like from your perspective.

Remember that you can only speak to your own thoughts and feelings in first person tense unless you know for sure what another person was thinking or feeling and can quote them.

Personal essays are also written in the past tense because they describe something that happened to you, not something that is happening or will happen. You cannot speak confidently about experiences that have not happened or are still happening because you have not yet learned from them. Teachers will probably want you to write a personal essay to reflect on a real experience that taught you something.

Use Your Own Vocabulary

Just as you shouldn't lie when writing personal essays, you also shouldn't waver. Your choice of vocabulary can help you establish and maintain themes throughout your essay. Every word matters.

Your goal when writing a personal essay should be authenticity and you need to choose your vocabulary accordingly. Use the words that naturally come to mind when you are writing and don't try to be something that you are not. Your language should fit the topic and guide readers to interpret your writing in a certain way.

Here are some examples of how to choose the right words.

When you are making a statement of opinion or fact, use powerful words that make your ideas clear. For example, say, "I ran like my life depended on it," rather than, "I ran pretty fast."
If you are trying to communicate uncertainty that you felt during an experience, use words that convey these feelings. "I questioned whether or not it was a good idea," rather than, "I didn't know what would happen."
Use positive language. Write about what did happen or what is rather than what did not happen or what is not . "I left room for dessert after dinner," instead of, "I hated dinner and couldn't even finish it."

Always be as descriptive as possible and incorporate all of your senses into your writing. Write about how something looked, sounded, felt, smelled, or tasted to help your readers imagine the experience for themselves. Use adjectives that support what you have described but do not use them to do the work of describing for you.

Edit, Edit, Edit

English grammar is tough even for native English speakers. Brush up on grammar rules before writing and revisit your work when you are finished to ensure that you have written an essay that you can be proud of.

No matter what you write, one of the most important parts of the writing process is editing . It is good practice to give yourself some space from your essay just after finishing it before you dive into editing because this can help you analyze your writing more objectively. A second opinion is always helpful too.

When editing, ask yourself these questions:

Is the grammar/sentence structure of your essay correct?
Is your essay well-organized and easy to follow? Does it flow?
Is your writing on topic throughout the essay?
Will your readers be able to picture what you have described?
Did you make your point?
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by Michelle Boyd Waters, M.Ed.

Essays Every High School Student Should Read

December 4, 2016 in Pedagogy

One of the most important goals of any English class should be to help students learn how to express themselves to an audience — how to tell their own stories, how to provide much-needed information, and how to convince others to see things from a different perspective.

Below are some essays students can read, not only to help them see how such writing is done in the real world, but also to learn more about the world around them.

[bctt tweet=”Need a #mentortext for student essays? Check out these exemplars for personal narrative, argumentative, and expository essay writing.”]

Note : This is a living list. I will continue adding to it as I find important essays and articles, and as my readers make suggestions.

If You Think Racism Doesn’t Exist by Jordan Womack | Lesson Plan

A 17-year-old Oklahoma author details incidents of discrimination he has faced within his own community. Brief, yet impactful, the author’s authenticity strikes readers at their core and naturally leads the audience to consider other perspectives.

Facebook hack ‘worse than when my house burned down’ says teacher by Michelle Boyd Waters, M.Ed.

When a hacker destroyed my Facebook account and I couldn’t find a way to reach out to Facebook, I decided to use my story, voice, and platform to shed light on a situation faced by people around the world. This can serve as a mentor text for students writing personal narratives on shared experiences in the context of current events.

Letter from a Vietnamese to an Iraqi Refugee by Andrew Lam

Vietnamese lecturer, journalist, and author Andrew Lam offers advice in this letter to a young Iraqi refugee he sees in a photograph on the Internet.

Allowing Teenage Boys to Love Their Friends by Jan Hoffman

Learn why early and lifelong friendships are as vital for boys as they are for girls and what happens when those friendships are fractured.

Chris Cecil: Plagiarism Gets You Fired by Leonard Pitts Jr

The Miami Herald columnist and 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary winner castigates a Georgia newspaper editor for plagiarizing his work. This column would go great with this followup article from The Boston Globe: Ga. Editor is Fired for Lifting Columns .

Class Dismissed by Walter Kirn

The author of Lost in the Meritocracy postulates that getting rid of the high school senior year might be good for students.

Complaint Box | Packaging by Dylan Quinn

A high school junior complains about the impossible-to-open packaging faced by consumers of everything “from action figures to zip drives.”

Drowning in Dishes, but Finding a Home by Danial Adkison

In this 2014 essay, a teenager learns important lessons from his boss at Pizza Hut.

How to Tame a Wild Tongue by Gloria Anzaldua

An American scholar of Chicana cultural theory discusses how she maintained her identity by refusing to submit to linguistic terrorism.

Humble Beast: Samaje Perine by John Rohde

The five-time Oklahoma Sportswriter of the Year features the University of Oklahoma’s running back.

In Praise of the F Word by Mary Sherry

An adult literacy program teacher argues that allowing students to fail will actually help them.

The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie

A Native American novelist recounts his experience loving reading and finally writing in spite of a culture that expected him to fail in the “non-Indian world” in order to be accepted.

Lane’s Legacy: One Final Ride by Keith Ryan Cartwright

A heartbreaking look back at the hours before and the circumstances surrounding Lane Frost’s untimely death, followed by reflections on his rise to fame — before and after death.

Learning to Read by Malcolm X

The 1960s Civil Rights leader writes about how educating himself in prison opened his mind and lead him to become one of the leading spokesmen for black separatism.

Learning to Read and Write by Frederick Douglass

A former slave born in 1818 discusses how he learned to read in spite of laws against teaching slaves and how reading opened his eyes to his “wretched condition, without remedy.”

Learning From Animal Friendships by Erica Goode

Scientists consider studying the phenomenon of cross-species animal friendships like the ones you see on YouTube.

Losing Everything, Except What Really Matters by Dan Barry

After a 2011 tornado destroys a house, but spares the family, a reporter writes about what’s important.

The Marked Woman by David Grann

How an Osage Indian family in Oklahoma became the prime target of one of the most sinister crimes in American history.

Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List by Lizette Alvarez

Read about what happens if you happen to share a name of a “suspicious person” on the U.S. No-Fly List.

Newly Homeless in Japan Re-Establish Order Amid Chaos by Michael Wines

After the tsunami that resulted in nuclear disaster in 2011, a reporter writes about the “quiet bravery in the face of tragedy” of the Japanese people.

No Ordinary Joe by Rick Reilly

Why in creation did American Football Conference’s 1981 best young running back Joe Delaney jump into that pit full of water that day, even though he couldn’t swim?

Politics and the English Language By George Orwell

Animal Farm and 1984 author, Orwell correlates the degradation of the English language into multi-syllabic drivel and the corruption of the American political process.

Serving in Florida by Barbara Ehrenreich

The Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America author tells about her experiences attempting to survive on income of low-paying jobs.

Starvation Under the Orange Trees by John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck, who later authored the fictionalized account of Okies in California, The Grapes of Wrath, first wrote this essay documenting the starvation of migrant workers in California during the Great Depression.

To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This by Mandy Len Catron

Is falling in love really a random event, or can two people “love smarter?”

We’ll Go Forward from this Moment by Leonard Pitts

The 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary winner pens a column chronicling the toughness of the American family’s spirit in the face of the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks. He wrote the column one day after the attacks.

What’s Wrong with Black English? by Rachel L. Jones

Jones, a student at Southern Illinois University in the 1980s, wrote this piece for Newsweek. In her essay, Jones adds her story and perspective to the debate over Black English.

Related topics: Mentor Texts , Teaching Writing

About the author

Michelle Boyd Waters, M.Ed.

I am a secondary English Language Arts teacher, a University of Oklahoma student working on my doctorate in Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum with an concentration in English Education and co-Editor of the Oklahoma English Journal. I am constantly seeking ways to amplify students' voices and choices.

A wonderful list of essays! I have neglected to teach essays as literature (only as student writing samples before we began work on an essay, after a novel). I’m looking forward to using these!

Thank you very much! I’d love to hear (or read) your feedback on the selections. Your input can help other teachers decide which essays to teach their students.

This list looks really great. Unfortunately, the first two links I chose were not working. One took me to a professors homepage and the other never opened.

Thank you for letting us know. I checked the “If you think racism doesn’t exist” went to the WordPress.com site where the author wrote his article and “Letter from a Vietnamese to an Iraqi Refugee” went to the Huffington Post article. Is it possible that your school web filter is blocking WordPress and Huffington Post?

Thank you for this. I am teaching a summer class that prepares 8th graders for high school essay writing. Trying to find a way to make it more creative and interesting, even interactive. I like the essays. If you have ideas about specific ways to use them, beyond reading and discussion, I would love to hear them.

You’re welcome! I think additional activities would depend on who your students are, their interests, and which essay(s) you plan to use. Perhaps if you join our RTE Facebook group and tell us about your kids and the essay you want to use, we can devise some activities to help them engage. Check us out here .

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10 Essays To Read Again in 2023

A list of our staff’s favorite essays from the past year.

Hello, New Lines readers,

We hope you’re enjoying a much-needed holiday break. We have a lot in store for 2023, particularly the launch of our print edition. In the meantime, as has become tradition, we wanted to share with you a list of our staff’s favorite essays from the past year. We hope you’ll find something of interest in this eclectic collection of stories.

Wishing you a Happy New Year from the New Lines team!

The Day My Wartime Cat Went Missing, by Rasha Elass

Riada asimovic akyol, strategic initiatives editor.

Many of my close friends tell me that, despite my irrational fear of cats, I’d be a perfect “cat person,” once I dared to confront those fears. I’ve acknowledged the joy and glow in their eyes, when my friends speak of their pets. I’ve observed such bonds curiously and in a more mindful way in the last few years, especially after becoming a mother, responsible for someone else’s life.

The essay “The Day My Wartime Cat Went Missing” was published early in 2022, and was an instant classic. Our Editorial Director, Rasha Elass, writes masterfully about her adventures with adopted cats Pumpkin and Gremlin, whom she first met in Abu Dhabi. She beautifully depicts how they survived a tough war, and the different challenges they’ve been through in the Middle East and the United States. She shares her genuine love and nurturing care, as well as her dread at the possibility of losing them, whether in peacetime or war.

The essay is a gorgeous reminder of the bonds that matter. Check it out for yourself.

How I Survived a Syrian Gulag, by Jaber Baker

Rasha al aqeedi, middle east deputy editor.

The terms “dictatorship,” “fascism,” “authoritarianism” and “totalitarianism” are thrown around today to describe various ruling systems in the world to such an extent that they have lost their actual meaning. Inconveniences such as losing access to a social media platform are compared to the conditions that led to the Holocaust, while wearing a pandemic-imposed mask is akin to living in a gulag.

The Syrian author Jaber Baker takes us on a dark journey through his time in an actual gulag run by Bashar al-Assad’s Baath Party. For me personally, the essay is a masterclass in storytelling and struck more chords and triggered more memories of my childhood and adolescence in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq than I wish it had. The true experiences and traumas of dictatorship face the threat of being drowned out by the noises of victimhood culture. While no one has a monopoly on trauma, Syrians have the right to tell the stories of their torture and suffering. It is a reminder that not all injustices are created equal.

The Last of the Bougainvillea Years, by Zeina Hashem Beck

Erin clare brown, north africa editor.

When faced with an impending move to Paris from Dubai in search of more stability for her family, poet Zeina Hashem Beck is suddenly filled with the pangs of loss — not for the Emirates, where she’d lived since 2006, but for her home in Lebanon. She explores this abstract sense of displacement and longing in her gorgeously crafted essay, written in a pitch-perfect prose that carries the music of poetry through her attempts to sort her belongings, prepare her children, and reassure herself that the displacement is the right call. Through it all Hashem Beck mourns the impending loss of her bougainvillea vines, whose clouds of pink blossoms and wicked thorns come to symbolize in turns her beloved hometown, her Mediterranean identity and in ways, the author herself.

It’s a beautiful meditation on loss and longing, displacement and belonging that reminds us that when we are the right amount of thirsty, we blossom.

What Ukraine Means for Lithuanians Haunted by Soviet Past, by Inga Rudzinskaite-Colman

Amie ferris-rotman, global news editor.

When reading this essay, one feels that an entire generation of Eastern Europeans is speaking, in a single, defiant voice, suddenly with renewed urgency. The globe is so focused on Russia’s horrific assault on Ukraine, and the grim atrocities the Russian military commits practically every day, that we often forget, or perhaps do not realize, the impact the war has on Moscow’s previous victims. In this essay, the analyst Inga Rudzinskaite-Colman, who was born and raised in Vilnius, dives into complicated issues like collective trauma and self-identity. She tells us, in poignant detail, how she and her fellow countrymen and women strived for decades to disassociate themselves from Russia and their Soviet past. But belonging to the Western “club” has also meant uncomfortable compromises, like being “Russiasplained” to. Read this beautifully written essay to peer into the new realities facing the Baltics, Poland and other countries once in Russia’s orbit, who are now finding themselves united by survival.

Rushdie Is India’s Forgotten Child of Midnight, by Pratik Kanjilal

Surbhi gupta, south asia editor.

Earlier this year, when Salman Rushdie was attacked before his talk in western New York, his supposed safe haven, much of the discussion in the media and reports in the news cycle focused on the politics of that infamous fatwa by the Ayatollah Khomeini calling for the writer’s death and its repercussions on the Muslim world. Yet, despite the fact Rushdie has roots in India and the subcontinent has been a constant source of inspiration for his writing, I could find no essay that delved into this relationship and work with South Asia — before this one.

While many were focused on the backlash against Rushdie’s novel, “The Satanic Verses,” the South Asian connection in the story was being overlooked. The first protests against the book happened not in Iran but in Pakistan, and this prompted the Indian government to ban its import from the U.K. It was, indeed, in a review in an Indian magazine that the Ayatollah is said to have first learned of the book. That’s why I loved this essay by Pratik Kanjilal, a veteran journalist and books editor in India, who has followed Rushdie’s journey closely through the years and was the best person to write it. He packs a lot into this essay: He writes about Rushdie, critiques his work, discusses what his Booker Prize wins meant for English writing in India, his relationship with India and Pakistan, and the irony of the attack, coinciding as it did with the 75th Independence Day celebrations in India.

Faith and Vengeance: the Islamic State’s War in Afghanistan, by Fazelminallah Qazizai and Chris Sands

Tam hussein, associate editor.

This piece tells the story of the rise of the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP), and its fall and rebirth, told through the character of Abu Omar Khorasani, “the most feared and despised prisoner in Directorate 40.” It takes you on a journey from the Afghan Jihad in the 1980s all the way to the present. I love deep dives and investigations. This particular piece is very original and will no doubt populate the citations of many books on the topic for years to come. To produce an essay of such quality requires a supportive editorial team and journalists willing to follow the story all the way. For me, that is embodied in this investigation. When I read it, I can almost see the legwork and local knowledge put in by Fazelminallah Qazizai. I see the crisp writing style of Qazizai’s co-author Chris Sands, the beautiful artwork of Joanna Andreasson and the background work that the editorial team puts in months before publication. And so it’s not just an enjoyable and interesting read, it’s what our managing editor Ola Salem says the best essays are — a work of art.

When Uganda Expelled Its Asian Population in 1972, Britain Tried to Exclude Them, by Saima Nasar

Kwangu liwewe, africa editor.

When I read this essay, it reminded me of the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Danger of a Single Story. For five decades, the narrative about the expulsion of Uganda’s Asians has been that they went to Britain, were welcomed there and lived as refugees, then successfully assimilated into society and have contributed to all spheres of British life.

This essay puts the spotlight on how the narrative changed from unwanted Asian immigrants to one of a humanitarian response, when the plight of Asians became international news and Britain feared a backlash. The writer Saima Nasar lifts the lid on this narrative and tells the story of how, in actual fact, the Asians were British passport holders and were initially not welcome in Britain.

Nasar writes, “While Ugandan Asians have no doubt shaped Britain’s economic, political and socio-cultural landscapes, it is important to avoid celebratory narratives that overlook histories of struggle and discrimination.”

It is an important essay that challenges society to re-examine historical narratives.

A Film Critic Reflects on the Artistic Journeys and Vision of the Late French Director Jean-Luc Godard, by Jonathan Rosenbaum

Danny postel, politics editor.

When I saw the news on Sept. 13 that the legendary filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard had died, I immediately called Jonathan Rosenbaum, the longtime film critic for my local alt-weekly newspaper, the Chicago Reader, and the author of multiple books on world cinema. Rosenbaum had written extensively about Godard’s films over the years and had interviewed the grand poobah of French cinema’s New Wave movement on more than one occasion. I was thrilled that Rosenbaum agreed to write for us, despite being unfamiliar with New Lines (he later informed me that Sight and Sound, the magazine of the British Film Institute, also asked him to write something on Godard but we got to him first).

In the essay, he discusses several of Godard’s films — “Breathless” (1960), “Alphaville” (1965), “Tout Va Bien” (1972), “Every Man for Himself” (1980), “Passion” (1982), “Nouvelle Vague” (1990) and “Histoire(s) du Cinéma,” an eight-part experimental video series made between 1988 and 1998 — but it’s far from a survey of the late director’s filmography. Instead, it’s a deeply personal meditation on his poetic vision and colossal global influence, and on the relationship between art and commercial success and failure. “Marketplace value has little or nothing to do with the love of art,” Rosenbaum writes, and “there’s no way of gauging the latter via the former, especially insofar as the intensity of the love and the qualities of the audience experiencing and expressing it aren’t even remotely quantifiable.” Godard once said to Rosenbaum: “I like to think of myself as an airplane, not an airport.” Reflecting on that quip, Rosenbaum writes that “vehicles that take us places, and the destinations of those who make them don’t have to be the same as the destinations of those who climb into those vehicles.”

Between Two Rivers, Between Two Myths, by Sophus Helle

Lydia wilson, culture editor.

I wanted to choose a history essay for two reasons: It’s one of the genres that we do particularly well and, second, this type of long-form history is not given much space in other outlets. Our history essays are always deep-dive explorations of stories from the past from experts on the subject, showing us something new about the world, whether a new perspective on a familiar topic or a previously hidden gem.

“Between Two Rivers,” by the Mesopotamian scholar Sophus Helle, exemplifies what we’re trying to do. It is based on deep expertise, exploring the identities of societies going back millennia in the territory now called Iraq. Helle looks at the labels these cultures gave themselves and were given by later invaders or historians. But it does not only tell the story of the historical material. Crucially, it explains why these facts, controversies and debates about old identities are relevant today, and the obfuscation of the past realities on the ground in Iraq does not serve its present inhabitants. History matters, and this essay brings that home.

An Exile Returns to Find Syria Changed Forever, by Nizar Kinaan

Faisal al yafai, international editor.

It’s been a year of war — as too many of the past few years have been — this time dominated in Europe by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the magazine, we’ve certainly published a lot about the Ukraine war, but we’ve also kept a close eye on other conflicts.

This essay by Nizar Kinaan, a pseudonym for obvious reasons, is one of those, revisiting the still-simmering Syrian conflict. The author returned to the coastal city of Latakia after years away and found a city, and country, drastically changed by the war. We called the essay “No Country for Young Men” because of the profound changes in gender roles wrought by the war.

“‘Where are the young men?’ I asked my friends in the cafe bar we were drinking in. ‘They are dead, in the army or they left like I should have done.’”

“The taboos against women working in certain specific jobs have definitely been broken,” wrote Kinaan, quoting a Syrian woman who said, “I am not saying all taboos have been completely shattered … but things have definitely shifted. Now women can work in most jobs, stay out late, and be a little bit more independent.”

Many will applaud that change, but the reasons that brought it about have destabilized the entire society. This is what makes Kinaan’s encounter with Latakia so interesting; he doesn’t judge what has happened by any moral standard except that of Syria itself. He doesn’t applaud changes in isolation without understanding what it took to make them change.

Turkey’s Winemakers Are Resurrecting the Wines of Millennia Past

Listen again: toxic masculinity online in kenya and south africa — with caroline kimeu and rosie motene, how a now-forgotten assassination almost toppled jordan’s monarchy, preserving iraqi memories through immersive virtual reality, edward said’s cultural universalism and love of opera, ‘a round of applause’ finds the funny side of despondency, sign up to our newsletter.

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Brazil Blocks X After Musk Ignores Court Orders

The social network began to go dark in the nation of 200 million, the result of an escalating fight between Elon Musk and a Brazilian judge over what can be said online.

Elon Musk wears a dark leather jacket with a fur collar against a dark background.

By Jack Nicas and Kate Conger

Jack Nicas reported from Rio de Janeiro, and Kate Conger from San Francisco.

X began to go dark across Brazil on Saturday after the nation’s Supreme Court blocked the social network because its owner, Elon Musk, refused to comply with court orders to suspend certain accounts.

The moment posed one of the biggest tests yet of the billionaire’s efforts to transform the site into a digital town square where just about anything goes.

Alexandre de Moraes , a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, ordered Brazil’s telecom agency to block access to X across the nation of 200 million because the company lacked a physical presence in Brazil.

Mr. Musk closed X’s office in Brazil last week after Justice Moraes threatened arrests for ignoring his orders to remove X accounts that he said broke Brazilian laws.

X said that it viewed Justice Moraes’s sealed orders as illegal and that it planned to publish them. “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes,” Mr. Musk said on Friday.

In a highly unusual move, Justice Moraes also said that any person in Brazil who tried to still use X via common privacy software called a virtual private network, or VPN, could be fined nearly $9,000 a day.

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The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World , William Dalrymple

For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilisation, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific.

William Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India's oft-forgotten position as the heart of ancient Eurasia. For the first time, he gives a name to this spread of Indian ideas that transformed the world. From the largest Hindu temple in the world at Angkor Wat to the Buddhism of China, from the trade that helped fund the Roman Empire to the creation of the numerals we use today (including zero), India transformed the culture and technology of its ancient world – and our world today as we know it.

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Personal Essays
Sunday Reading: Personal Reflections. From the magazine's archive: a selection of memorable personal essays and explorations. By Erin Overbey. December 19, 2021. Culture Desk.
25 Great Nonfiction Essays You Can Read Online for Free
Besides essays on Book Riot, I love looking for essays on The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Rumpus, and Electric Literature. But there are great nonfiction essays available for free all over the Internet. From contemporary to classic writers and personal essays to researched ones—here are 25 of my favorite nonfiction essays you can read today.
Best of 2022: Personal Essays
Annie Sand | Guernica | May 23, 2022 | 2,821 words. "Only sometimes will the ice hold my weight," writes Annie Sand in this powerful essay at Guernica , in which she considers the meteorological metaphors she uses to understand and cope with mental illness. "Metaphor rushes in to fill gaps, to make meaning, and to conceal," she says, as ...
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The Gradual Extinction of Softness, Chantha Nguon and Kim Green, Hippocampus Magazine, November 8, 2021. For this category, I'm recommending a moving, lyrical personal essay from Kim Green and Chantha Nguon. Nguon is a co-founder of a women's social enterprise in rural northeastern Cambodia. For 10 years, these two friends have been ...
Nine New Personal Essays to Read This Week...
Nine New Personal Essays to Read This Week... Welcome to Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter and a quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively , The Rumpus , Catapult , Granta , Guernica, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub — and now many additional publications. Beginning in January, 2022, there'll occasionally be original work as ...
Best of 2023: Personal Essays
Our favorite personal essays published this year include stories on loss, Indigenous community, video games, caring for aging relatives, and the fear of missing love. by Longreads December 5, 2023. This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers. Personal essays are as much about the readers as the writers.
Best Essays to Read
Therefore, each essay on this list holds a special place in my heart, and I've curated these essays worth reading based on my own, personal taste. These essays, handpicked from diverse corners of literature, have left a lasting impression on me. They are more than just ink on paper; they are windows into my own thoughts, emotions, and ...
10 Amazing Personal Essays
6. Melissa Febos: " The Wild, Sublime Body ". This essay appeared in Best American Essays 2022 after being published in The Yale Review, and showcases the best of Febos, in that it is intensely corporeal. Febos's personal essay has a very clear subject—her body and her relationship with her body.
20 Places to Read Great Personal Essays
3. Catapult: Catapult is a book publisher and a provider of online writing classes, but their team also produces an online daily magazine of narrative fiction and nonfiction. It's the kind of site where you can lose hours to reading. Suggested Read: Talking to my daughter about Charlottesville by Taylor Harris. 4.
10 Essential Essay-Length Memoirs You Can Read Online for Free
Harrison Scott Key is the author of two memoirs: Congratulations, Who Are You Again? and The World's Largest Man. Key details one humorous afternoon on Mississippi's Pearl River, where he believes his brother's "badass" antics and his father's gruff and wild nature almost led to his death-by-alligator.
Fifteen Excellent Personal Essays to Read this Week
Joy Castro. "Since my late twenties, when my hair began to go silver, I'd colored it assiduously, like all the women in my family—like all the Latinas I knew. Dark hair was a marker of identity, of youth, of femininity, of our culture." (Editor's note: This essay was featured when it first was published in 2022.
Eleven Great Personal Essays to Read this Week...
Memoir Monday, a weekly curation of the best personal essays from around the web brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Granta, Guernica, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub, Orion Magazine, The Walrus, and Electric Literature. Below is this week's curation. First Person Singular, featuring original personal essays.
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Art & Ardor — Cynthia Ozick. 5. The Art of the Personal Essay — anthology, edited by Phillip Lopate. 6. Bad Feminist — Roxane Gay. 7. The Best American Essays of the Century — anthology, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. 8. The Best American Essays series — published every year, series edited by Robert Atwan.
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This college essay tip is by Abigail McFee, Admissions Counselor for Tufts University and Tufts '17 graduate. 2. Write like a journalist. "Don't bury the lede!" The first few sentences must capture the reader's attention, provide a gist of the story, and give a sense of where the essay is heading.
18 Essay-Length Short Memoirs to Read Online on Your Lunch Break
Harrison Scott Key, "My Dad Tried to Kill Me with an Alligator". This personal essay is a tongue-in-cheek story about the author's run-in with an alligator on the Pearl River in Mississippi. Looking back on the event as an adult, Key considers his father's tendencies in light of his own, now that he himself is a dad.
10 personal essays that will teach you how to write
10 essays that will teach you how to write. 1. Claudia Rankine's Citizen. You are in the dark, in the car, watching the black-tarred street being swallowed by speed; he tells you his dean is making him hire a person of color when there are so many great writers out there.
The Personal Essay
The personal essay is a snippet of who you are and where you're coming from - a snapshot for the admissions officers to look at as they read your application. It will never be able to capture everything about you, but you want to make sure that you're giving them your best angle. So sit down, smile, and get to writing!
6 Steps to Writing the Perfect Personal Essay
6 Steps to Writing the Perfect Personal Essay. Personal essays are easy once you know how! It is the first day of a new school year and your teacher has just assigned a personal essay. They have good reasons for this assignment—personal or narrative essays allow teachers to assess your grasp of language, composition, and creativity. If you ...
Publish Your Personal Essay: 22 Magazines and Websites
Aimed at women in their 30s, the publication covers politics, race, civil rights, disability, class, gender, sex, reproductive rights, LGBTQ issues and much more. Rates are based on type of features, but they typically pay $200 for essays. Must-read personal essay: " I Wanted Joan Didion's Heart to Be Messy" by Lauren Sandler. 4.
12 Outstanding Personal Statement Examples
Example #3 - 12. Example #4 - Flying. Example #5 - Arab Spring in Bahrain. Example #6 - Poop, Animals and the Environment. Example #7 - Entoptic Phenomena. Example #8 - The Builder & Problem Solver. Example #10 - The Little Porch and a Dog (With Spanish Translation) Example #10 - Life As an Undocumented Student.
Essays Every High School Student Should Read
Below are some essays students can read, not only to help them see how such writing is done in the real world, but also to learn more about the world around them. [bctt tweet="Need a #mentortext for student essays? Check out these exemplars for personal narrative, argumentative, and expository essay writing."] Note: This is a living list. I ...
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In this essay, the analyst Inga Rudzinskaite-Colman, who was born and raised in Vilnius, dives into complicated issues like collective trauma and self-identity. She tells us, in poignant detail, how she and her fellow countrymen and women strived for decades to disassociate themselves from Russia and their Soviet past.
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X said that it viewed Justice Moraes's sealed orders as illegal and that it planned to publish them. "Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is ...
September nonfiction: A new book of Indian history by William Dalrymple
September nonfiction: A new book of Indian history by William Dalrymple and five more titles to read A biography of Irawati Karve, essays by writers on their craft, a new way of looking at art ...