Memoir Essays

Filled with empathy and wisdom, instruction and inspiration, this book encourages us to reevaluate the codes and conventions that have shaped our assumptions about how fiction should be written, and also challenges us to apply its lessons to both what we read and how we read. The start of a more inclusive conversation about storytelling, Letters to a Writer of Color will be a touchstone for aspiring and working writers and for curious readers everywhere.

Why are gravy stains on your shirt at the dinner table to be admired? Does bacon improve everything? And is gin really the devil's work? In this rollicking collection of his hilarious columns, the award-winning writer and Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner answers these vital questions and many, many more. They are glorious dispatches, seasoned in equal measure with both enthusiasm and bile, from decades at the very frontline of eating.

Many of us grew up scoring a thousand glorious NHL goals in our minds, and on our streets and corner rinks. We won the Stanley Cup over and over in our imaginations. What happened to those childhood heroics? We packed them in a box with our hockey cards and forgot them. Growing Up Hockey uses the heartwarming and comical exploits of a house-league third-liner to prompt us to re-live our memories of hockey glory.

"Panikherz" war eine Reise ins Innere. Nun geht es in die umgekehrte Richtung: nach draußen, zu den anderen. Mit Boris Becker schaut er in Wimbledon das berühmte Finale von Wimbledon. Mit Helmut Dietl scheitert er in Berlin wegen Berlin an Berlin. Dem Freund Christian Ulmen schaut er zu bei der Verwandlung in "Christian Ulmen". Mit Ferdinand von Schirach schweigt er in der Schreibklausur über das Schreiben. Bei Madonna live in L. A. entdeckt er wahrhaftige Künstlichkeit.

In sixteen wholly original essays that blend memoir, cultural criticism, investigative journalism, and a dash of fanfiction, Walker places her own experiences within the larger context of the pressing and underdiscussed aspects of contemporary American womanhood that make up daily life. She explores the allure and violence of assimilating into white womanhood in all its hegemonic glory, exposes the ways in which the truth of trans women's reproductive healthcare is erased in favor of reactionary narratives, and considers how our agency is stripped from us—purely on account of our bodies.

From the wind-swept, snowy ranges of Wyoming to Florida beaches glowing with Christmas lights, All American Christmas traces holiday traditions across the United States. Rachel Campos-Duffy and Sean Duffy present a dazzling collection of emotional stories and homegrown Christmas recipes from some of Fox News’ most beloved personalities.

Soldier Keith Nightingale has conducted terrain walks in Normandy for over forty years with veterans, active-duty military, and local French civilians. Over the decades Nightingale conducted dozens of formal interviews and informal conversations with many of the principals of the day, including Generals Bradley, Collins, Gavin, Ridgway, and Hill. Added to this rare new primary material from the top brass are numerous conversations with lower-ranking vets who did the heavy lifting.

We talk about achieving 'LGBTQ+ equality', but around the world, LGBTQ+ people are still suffering discrimination and extreme violence. How do we solve this urgent problem, allowing queer people everywhere the opportunity to thrive? In We Can Do Better Than This, 35 voices explore this question. Through deeply moving stories and provocative new arguments on safety and visibility, dating and gender, care and community, they map new global frontiers in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.

In Twenty-One Years Young: Essays, author Amy Dong examines the uncertainty, absurdity, and beauty in growing up. This poignant collection of essays is unabashedly intimate, drawing the listener into Dong’s life as if they were a close friend. She masterfully evokes humor, nostalgia, melancholy, and euphoria to create scenes that are as vivid as they are profound.

Psychological injuries and trauma suffered during childhood are extremely common. They lead to all sorts of addictive behaviors as well as anxiety, depression, and debilitating and life-threatening physical maladies. In Healing with Psychedelics, Chris writes about how to recognize the often-hidden histories that caused us as children to create a false self and changed how we operate in this world. He then takes us on his personal healing journey, revealing the details of his own experience and describing the process of psychedelic-assisted sacred-medicine therapy.

Sarah Ferguson's homage to her mother and a reflection on mothers and daughters. A mother's love over decades and across continents. The sudden death of Sarah's mother reveals their relationship with poignant clarity and shows her the individual who existed beyond motherhood.

In Bookends, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon offers a compilation of pieces about literature - age-old classics as well as his own - that presents a unique look into his literary origins and influences, the books that shaped his taste and formed his ideas about writing and reading.

In Traveling without Moving, Coleman shares intimate essays from her life: her childhood in Chicago—growing up in poverty with four siblings and a single mother—and the empowering decision to leave her first marriage. She writes about being the only Black student in a prestigious and predominantly White creative writing program, about institutional racism and implicit bias in writing instruction, about the violent legacies of racism in the US housing market, about the maternal health disparities seen across the country and their implication in her own miscarriage.

Sandra Brown revisits two pivotal Christmases from her own past in this heartfelt and intimate essay. One needn't be familiar with Brown's previous works to be deeply moved by this personal reflection on the meaning of family, faith, celebration, and generosity: but fans will find it a unique and special insight into the New York Times best-selling author's life and values.

Across these twenty fresh and boldly intimate stories, Erin Riley writes about the things that matter most: family, heartbreak, humanity, justice and swimming, and the messy, hard graft of becoming one's authentic self. In weaving together their everyday while questioning society and its structures, Erin gifts us stories that double as a manifesto on how to disrupt and reinvent narrative, identity, love and community.

Step into my world as I share a collection of stories and essays that offer an intimate glimpse into my life. I wear many hats—Man of God, Husband, Father, Grandfather, Comedian, and more—but all are worn with pride. Through these reflections, I invite you to see the world as I do, through the lens of a Black man living in today's United States. In this book, I open up about my journey—celebrating successes, confronting challenges, and navigating the complexities of life.

This book helps you see, think, and feel back together those parts of yourself the Western mind reduced to rubble. If you feel integration to be unnatural, that’s your problem at a glance. I apologize that the day is dawning and there’s work we need to do, but hello. It’s time to wake up.

"Plato sucks because the ideal world pales in comparison with the mysterious complexity of the real one." So writes Andrei Codrescu in this kaleidoscope of riffs and rants about the passions and nightmares of a poet at millennium's end. What does the collapse of communism and rise of nationalism in Eastern Europe look like from the perspective of this reporter who experienced it firsthand? How does a ceramicist and child of photographers view the origin myths of pottery and photography?

An essay in biography, Rollyson argues, is an effort to comprehend a life that is inherently incomplete and subject to revision. Many of the facts about a biographical subject's life that are blandly presented in reference books have been discovered by biographers at great cost to their reputations. With the history of biography as a censored genre in mind, he encourages consumers of biography to be critical of the biographies they come across - no matter whether those biographies are book-length narratives or short encyclopedia entries.

'Indian-Australian' is not a one-size-fits-all descriptor. Given the depth and richness of diversity of the Indian subcontinent, it is fitting that its diaspora is similarly varied. Growing Up Indian in Australia reflects and celebrates this vibrant diversity. It features contributions from Australian-Indian writers, both established and emerging, who hail from a wide range of backgrounds, religions and experiences. This colorful, energetic anthology offers reflections on identity, culture, family, food and expectations, ultimately revealing deep truths about both Australian and Indian life.