Personal Essay

Julia Cameron has been teaching the world about creativity since her seminal book, The Artist’s Way, first broke open the conversation around art. Now, in Write for Life, she turns to one of the subjects closest to her heart: the art and practice of writing. Over the course of six weeks, Cameron carefully guides listeners step by step through the creative process. With the learned experience of a lifetime of writing, Cameron gives listeners practical tools to start, pursue, and finish their writing project.

Like Kelly Kapoor on The Office, Mindy is engaged with her Indian heritage to the extent that it is fun and convenient. So apart from a tolerance for spicy foods and an appreciation for Ravi Shankar, Mindy isn’t all that Hindu. Her daughter’s Jewish godfather--TV and film’s B.J. Novak--prompts her to reconsider her religious beliefs and ask herself: How Indian do I want my daughter to be?

When Andrew McCarthy's eldest son began to take his first steps into adulthood, McCarthy found himself wishing time would slow down. Looking to create a more meaningful connection with Sam before he fled the nest, as well as recreate his own life-altering journey decades before, McCarthy decided the two of them should set out on a trek like few others: 500 miles across Spain's Camino de Santiago. Over the course of the journey, the pair traversed an unforgiving landscape, having more honest conversations in five weeks than they'd had in the preceding two decades.

There was a turning point in Michael Lewis' life, in a baseball game when he was 14 years old. The irascible and often terrifying Coach Fitz put the ball in his hand with the game on the line and managed to convey such confident trust in Lewis's ability that the boy had no choice but to live up to it. "I didn't have words for it then, but I do now: I am about to show the world, and myself, what I can do."

Those who have had a narcissistic parent can testify to how damaging it can be to one's psyche. Narcissistic parents lack empathy, show a severe sense of entitlement to micromanage the lives of their children, and often subject their children to neglect, as well as emotional, psychological, and physical abuse. From the unique challenges daughters of narcissistic fathers face to the ways in which adverse childhood experiences affect our brains, Shahida Arabi's insightful essays resonate deeply with those who have been raised by narcissistic parents.

Yes, Mindy Kaling is the genial Hollywood celebrity who posted twelve selfies from a single Oscar party, but that smile took work. In this hilariously honest essay, Mindy reflects on the social anxiety that she traces back to the slices of white cheese her parents served at her ninth birthday party. Little has changed in thirty years--least of all the fear of being judged forever. It’s probably best to just back away.

Anna Prushinskaya explores the deep life shifts of pregnancy, birth and motherhood in the United States, a world away from the author's Soviet homeland. Drawing from inspirations as various as midwife Ina May Gaskin, writer and activist Alice Walker, and frontierswoman Caroline Henderson, Prushinskaya captures the inherent togetherness of motherhood alongside its accompanying estrangement. She plumbs the deeper waters of compassion, memory and identity, as well as the humorous streams of motherhood as they run up against the realities of work and the ever-present eye of social media.

After a friend real-talks Mindy into hiring a baby nurse, she finds the help she needs--and so much more--in this soulful essay by the acclaimed writer, actress, producer, and director. Becoming a new mother after losing her own, Mindy Kaling needs help--like someone to answer the questions What is a baby, and why don’t they have kneecaps? Enter Rose. The in-demand, dedicated baby nurse alleviates Mindy’s fears, from the minor to the profound.

These are just a few of the people who tell their stories in Modern Love, Revised and Updated, featuring dozens of the most memorable essays to run in The New York Times “Modern Love” column since its debut in 2004. Some of the stories are unconventional, while others hit close to home. Some reveal the way technology has changed dating forever; others explore the timeless struggles experienced by anyone who has ever searched for love.

From the author of the popular newsletter That’s What She Said, Nobody Cares is a frank, funny personal essay collection about work, failure, friendship, and the messy business of being alive in your 20s and 30s. As she shares her hard-won insights from screwing up, growing up, and trying to find her own path, Anne T. Donahue’s debut book offers all the honesty, laughs, and reassurance of a late-night phone call with your best friend.

How do we add to archives of ecological memory? How can we notice and document what’s missing in the landscapes closest to us? In her debut essay collection, Laura Marris reframes environmental loss by setting aside the catastrophic framework of the Anthropocene in favor of that of the Eremocene, the age of loneliness, which is marked by the dramatic thinning of wildlife populations and by isolation between and among species.

In 2021, Australia saw rage and revelation as #MeToo powered an insurgency against sexism and sexual violence. From once isolated survivors to political staffers, women everywhere were refusing to keep men’s secrets. In this electrifying essay, Jess Hill traces the conditions that gave birth to #MeToo and tells the stories of women who – often at great personal cost – found themselves at the centre of this movement. Hill exposes the networks of backlash against them – in government, media, schools and in our national psyche.

Lydia Davis is a writer whose originality, influence, and wit are beyond compare. Jonathan Franzen has called her "a magician of self-consciousness," while Rick Moody hails her as "the best prose stylist in America." And for Claire Messud, "Davis's signal gift is to make us feel alive." Best known for her masterful short stories and translations, Davis's gifts extend equally to her nonfiction. In Essays One, Davis has, for the first time, gathered a selection of essays, commentaries, and lectures composed over the past five decades.

For Mike Krzyzewski, head coach of the Duke University men's basketball team, certain words have special importance and force. Coach K uses them every day to energize, motivate, and teach his players how to be winners on the court and in every aspect of their lives. Now, in Beyond Basketball, he offers 40 short, hard-hitting audio essays that will educate and inspire. Each is centered on an important keyword and illustrated with anecdotes from his personal experiences.

The extraordinarily evocative stories depict the generation born in a small-town America during the Depression and growing up in a world where the old sexual morality was turned around and material comforts were easily had. Yet, as these stories reflect so accurately, life was still unsettling, and Updike chronicles telling moments both joyful and painful. The texts are taken from his recent omnibus, The Early Stories, 1953-1975.

Learn how to leverage dark psychology and emotional manipulation techniques to get what you want out of people. This bundle contains volume one, two, and three in one audiobook!

In this pyrotechnic memoir-in-essays, Mak ranges widely over our landscape of paranoia, crisis, and frenetic, clickable consumption. He grants listeners an inside pass to the spaces where culture was made and unmade over the past decade, from the antiseptic glare of white-walled galleries to the darkest corners of Berlin techno clubs. As the gay son of an evangelical minister, Mak fled to those spaces, hoping to join a global, influential elite. But when calamity struck, it forced Mak to confront the costs of mistaking status for belonging.

The man in the pencil-thin mustache, auteur of the transgressive movie classics Pink Flamingos, Polyester, the original Hairspray, Cry-Baby, and A Dirty Shame, is one of the world’s great sophisticates, and in Mr. Know-It-All he serves it up raw: how to fail upward in Hollywood; how to develop musical taste from Nervous Norvus to Maria Callas; how to build a home so ugly and trendy that no one but you would dare live in it; more important, how to tell someone you love them without emotional risk; and yes, how to cheat death itself.

In 1997 Tiger Woods was already among the most-watched and closely examined athletes in history. But it wasn't until the Masters Tournament that his career would definitively change forever. Woods, then only 21, won the Masters by a historic 12 shots, which remains the widest margin of victory in the tournament's history, making it an iconic moment for him and sports.

An inspiring and revealing essay about motherhood, self-acceptance, and overcoming the fears that hold you back by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Open Book.