In the latest installment in her illustrated series, Carolita Johnson catalogues her efforts to maintain her appearance from about 1970 to 2018.
Sari Botton
Posted inEditor's Pick
Swipe White
In this personal essay, Jennifer Chong Schneider considers what it is to be Asian, maligned, and fetishized in dating — and questions her own desire when she dates someone of her own ethnicity for the first time.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Bastard: Neither of My Parents Was Exactly Who I Thought They Were
In this personal essay, author Elizabeth Wurtzel shares the bombshell that was recently dropped on her — that her father was not Donald Wurtzel, but rather civil rights era photojournalist Bob Adelman — and tries to make sense of her mother’s choice to keep the secret of her affair (and her daughter’s true paternity) for […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Portrait of the Mother as a Young Girl
In this personal essay from our Fine Lines series, Marlene Adelstein finds herself transported back in time and consciousness via an inherited painting.
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Jack, Jacqueline — Dad
A personal essay in which Yvonne Conza wrestles with the complexities of estrangement from her dying — complicated — dad.
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How to Thrive as a Sober Queer Through the Holigays
In a piece that’s part personal essay and part service journalism, Molly Priddy shares how challenging it initially was going home for the holidays just after she got sober — and how it’s gotten better over the years. She also offers tips suggesting how others avoiding alcohol might get through the end-of-year forced family fun […]
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How to Grieve Your Friend and Mentor
In this moving personal essay, Amy Jo Burns writes about how the death of her writing mentor, Louise DeSalvo, has affected her, and how reading Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, and Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend helped her process her grief.
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As Beauty Does
In this personal essay, writer Chaya Bhuvaneswar contemplates the powerful evolution of a woman’s beauty over time.
Posted inEditor's Pick
My Brother, My Self
In this personal essay, Katie Prout tries to untangle the story of her brother’s complicated, life-long battle with alcoholism against the backdrop of her family’s history of addiction.