“If I’d stayed, I could have protected him. That’s what I believed. Maybe he believed that, too.”
Essays & Criticism
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Death by Fire
Forty years after his time with the U.S. Forest Service, a writer reflects on his years fighting fires out West, especially how fire shapes both forests and people.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Flavorwire Author Club: Nora Ephron’s Guide to Dealing With Heartbreak Through ‘Heartburn’
A personal essay and appreciation of Heartburn, Nora Ephron’s autobiographical novel, by Tyler Coates (these days a culture editor at Esquire). Ephron’s novel was released on this day in 1983. This essay, in which Coates recalls watching the 1986 film adaptation while recovering from his own heartbreak, was published in 2014.
Posted inEditor's Pick
My Father Spent 30 Years In Prison. Now He’s Out.
A touching personal essay in which writer Ashley Ford reveals that she and her father are happily rebuilding their relationship now that he has been released from prison after 30 years. Slowly they are getting to know each other in ways they never before had. One of the more challenging aspects: bringing him up to […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Fast Life
A personal essay by The Price of Illusion author and former French Vogue editor Joan Juliet Buck, about choosing to be “fast” after learning her grandmother regretted her lifetime with just one man.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘Every Watch Geek Has an Origin Story’
Anxious about politics, Gary Shteyngart finds calm in the minutiae of wristwatches in this essay from The New Yorker.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Confessions of a Watch Geek
A reported personal essay by Gary Shteyngart. The Russian-born novelist and memoirist confesses to an obsession with expensive mechanical watches, which intensified through the 2016 Presidential race. He quells his growing anxiety by taking tours of German watchmaking facilities, and comparing rarefied ticking treasures with other watch geeks.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Moved by Kim
Seth Davis Branitz had an awful suspicion he’d feel relieved when, some day, his very troubled brother would pass. He had no idea about the other ends it would rapidly bring with it.
Posted inNonfiction
Moved by Kim
Seth Davis Branitz had an awful suspicion he’d feel relieved when, some day, his very troubled brother would pass. He had no idea about the other ends it would rapidly bring with it.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘There Was a Lot of Spontaneous Crying’: Chrissy Teigen on Her Postpartum Depression
Model, television host, and cookbook author Chrissy Teigen wrote a personal essay for Glamour, in which she confesses to having postpartum depression.