Emily Gould reconsiders the likelihood of women’s first-person writing bringing about change.
Personal Essay
Posted inEditor's Pick
Replaying My Shame
In the past 13 years, Emily Gould has become an accomplished author and feminist book publisher. As she prepares for the launch of her latest novel, Perfect Tunes, she worries that to many people, she will only ever be what she was for less than a year, in 2007: an editor at now defunct media […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Between Russell Simmons and The World and Oprah
Russell Simmons moved to Bali to avoid the legal fallout from a litany of #metoo accusations, but that didn’t stop him from spending time, recently, in New York City. Veteran journalist Kevin Powell conducted many interviews with him there, attempting to understand his one-time idol’s perspective. In the wake of Oprah Winfrey’s withdrawal from producing […]
Posted inNonfiction
House of the Century
Daisy Alioto reconsiders the nature of architecture while researching window alarms.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Adventures in Publishing Outside the Gates
When Latinx author Wendy C. Ortiz shopped her memoir, Excavation, about the inappropriate sexual relationship her eighth grade English teacher initiated with her, mainstream publishers wouldn’t give her the time of day. She published it with tiny Future Tense Books, and the book gained a strong following. Among her readers was white author Kate Elizabeth […]
Posted inFeature
Whatever Happened to ______ ?
Envy over her success led her husband, also a writer, to become violent. She fights every day for her safety — and to avoid being relegated to obscurity like so many writers who are mothers.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
Searching Sephora for an Antidote to Aging — and Grief
Five years after her mother’s death, while still grieving and suddenly middle-aged, Abby Mims turns to beauty products to cure what ails her.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
The Price of Dominionist Theology
After leaving fundamentalism, Eve Ettinger grapples with the loaded theological heritage of evangelical personal finance teachings.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Highlight, Nonfiction, Quotes
Elizabeth Wurtzel Made it Okay to Write ‘Ouch’
Today’s memoirists and personal essay writers owe a debt of gratitude to the Prozac Nation author for rewriting an inhibiting rule.
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘I Believe in Love’: Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Final Year, In Her Own Words
Memoirist Elizabeth Wurtzel was working on this, her final personal essay, when she passed away on January 7th, 2020 from metastatic breast cancer. In the piece she reveals that as her health was declining, her marriage was unraveling, and that she was still wrestling with new information her mother finally revealed a couple of years […]