The personal essays that we can’t stop thinking about.
personal essays
‘Writing Was a Way to Have My Say’: An Interview with Author Sejal Shah
“I didn’t know at first what I was doing. I was just trying to represent the inside of the feeling.”
On Racism and Epithets
Essaying on the way white supremacy shapes life.
A Beautiful, Rugged Place: Erosion of the Body
The life-long writer, teacher, and activist believed she could save a piece of land or a species, but after her brother took his life, she questioned her optimism and how to grieve for him and the planet.
Am I Writing About My Life, Or Selling Myself Out?
After people repeatedly recognize Shannon Keating and her girlfriend from a personal essay she published about a lesbian cruise, and in the midst of the furor over Natalie Beach’s essay about her friendship with Instagram influencer Caroline Calloway on The Cut, Keating wonders about the line between writer and influencer, and the ethics of writing […]
Searching for The Sundays
When music writers are also music fans, they can walk a line between appreciative and intrusive.
All the Obstacles in a Mother’s Way
Everyone has something to say about this mother’s body, career, and parental choices.
It’s Like That: The Makings of a Hip-Hop Writer
Hip-hop was a different kind of music that needed a different kind of writer to cover it. This is how Michael A. Gonzales came of age in a time when Black writers began breaking the white ceiling.
The Ways of a Wandering Spirit
For many of us, road trips are also trips through the self.