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The Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2022

Featuring bob dylan, elena ferrante, zora neale hurston, jhumpa lahiri, melissa febos, and more.

We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2022, in the categories of (deep breath): Fiction ; Nonfiction ; Memoir and Biography ; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror ; Short Story Collections ; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime ; Graphic Literature ; and Literature in Translation .

Today’s installment: Essay Collections .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing by Elena Ferrante (Europa)

12 Rave • 12 Positive • 4 Mixed

“The lucid, well-formed essays that make up In the Margins are written in an equally captivating voice … Although a slim collection, there is more than enough meat here to nourish both the common reader and the Ferrante aficionado … Every essay here is a blend of deep thought, rigorous analysis and graceful prose. We occasionally get the odd glimpse of the author…but mainly the focus is on the nuts and bolts of writing and Ferrante’s practice of her craft. The essays are at their most rewarding when Ferrante discusses the origins of her books, in particular the celebrated Neapolitan Novels, and the multifaceted heroines that power them … These essays might not bring us any closer to finding out who Ferrante really is. Instead, though, they provide valuable insight into how she developed as a writer and how she works her magic.”

–Malcolm Forbes ( The Star Tribune )

2. Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri (Princeton University Press)

8 Rave • 14 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Lahiri mixes detailed explorations of craft with broader reflections on her own artistic life, as well as the ‘essential aesthetic and political mission’ of translation. She is excellent in all three modes—so excellent, in fact, that I, a translator myself, could barely read this book. I kept putting it aside, compelled by Lahiri’s writing to go sit at my desk and translate … One of Lahiri’s great gifts as an essayist is her ability to braid multiple ways of thinking together, often in startling ways … a reminder, no matter your relationship to translation, of how alive language itself can be. In her essays as in her fiction, Lahiri is a writer of great, quiet elegance; her sentences seem simple even when they’re complex. Their beauty and clarity alone would be enough to wake readers up. ‘Look,’ her essays seem to say: Look how much there is for us to wake up to.”

–Lily Meyer ( NPR )

3. The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan (Simon & Schuster)

10 Rave • 15 Positive • 7 Mixed • 4 Pan

“It is filled with songs and hyperbole and views on love and lust even darker than Blood on the Tracks … There are 66 songs discussed here … Only four are by women, which is ridiculous, but he never asked us … Nothing is proved, but everything is experienced—one really weird and brilliant person’s experience, someone who changed the world many times … Part of the pleasure of the book, even exceeding the delectable Chronicles: Volume One , is that you feel liberated from Being Bob Dylan. He’s not telling you what you got wrong about him. The prose is so vivid and fecund, it was useless to underline, because I just would have underlined the whole book. Dylan’s pulpy, noir imagination is not always for the squeamish. If your idea of art is affirmation of acceptable values, Bob Dylan doesn’t need you … The writing here is at turns vivid, hilarious, and will awaken you to songs you thought you knew … The prose brims everywhere you turn. It is almost disturbing. Bob Dylan got his Nobel and all the other accolades, and now he’s doing my job, and he’s so damn good at it.”

–David Yaffe ( AirMail )

4. Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos (Catapult)

13 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed Read an excerpt from Body Work here

“In her new book, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative , memoirist Melissa Febos handily recuperates the art of writing the self from some of the most common biases against it: that the memoir is a lesser form than the novel. That trauma narratives should somehow be over—we’ve had our fill … Febos rejects these belittlements with eloquence … In its hybridity, this book formalizes one of Febos’s central tenets within it: that there is no disentangling craft from the personal, just as there is no disentangling the personal from the political. It’s a memoir of a life indelibly changed by literary practice and the rigorous integrity demanded of it …

Febos is an essayist of grace and terrific precision, her sentences meticulously sculpted, her paragraphs shapely and compressed … what’s fresh, of course, is Febos herself, remapping this terrain through her context, her life and writing, her unusual combinations of sources (William H. Gass meets Elissa Washuta, for example), her painstaking exactitude and unflappable sureness—and the new readers she will reach with all of this.”

–Megan Milks ( 4Columns )

5. You Don’t Know Us Negroes by Zora Neale Hurston (Amistad)

12 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed

“… a dazzling collection of her work … You Don’t Know Us Negroes reveals Hurston at the top of her game as an essayist, cultural critic, anthropologist and beat reporter … Hurston is, by turn, provocative, funny, bawdy, informative and outrageous … Hurston will make you laugh but also make you remember the bitter divide in Black America around performance, language, education and class … But the surprising page turner is at the back of the book, a compilation of Hurston’s coverage of the Ruby McCollom murder trial …

Some of Hurston’s writing is sensationalistic, to be sure, but it’s also a riveting take of gender and race relations at the time … Gates and West have put together a comprehensive collection that lets Hurston shine as a writer, a storyteller and an American iconoclast.”

–Lisa Page ( The Washington Post )

6. Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us by Rachel Aviv (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

11 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed Listen to an interview with Rachel Aviv here

“… written with an astonishing amount of attention and care … Aviv’s triumphs in relating these journeys are many: her unerring narrative instinct, the breadth of context brought to each story, her meticulous reporting. Chief among these is her empathy, which never gives way to pity or sentimentality. She respects her subjects, and so centers their dignity without indulging in the geeky, condescending tone of fascination that can characterize psychologists’ accounts of their patients’ troubles. Though deeply curious about each subject, Aviv doesn’t treat them as anomalous or strange … Aviv’s daunted respect for uncertainty is what makes Strangers to Ourselves distinctive. She is hyperaware of just how sensitive the scale of the self can be.”

–Charlotte Shane ( Bookforum )

7. A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast by Dorthe Nors (Graywolf)

11 Rave • 1 Positive Read an excerpt from A Line in the World here

“Nors, known primarily as a fiction writer, here embarks on a languorous and evocative tour of her native Denmark … The dramas of the past are evoked not so much through individual characters as through their traces—buildings, ruins, shipwrecks—and this westerly Denmark is less the land of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales and sleek Georg Jensen designs than a place of ancient landscapes steeped in myth … People aren’t wholly incidental to the narrative. Nors introduces us to a variety of colorful characters, and shares vivid memories of her family’s time in a cabin on the coast south of Thyborøn. But in a way that recalls the work of Barry Lopez, nature is at the heart of this beautiful book, framed in essay-like chapters, superbly translated by Caroline Waight.”

–Claire Messud ( Harper’s )

8. Raising Raffi: The First Five Years by Keith Gessen (Viking)

4 Rave • 10 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from Raising Raffi here

“A wise, mild and enviably lucid book about a chaotic scene … Is it OK to out your kid like this? … Still, this memoir will seem like a better idea if, a few decades from now, Raffi is happy and healthy and can read it aloud to his own kids while chuckling at what a little miscreant he was … Gessen is a wily parser of children’s literature … He is just as good on parenting manuals … Raising Raffi offers glimpses of what it’s like to eke out literary lives at the intersection of the Trump and Biden administrations … Needing money for one’s children, throughout history, has made parents do desperate things — even write revealing parenthood memoirs … Gessen’s short book is absorbing not because it delivers answers … It’s absorbing because Gessen is a calm and observant writer…who raises, and struggles with, the right questions about himself and the world.”

–Dwight Garner ( The New York Times )

9. The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser (Doubleday)

8 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed • 1 Pan Watch an interview with CJ Hauser here

“17 brilliant pieces … This tumbling, in and out of love, structures the collection … Calling Hauser ‘honest’ and ‘vulnerable’ feels inadequate. She embraces and even celebrates her flaws, and she revels in being a provocateur … It is an irony that Hauser, a strong, smart, capable woman, relates to the crane wife’s contortions. She felt helpless in her own romantic relationship. I don’t have one female friend who has not felt some version of this, but putting it into words is risky … this collection is not about neat, happy endings. It’s a constant search for self-discovery … Much has been written on the themes Hauser excavates here, yet her perspective is singular, startlingly so. Many narratives still position finding the perfect match as a measure of whether we’ve led successful lives. The Crane Wife dispenses with that. For that reason, Hauser’s worldview feels fresh and even radical.”

–Hope Reese ( Oprah Daily )

10. How to Read Now by Elaine Castillo (Viking)

8 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from How to Read Now here

“Elaine Castillo’s How to Read Now begins with a section called ‘Author’s Note, or a Virgo Clarifies Things.’ The title is a neat encapsulation of the book’s style: rigorous but still chatty, intellectual but not precious or academic about it … How to Read Now proceeds at a breakneck pace. Each of the book’s eight essays burns bright and hot from start to finish … How to Read Now is not for everybody, but if it is for you, it is clarifying and bracing. Castillo offers a full-throated critique of some of the literary world’s most insipid and self-serving ideas …

So how should we read now? Castillo offers suggestions but no resolution. She is less interested in capital-A Answers…and more excited by the opportunity to restore a multitude of voices and perspectives to the conversation … A book is nothing without a reader; this one is co-created by its recipients, re-created every time the page is turned anew. How to Read Now offers its audience the opportunity to look past the simplicity we’re all too often spoon-fed into order to restore ourselves to chaos and complexity—a way of seeing and reading that demands so much more of us but offers even more in return.”

–Zan Romanoff ( The Los Angeles Times )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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The 25 Greatest Essay Collections of All Time

Today marks the release of Aleksandar Hemon’s excellent book of personal essays, The Book of My Lives , which we loved, and which we’re convinced deserves a place in the literary canon. To that end, we were inspired to put together our list of the greatest essay collections of all time, from the classic to the contemporary, from the personal to the critical. In making our choices, we’ve steered away from posthumous omnibuses (Michel de Montaigne’s Complete Essays , the collected Orwell, etc.) and multi-author compilations, and given what might be undue weight to our favorite writers (as one does). After the jump, our picks for the 25 greatest essay collections of all time. Feel free to disagree with us, praise our intellect, or create an entirely new list in the comments.

The Book of My Lives , Aleksandar Hemon

Hemon’s memoir in essays is in turns wryly hilarious, intellectually searching, and deeply troubling. It’s the life story of a fascinating, quietly brilliant man, and it reads as such. For fans of chess and ill-advised theme parties and growing up more than once.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem , Joan Didion

Well, obviously. Didion’s extraordinary book of essays, expertly surveying both her native California in the 1960s and her own internal landscape with clear eyes and one eyebrow raised ever so slightly. This collection, her first, helped establish the idea of journalism as art, and continues to put wind in the sails of many writers after her, hoping to move in that Didion direction.

Pulphead , John Jeremiah Sullivan

This was one of those books that this writer deemed required reading for all immediate family and friends. Sullivan’s sharply observed essays take us from Christian rock festivals to underground caves to his own home, and introduce us to 19-century geniuses, imagined professors and Axl Rose. Smart, curious, and humane, this is everything an essay collection should be.

The Boys of My Youth , Jo Ann Beard

Another memoir-in-essays, or perhaps just a collection of personal narratives, Jo Ann Beard’s award-winning volume is a masterpiece. Not only does it include the luminous, emotionally destructive “The Fourth State of the Matter,” which we’ve already implored you to read , but also the incredible “Bulldozing the Baby,” which takes on a smaller tragedy: a three-year-old Beard’s separation from her doll Hal. “The gorgeous thing about Hal,” she tells us, “was that not only was he my friend, he was also my slave. I made the majority of our decisions, including the bathtub one, which in retrospect was the beginning of the end.”

Consider the Lobster , David Foster Wallace

This one’s another “duh” moment, at least if you’re a fan of the literary essay. One of the most brilliant essayists of all time, Wallace pushes the boundaries (of the form, of our patience, of his own brain) and comes back with a classic collection of writing on everything from John Updike to, well, lobsters. You’ll laugh out loud right before you rethink your whole life. And then repeat.

Notes of a Native Son , James Baldwin

Baldwin’s most influential work is a witty, passionate portrait of black life and social change in America in the 1940s and early 1950s. His essays, like so many of the greats’, are both incisive social critiques and rigorous investigations into the self, told with a perfect tension between humor and righteous fury.

Naked , David Sedaris

His essays often read more like short stories than they do social criticism (though there’s a healthy, if perhaps implied, dose of that slippery subject), but no one makes us laugh harder or longer. A genius of the form.

Against Interpretation , Susan Sontag

This collection, Sontag’s first, is a dazzling feat of intellectualism. Her essays dissect not only art but the way we think about art, imploring us to “reveal the sensuous surface of art without mucking about in it.” It also contains the brilliant “Notes on ‘Camp,'” one of our all-time favorites.

The Common Reader , Virginia Woolf

Woolf is a literary giant for a reason — she was as incisive and brilliant a critic as she was a novelist. These witty essays, written for the common reader (“He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of whole- a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing”), are as illuminating and engrossing as they were when they were written.

Teaching a Stone to Talk , Annie Dillard

This is Dillard’s only book of essays, but boy is it a blazingly good one. The slender volume, filled with examinations of nature both human and not, is deft of thought and tongue, and well worth anyone’s time. As the Chicago Sun-Times ‘s Edward Abbey gushed, “This little book is haloed and informed throughout by Dillard’s distinctive passion and intensity, a sort of intellectual radiance that reminds me both Thoreau and Emily Dickinson.”

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man , Henry Louis Gates Jr.

In this eloquent volume of essays, all but one of which were originally published in the New Yorker , Gates argues against the notion of the singularly representable “black man,” preferring to represent him in a myriad of diverse profiles, from James Baldwin to Colin Powell. Humane, incisive, and satisfyingly journalistic, Gates cobbles together the ultimate portrait of the 20th-century African-American male by refusing to cobble it together, and raises important questions about race and identity even as he entertains.

Otherwise Known As the Human Condition , Geoff Dyer

This book of essays, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the year of its publication, covers 25 years of the uncategorizable, inimitable Geoff Dyer’s work — casually erudite and yet liable to fascinate anyone wandering in the door, witty and breathing and full of truth. As Sam Lipsyte said, “You read Dyer for his caustic wit, of course, his exquisite and perceptive crankiness, and his deep and exciting intellectual connections, but from these enthralling rants and cultural investigations there finally emerges another Dyer, a generous seeker of human feeling and experience, a man perhaps closer than he thinks to what he believes his hero Camus achieved: ‘a heart free of bitterness.'”

Art and Ardor , Cynthia Ozick

Look, Cynthia Ozick is a genius. One of David Foster Wallace’s favorite writers, and one of ours, Ozick has no less than seven essay collections to her name, and we could have chosen any one of them, each sharper and more perfectly self-conscious than the last. This one, however, includes her stunner “A Drugstore in Winter,” which was chosen by Joyce Carol Oates for The Best American Essays of the Century , so we’ll go with it.

No More Nice Girls , Ellen Willis

The venerable Ellen Willis was the first pop music critic for The New Yorker , and a rollicking anti-authoritarian, feminist, all-around bad-ass woman who had a hell of a way with words. This collection examines the women’s movement, the plight of the aging radical, race relations, cultural politics, drugs, and Picasso. Among other things.

The War Against Cliché , Martin Amis

As you know if you’ve ever heard him talk , Martin Amis is not only a notorious grouch but a sharp critical mind, particularly when it comes to literature. That quality is on full display in this collection, which spans nearly 30 years and twice as many subjects, from Vladimir Nabokov (his hero) to chess to writing about sex. Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that he’s a brilliant old grump.

Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories From History and the Arts , Clive James

James’s collection is a strange beast, not like any other essay collection on this list but its own breed. An encyclopedia of modern culture, the book collects 110 new biographical essays, which provide more than enough room for James to flex his formidable intellect and curiosity, as he wanders off on tangents, anecdotes, and cultural criticism. It’s not the only who’s who you need, but it’s a who’s who you need.

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman , Nora Ephron

Oh Nora, we miss you. Again, we could have picked any of her collections here — candid, hilarious, and willing to give it to you straight, she’s like a best friend and mentor in one, only much more interesting than any of either you’ve ever had.

Arguably , Christopher Hitchens

No matter what you think of his politics (or his rhetorical strategies), there’s no denying that Christopher Hitchens was one of the most brilliant minds — and one of the most brilliant debaters — of the century. In this collection, packed with cultural commentary, literary journalism, and political writing, he is at his liveliest, his funniest, his exactingly wittiest. He’s also just as caustic as ever.

The Solace of Open Spaces , Gretel Ehrlich

Gretel Ehrlich is a poet, and in this collection, you’ll know it. In 1976, she moved to Wyoming and became a cowherd, and nearly a decade later, she published this lovely, funny set of essays about rural life in the American West.”Keenly observed the world is transformed,” she writes. “The landscape is engorged with detail, every movement on it chillingly sharp. The air between people is charged. Days unfold, bathed in their own music. Nights become hallucinatory; dreams, prescient.”

The Braindead Megaphone , George Saunders

Saunders may be the man of the moment, but he’s been at work for a long while, and not only on his celebrated short stories. His single collection of essays applies the same humor and deliciously slant view to the real world — which manages to display nearly as much absurdity as one of his trademark stories.

Against Joie de Vivre , Phillip Lopate

“Over the years,” the title essay begins, “I have developed a distaste for the spectacle of joie de vivre , the knack of knowing how to live.” Lopate goes on to dissect, in pleasantly sardonic terms, the modern dinner party. Smart and thought-provoking throughout (and not as crotchety as all that), this collection is conversational but weighty, something to be discussed at length with friends at your next — oh well, you know.

Sex and the River Styx , Edward Hoagland

Edward Hoagland, who John Updike deemed “the best essayist of my generation,” has a long and storied career and a fat bibliography, so we hesitate to choose such a recent installment in the writer’s canon. Then again, Garrison Keillor thinks it’s his best yet , so perhaps we’re not far off. Hoagland is a great nature writer (name checked by many as the modern Thoreau) but in truth, he’s just as fascinated by humanity, musing that “human nature is interstitial with nature, and not to be shunned by a naturalist.” Elegant and thoughtful, Hoagland may warn us that he’s heading towards the River Styx, but we’ll hang on to him a while longer.

Changing My Mind , Zadie Smith

Smith may be best known for her novels (and she should be), but to our eyes she is also emerging as an excellent essayist in her own right, passionate and thoughtful. Plus, any essay collection that talks about Barack Obama via Pygmalion is a winner in our book.

My Misspent Youth , Meghan Daum

Like so many other writers on this list, Daum dives head first into the culture and comes up with meat in her mouth. Her voice is fresh and her narratives daring, honest and endlessly entertaining.

The White Album , Joan Didion

Yes, Joan Didion is on this list twice, because Joan Didion is the master of the modern essay, tearing at our assumptions and building our world in brisk, clever strokes. Deal.

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Best of 2021: Personal Essays

The Gradual Extinction of Softness , Chantha Nguon and Kim Green, Hippocampus Magazine , November 8, 2021

For this category, I’m recommending a moving, lyrical personal essay from Kim Green and Chantha Nguon. Nguon is a co-founder of a women’s social enterprise in rural northeastern Cambodia. For 10 years, these two friends have been collaborating on Nguon’s life story, through interviews and cooking sessions, which will eventually culminate into Slow Noodles , a memoir on food, loss, and recovered family recipes. This excerpt from the memoir-in-progress is an evocative piece on surviving the Cambodian genocide, and remembering the flavors, the memories, and the past that the Khmer Rouge regime tried to erase. It’s also sprinkled with “recipes,” made up of ingredients that reveal details of Nguon’s life, particularly of her childhood in Battambang: “Take a well-fed nine-year-old with a big family and a fancy French-Catholic-school education. Fold in 2 revolutions, 2 civil wars, and 1 wholesale extermination. Separate her from home, country, and a reliable source of food.” I’ve read this gorgeous essay a number of times, and each time I pay attention to new details — aromas, tastes — which make me appreciate it even more. — Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Authors Chantha Nguon and Kim Green on the story they wish they’d written this year:

We both loved “ Cambodian Americans Are Ready to Share Their Cuisine, On Their Terms ” by Maryam Jillani in Condé Nast Traveler . It’s a great primer on Cambodian cuisine that acknowledges the diaspora’s collective trauma without dwelling on it. And we love how she highlights the artistry of chefs we follow and admire. We wish we had written it but are also thrilled that Jillani did it so well.

Aftermath , Briohny Doyle, Griffith Review , October 24, 2021

In her exquisite piece about the human condition in the age of COVID, climate change, and other calamities, Briohny Doyle challenges readers — and herself — to give up the ghost of renewal. “What is an ideal community, a good life,” Doyle asks, “if nothing is renewed, if we are working in and through catastrophe with only what we have now and in the face of what will be?” This question is more than essay fodder. It’s a mantra, an incantation — for us all. — Seyward Darby

Author Briohny Doyle ‘s personal essay recommendation:

I’m a long-time admirer of Vanessa Berry’s writing, which is always marked by assiduous curiosity and intimate detail. Gentle and Fierce — the title of her new collection — describes her writing as much as her animal subjects. This essay, “ Perec’s Cat ” is a wonderful example of her enviably light touch at work.

Ghosts , Vauhini Vara, The Believer , August 9, 2021

Even as artificial intelligence creeps across science and technology, bulldozing computational problems, we comfort ourselves in the face of such power by thinking there are some things a program simply can’t do. A program can’t be funny, can’t be fraught, can’t be human. And maybe it can’t. But in Vauhini Vara’s gutpunch of an essay, we begin to see the glimmer of otherwise. Unable to write about her sister’s death of a rare cancer years earlier, Vara began feeding the linguistic engine GPT-3 prompts about her sister — and over the course of nine increasingly stirring attempts, their two voices meld in a way that wipes away any preconceptions you might have brought to the piece. This isn’t a warning klaxon about robot overlords; it’s a bracing exploration of what can happen when we finally hold the mirror at the perfect angle. — Peter Rubin

Author Vanessa Angélica Villarreal on “Ghosts”:

“My own writing is largely a practice of communion with the dead—recording forgotten lives, lost records, documenting collective memory. I personally use tarot to tap into my own unconscious and excavate the buried material there, and have noted the recent trend of astrology apps and tarot on TikTok and the uncanny specificity of its algorithms to ensure the right message finds you. It is brilliant to use AI as a divination tool, and to explore what mathematical fabric algorithms might be connected to beyond our understanding.”

Contraindications , Alison Criscitiello, The Alpinist , September 17, 2017

Alison Criscitiello’s essay about her climbing partner Anna Smith has stayed with me for a long time. It starts off as a rollicking adventure story: Two best friends embarking on a climbing expedition to the Indian Himalayas. The affection and admiration the women share spills out of her words, “opposites in almost every way imaginable, end members constantly bringing one another closer to an elusive center.” It is not just an exquisitely told quest: It is also about true friendship — and the joy found in sharing beautiful experiences.

Then it becomes something else. When Criscitiello describes Anna’s death, it is raw; I felt her pain. The essay turns into a survival story: Surviving not only the physical challenge of getting Anna off the mountain, but the grief, shock, and loneliness overwhelming Criscitiello now that she “no longer had Anna tethered to me.” For three days, she stays with Anna before a team arrives to help take her body down. Even then, Criscitiello remains, “guarding her” until Anna is finally cremated “along the shores of the Beas River in the heart of Manali” and her ashes taken home. It is time spent remembering Anna, whose “strength emanated from her core” and whose spark “set my aspirations afire.” — Carolyn Wells

The Grief Artist , Traci Brimhall, Guernica Magazine , January 6, 2021

Brimhall’s essay explores the influence that art, process, and ritual have on dealing with grief and loss as she mourns her mother’s death and the end of her marriage. So many essays deal with grief, but few consider the shape of it through so many disparate lenses. As Brimhall makes art out of the unexpected, she weaves a strand of persistent, insistent hope for the reader. “I love that nothing is wasted,” she writes. “Everything is ripe for transformation.” This essay reminds me that despite the fact that humans struggle with loss and change, maybe we can learn something about ourselves if we choose to lean on process and routine. Maybe too, we can get better at being more human as we deal with things that end, be it a life, a friendship, a marriage, or even just a time in our lives. — Krista Stevens

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31 page-turning memoirs to read in your lifetime, from searing essay collections to celebrity bestsellers

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Memoirs are the most personal account of nonfiction events.
They give readers an engaging narrative that navigates historical hardships or personal triumph.
The memoirs in this list were chosen for their unique stories and writing style.

Memoirs are hugely popular as readers gravitate towards the personal lens of real events, with the best ones almost reading like fiction. These remarkable, sometimes tragic, always inspirational stories bring us into the lives of people we've never met, giving us a wider understanding of humanity and of the promise one life can hold.

Each memoir on this list was chosen because it had a unique story with the potential to change how we understand the world. Some follow celebrities and others are a glimpse into the life of someone we probably never would have known. Capturing a human experience within the pages of a book is often raw and emotional, but so many of the memoirs in this list are also funny and highly entertaining. I'm thrilled to share with you my memoir recommendations because I feel these stories demand to be heard.

A formerly anonymous account of an infamous assault

"Know My Name" by Chanel Miller, free with Audible trial, $11.99 on Kindle, $16.20 for paperback

This is the best, most painful, most powerful memoir I have ever had the pleasure to read. I often go into books with no expectations of the author or the plot, so when the first chapters of this book introduced me to Chanel Miller and her story, I was floored. We've heard the name "Brock Turner" over and over, a convicted sexual assailant hailed for his swim records while an anonymous woman's letter circulated the internet. With the publication of this book, Chanel's words beg us to know her name and her story.

Memorable quote: "It is not a question of if you will survive this, but what beautiful things await you when you do."

An anecdotal Asian American essay collection

"Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning" by Cathy Park Hong, free with Audible trial, $13.99 on Kindle, $15.98 for paperback

"Minor Feelings" is an essay collection on what it means to experience racial stereotyping, historical trauma, and societal invalidation as an Asian American. This is an honest, original, and representative storytelling of identity and culture in a society where one of the most diverse demographics is often reduced to "the preferred minority." Especially with the recent rise of violence against Asian Americans , this is a crucial read, among many , to understand the ignorance and racism endured by Cathy Park Hong and so many others.

Memorable quote: "Asian Americans inhabit a purgatorial status: neither white enough nor black enough, unmentioned in most conversations about racial identity.

Michelle Obama's wise and reflective life story

"Becoming" by Michelle Obama, free with Audible trial, $12.99 on Kindle, $11.89 for hardcover

There's something for everyone in "Becoming," no matter your political view or opinion of the Obama family. Michelle's life story is one of challenge and promise, hope, and perseverance. Her book begins with her childhood, through meeting Barack at a law firm, and continues all the way through her time in the White House. Her anecdotes and advice overflow with inspiration, empathy, and patience. Besides being absolutely delightful and refreshing, Michelle Obama's memoir further demonstrates why she's become such an icon for young women to become confident and inspiring women themselves.

Memorable quote: "At fifty-four, I am still in progress, and I hope that I always will be."

A grief-stricken memoir

"The Men We Reaped" by Jesmyn Ward, free with Audible trial, $10.04 on Kindle, $11.56 for hardcover

Jesmyn Ward (the author of " Sing, Unburied, Sing ") has lived through a lot of death, losing five men in her life in four years. She struggled with the "why" of it all until the answer became clear: though each man died of different causes, they all came back to racial and economic struggles. There is a lot of grief in her story as she navigates the statistics of racial poverty and their personalized effect on her, her family, and her community.

Memorable quote: "We tried to outpace the thing that chased us, that said: You are nothing."

A series of wildly entertaining restaurant adventures

"Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain, free with Audible trial, $12.60 on Kindle, $17.84 for hardcover

Hailed as an iconic chef, traveler, and journalist, Anthony Bourdain's memoir is a trip through all the hilariously bad behavior in the back of every great restaurant. Bourdain held nothing back in his storytelling, exposing the hidden and often dirty secrets to which anyone who has ever worked in a kitchen can attest. His words are that of a seasoned professional, a voice empty of arrogance but full of endearment for the often chaotic nature of the industry.

Memorable quote: "Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride."

The story of one woman's improbable success

"Educated" by Tara Westover, free with Audible trial, $12.99 on Kindle, $13 for hardcover

Tara came from a Mormon, survivalist mountain family; her father's fears of the end of the world dictated that the children would never receive an education, proper medical attention, or even have birth certificates. When she was accepted to Brigham Young University after spending years teaching herself math and grammar, her life became driven by her thirst for knowledge. Tara writes with poise, patience, and wisdom that radiates through her pursuit of self-identity, going beyond trauma and towards a balance between forgiveness from where she came and passion for where she's going.

Memorable quote: "'You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them,' she says now. 'You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.'"

The fierce account of an unstoppable young woman

"I Am Malala" by Malala Yousafazi, free with Audible trial, $9.99 on Kindle, $8.30 for hardcover

On October 9, 2012, Malala Yousafazi was shot in the head while riding the bus home from school, having tirelessly fought for her right to an education. Malala has since become famous for her human rights advocacy, specifically for Pakistani women, and is the youngest woman to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. Her memoir is the story of the fight for freedom against seemingly impossible odds — about being a daughter in a world that values only sons, and speaking up even when everyone is trying to keep you quiet.

Memorable quote: " We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced."

The contemplative work of a terminally ill neurosurgeon

"When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi" free with Audible trial, $9.99 on Kindle, $14.64 for hardcover

What makes a life worth living? At 36, Paul Kalanithi was a life-saving neurosurgeon whose career came to a halt as he was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. Now a patient confronting his own mortality and seeking a broader understanding of this life , Paul digs into all of life's great questions as his own slips away. He lost his battle with cancer while writing this memoir, leaving much for us to think about as we continue on.

Memorable quote: "There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment."

A collection of personal essays on mental illness

"The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays" by Esmé Weijun Wang, free with Audible trial, $9.99 on Kindle, $12.53 for hardcover

By combining research in her personal essays, Esmé Weijun Wang explores schizophrenia both in her own mind and through the lens of our society as we struggle to understand and care for mental illness. The book begins with a technical explanation of schizoaffective disorders and their effects, providing a necessary perspective on which her memoir is based. Her stories are extremely important, a candid telling of exceptionally personal experiences in a world where she and her diagnosis are frequently misunderstood.

Memorable quote: "I tell myself that if I must live with a slippery mind, I want to know how to tether it too."

A father's letter to his son

"Between The World And Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates, free with Audible trial, $12.99 on Kindle, $14.99 for hardcover

Told in the form of a letter to his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates attempts to answer the biggest questions he's encountered in his life about race, America's history, and how to protect his son from an unforgiving world. The story is profoundly raw and real, one that combines our history with the current political climate and will undoubtedly be hailed for years to come.

Memorable quote: "You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable."

A painfully honest story of getting lost in order to be found

"Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail" by Cheryl Strayed, free with Audible trial, $11.99 on Kindle, $16.53 for hardcover

Cheryl Strayed had almost zero hiking experience and no real training when she decided to embark on the Pacific Crest Trail which spans from the Mojave Desert to Washington State. Four years prior, her mother's death spurred a whirlwind of addiction, anger, and heartbreak that pushed her to the point of giving up. The story of her hike is a brutal and honest one. But in order to find herself again, Cheryl needs to come to terms with her mistakes — a journey into which she welcomes us in the form of this book.

Memorable quote: "How wild it was, to let it be."

One woman's journey from refugee to Congresswoman

"This Is What America Looks Like" by Ilhan Omar, free with Audible trial, $12.99 on Kindle, $16.59 for hardcover

Ilhan was one of seven children being raised by her father and grandfather when her family fled Somalia and found themselves in a refugee camp in Kenya. Surrounded by poverty, starvation, and death, it took four years for her family to reach Virginia. Determined to find her American Dream, Ilhan worked through every hardship to her election to Congress in 2019. Her memoir is an incredible account of Ilhan's determination to not only survive but thrive in environments that could have broken her. It is uniquely eye-opening and transparent, a look into her endurance through the impossible.

Memorable quote: "As a refugee who fled civil war as a child, I am still trying to figure out where I fit in — which is perhaps why the most important note I found sticking to the wall outside my office had only three words. You belong here."

A narrative of incarceration and justice

"Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson, free with Audible trial, $12.99 on Kindle, $9.11 for paperback

Bryan was a young lawyer in Alabama when he founded the "Equal Justice Initiative" — a law office committed to defending prisoners wrongly convicted, too poor to afford proper representation, or those not given a fair trial. This memoir focuses on the early days of the firm and one of the first clients, Walter McMillian, a Black man wrongly convicted of murder. If you don't know much about the mass incarceration or racial inequality in America's justice system, this is a great place to start.

Memorable quote: "Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done."

A memoir that will make you feel alright, alright, alright

"Greenlights" by Matthew McConaughey, free with Audible trial, $14.99 on Kindle, $16.95 for hardcover

"Greenlights" is a memoir that radiates with McConaughey's iconic country-boy coolness through the printed words about life lessons, patience, "catching greenlights" and the wisdom that the "yellows and reds eventually turn green, too." Matthew McConaughey's novel reads like an old friend sitting down with you on the front porch as the sun sets on a summer night — it's supremely warm and comfortable, full of wisdom collected from nearly 50 years of Matthew's diaries.

Memorable quote: "Stepping in shit is inevitable, so let's either see it as good luck, or figure out how to do it less often."

An inside look at a rising political figure

"Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future" by Pete Buttigieg, free with Audible trial, free on Kindle for Prime members, $15.77 for hardcover

At 29, Pete Buttigieg was the youngest elected mayor in the nation and held a vision to revitalize South Bend, Indiana. In recent years, he has emerged onto the national political stage for his unparalleled successes, even holding his mayoral position when he deployed to Afghanistan as an officer in the Navy. His memoir is authentic, endearing, and optimistic. It's also a great way to learn more about Buttigieg's policies, accomplishments, and aspirations for the future of our country.

Memorable quote: "A river is made drop by drop."

A composition of a noteworthy Supreme Court Justice

"My Own Words" by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, free with Audible trial, $12.99 on Kindle, $9.18 for paperback

This is a collection of RBG's writings and speeches, with each chapter given an introduction to provide historical context. It spans a wide range of topics, from feminism to the inner workings of the Supreme Court. A combination of legal decisions, advice from her mother, and stories of her strides towards gender equality make for a lasting memoir of a woman whose legacy endures.

Memorable quote: "When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one's ability to persuade."

A memoir for a YA audience

"All Boys Aren't Blue" by George M. Johnson, free with Audible trial, $10.99 on Kindle, $14.10 for hardcover

Told in a series of essays, this memoir annotates the struggles of queer, Black boys and men in our society. For some readers, it's a reassurance that there is a place in this world for us to be uniquely ourselves and thrive despite setbacks. For others, it's a call to be the ally that could save a person's life. George M. Johnson's essays address tough subjects like toxic masculinity, consent, and questioning one's gender identity in an accessible way. The book is geared towards a young adult audience, making it a great outlet to explore gender, sexuality, and race by fostering supportive environments and open conversations.

Memorable quote: "The first person you are ever an activist for is yourself. If I wasn't gonna fight for me, who else was?"

A raw account of the long journey to loving oneself

"Over The Top" by Jonathan Van Ness, free with Audible trial, $11.99 on Kindle, $12.90 for paperback

I absolutely adore "Queer Eye" and Jonathan Van Ness's radiance, encouragement, and clearly genuine love for those around him. I picked up his memoir thinking it would be fun and light, but Jonathan also opens up about some hidden hardships like bullying, trauma, and addiction. Every bit of JVN's sparkling personality shines through his memoir, a demonstration of how bright and shiny we can become.

Memorable quote: "As scary as this can be I want you to know no matter how broken you feel, and how seemingly unlikely it is, we are never too broken to heal."

The dark years of an American musician's childhood

"Hollywood Park" by Mikel Jollett, free with Audible trial, $14.99 on Kindle, $14.74 for paperback

Mikel Jollett was born into the Church of Synanon, one of the country's most infamous cults. By cult law, Mikel was taken from his mother at six months old and raised in their "school," finally escaping years later with his mother and brother. This is the poetic yet painful story of a life both in and out of the cult, peppered with addiction, trauma, and abuse. Ultimately, this memoir is a testament to strength and love. The beginning is told through the perspective of a child, enduring the cruelties of the cult, but the voice morphs as Mikel escapes and begins to experience and understand the world more.

Memorable quote: "How long can you live with ghosts before deciding to become one?"

The childhood account of an iconic American poet

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou, free with Audible trial, $6.99 on Kindle, $15.49 for paperback

This is a precious and painful memoir of a woman who shaped poetry and literature and is an idol to so many today. It spans Maya Angelou's childhood, addressing the abuse she endured and letting other women know they are not alone. This book, which has been banned in many schools and libraries, tells the story of how words saved Maya's life.

Memorable quote: "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

The story of strained yet unconditional familial love

"The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls, free with Audible trial, $12.99 on Kindle, $7.09 for paperback

Jeannette Walls spent much of her life hiding the secrets of her nomadic and deeply dysfunctional childhood. One of four children born to wanderer parents, Jeannette's family found themselves settling down in a mining town in Virginia once their money ran out. The dysfunction escalated as her father used destructive means to try and escape the confines of "normal" life, leaving the children desperate for escape. This memoir spent over 440 weeks on the "New York Times" Bestseller list, a balance of bright successes and dark childhood hardships. It's interesting to feel Jeannette's withstanding love for her family, even as we the readers resent them more and more.

Memorable quote: "You should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. Everyone has something good about them. You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that."

One woman's notable spiritual journey

"Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert, free with Audible trial, $13.99 on Kindle, $15.67 for hardcover

"Eat, Pray, Love" has become such an undeniable classic in the 14 years since its publication. For a while, it had the reputation of the favorite amongst Mom Book Clubs, but Elizabeth Gilbert's pursuit of fulfillment in every aspect of her life is one we all might need. At 30, Elizabeth Gilbert hit an early mid-life crisis as she found herself deeply unhappy in a textbook-perfect life. The memoir follows her yearlong journey around the world after quitting her job, selling all her belongings, and setting off on a spiritual expedition.

Memorable quote: "This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something."

Barack Obama's newest memoir

"A Promised Land" by Barack Obama, free with Audible trial, $17.99 on Kindle, $23.23 for hardcover

I will admit, I'm still in the middle of reading this memoir and I am savoring it for as long as I can. Obama's work fills me with the warmth of nostalgia, even as I'm reading through some of the hardest days of his presidency. His intimate account of the events we saw plastered against the news for years is fiercely engaging, paired with the ease of writing as smooth as his voice. One of a series of future presidential memoirs by him, this one is captivating for the insight of a firsthand experience and the perspective gained in the years since his time in office.

Memorable quote: "Either you seize what may turn out to be the only chance you have, or you decide you're willing to live with the knowledge that the chance has passed you by."

A uniquely illustrated memoir

"The Fire Never Goes Out" by Noelle Stevenson, $9.99 on Kindle, $12.99 for paperback

A compilation of personal essays and mini-comics, Noelle's memoir is that of the roller coaster of a creative life. This one is for every reader with a creative side who understands the highs and lows of creating art. The memoir spans about eight years. so it's really interesting to see her work morph, pivot, and grow over the course of the book. We've all heard "a picture is worth a thousand words" but I was still surprised at how revealing her artwork was through her transformative young adult years.

Memorable quote: "Love your younger self, and let them die."

A harrowing holocaust account

"Night" by Elie Wiesel, free with Audible trial, $7.46 for paperback

This memoir is not for the faint of heart. It does not tiptoe around the atrocities of the Holocaust or cushion the horrors within the confines of a concentration camp. T his is Elie's story as his family was taken from their home in 1944 and detained in Auschwitz. It is a short read that will transport you to the center of the pain, the abuse, and the murder of the Holocaust.

Memorable quote: "To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time."

Sylvia Plath's vivid journal entries

"The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath," free with Audible trial, $9.99 on Kindle, $15.49 for paperback

Sylvia Path's journals were first published in 1982, though heavily abridged. This memoir is a compilation of the complete, unedited, and remarkably introspective journal entries of the last 12 years of Sylvia's life until her death at age 30. Her writing is intriguing and intimate and I often had to remind myself of her age — my perception was completely skewed by the maturity in her thoughts. If you ever loved her poetry or "The Bell Jar," this is one to pick up.

Memorable quote: "I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life."

Stephen King's advice and anecdotes

"On Writing" by Stephen King, free with Audible trial, $12.99 on Kindle, $14.56 for paperback

Both memoir and mentorship, "On Writing" is a must-read for any aspiring writer, Stephen King-lover, or storyteller. The stories about his life are largely entertaining, dating back to his love for books as a young child all the way through his prominent writing career. The advice and inspiration in his memoir are profound, with so many quotable moments you'll cling to long after you've finished the book.

Memorable quote: "The scariest moment is always just before you start."

Nelson Mandela's incredible story

"Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela, free with Audible trial, $11.99 on Kindle, $23.01 for paperback

When I was given Nelson Mandela's over- 700-page memoir, I was intimidated (to say the least). I'd known the most famous parts of his life — from his imprisonment to him receiving the Nobel Peace Prize — but this memoir blew me away with just how instrumental and powerful his work was. The writing is clear and direct, leaving his life lessons and personal experience to speak for themselves.

Memorable quote: "And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same."

An account of healing through non-traditional therapy

"Group: How One Therapist And A Circle of Strangers Saved My Life" by Christine Tate, free with Audible trial, $13.99 on Kindle, $14.49 for paperback

In her memoir about the saving grace of strangers, Christie Tate was a law student when dark thoughts led her to seek therapy and her therapist led her to a psychotherapy group. It's easy to find the dark humor in this memoir and get lost in the problems of complete strangers while happily ignoring our own (at least for a little while). Christie finds a deeper connection and a sense of intimacy with this group of strangers as they discuss sex, childhood, and destructive habits. It's a fantastic normalization of non-traditional therapy practices and a story that's simultaneously entertaining and comically uncomfortable.

Memorable quote: "If you're serious about getting into intimate relationships — becoming a real person, as you said — you need to feel every feeling you've been stifling since you were a kid. The loneliness, the anxiety, the anger, the terror."

An inspirational, gender-focused memoir

"Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story" by Jacob Tobia, free with Audible trial, $9.99 on Kindle, $26 for hardcover

I will absolutely never forget the day I wore purple lipstick for the first time and just happened to meet Jacob Tobia, who told me they loved the shade and asked where I got it. This tiny but affirming interaction between strangers is a testament to the kindness that radiates from Jacob everywhere they go — and in their memoir. Labeled "sissy" at a young age, Jacob grew to power a gender revolution alongside transgender, non-binary, and other gender-nonconforming folks. Their book is extremely vulnerable which allows us to take part in their journey and think about gender in ways we haven't before.

Memorable quote: "I'm sharing this with you because I want you to understand that telling a boy not to wear a dress is an act of spiritual murder."

The story of two famous podcast hosts

"Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered" by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, free with Audible trial, $9.99 on Kindle, $26 for hardcover

"My Favorite Murder: is one of the most popular true-crime murder podcasts out there. Since 2016, Karen and Georgia have sat down and swapped well-researched murder stories, telling them for the first time during recording so their reactions are real and hysterical. We've gotten to know these two through their podcast, but their memoir gives a more genuine look into the backstories behind their best advice to not get murdered (my personal favorite being "F** politeness.") Their writing is each reflective and witty, no matter how difficult the subject.

Memorable quote: "We barely get any time on this planet. Do not spend it pleasing other people."

Main content

10 Memoirs and Essay Collections by Black Women

Reading Lists

These contemporary books illuminate the realities of the world for black women in america.

A Black woman sitting on a bench reading

In her 1993 poem, “won’t you celebrate with me,” author and educator, Lucille Clifton, invites us to wonder at the life she has created:

“… i had no model born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up.”

As a Black woman existing at the intersections of these marginalized identities (“both nonwhite and woman”), Clifton finds herself rendered invisible in the mainstream and—consequently—creates herself in the process. 30 years onwards, Black women writers continue to take on the mantle of rendering themselves visible across genres and constructing models for future generations to see themselves in.

This has been especially true in the case of personal narratives, from memoir to essay collections. Starting with Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl published in 1861 as a foundational abolitionist text, through to Angela Davis: An Autobiography released only a few years after the acquittal of the Black Panther leader and prominent feminist, Black women have narrated their stories and transformed the personal into the political with radical results.

In our own personal narratives, we shrug off duty and expectations, the needs of others become secondary to our primary, as we catalog our hurts and our hopes. We become the hero, not saving anyone else but ourselves. To borrow a phrase from the late bell hooks, we move from the margin to the center.

The following contemporary memoirs and personal essay collections released in the past ten years exemplify this growing urgency by Black women to tell our side of the story. Their words illuminate the realities of the world and the impact of racist and sexist systems of powers on the lives of the most disenfranchised. These works are affecting, funny, haunting, inspiring and all urgently salient. They are additions to the records and the archives, insisting and reminding us that our voices always matter.

Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward

Within a four-year time span, two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward saw the deaths of five Black men in her life, including that of her brother. She chronicles their lives, alongside her own, of growing up in Mississippi and the history of racial violence that surrounds around them. “Hopefully, I’ll understand why my brother died while I live,” Ward writes, ”and why I’ve been saddled with this rotten fucking story.” Her journey of reflection is one of grief, anger, and guilt, all buoyed ultimately by the love that comes through of her family and the home that raised her.

Negroland: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson

Writing about her upbringing in a wealthy, professional Black community of Chicago in the 1950s, critic Margo Jefferson reflects on the intersections of race, gender, class, and color within her community, poetically delving into the nuances of Black life. The Pulitzer Prize winner manages a tight balancing act, honestly approaching the privileges and prejudices of her childhood family and friends, whilst remaining steadfast in her knowledge and understanding that Blackness—regardless of status or hue—is still ultimately Black. “We’re considered upper-class Negroes and upper-middle-class Americans,” her mother tells her, “But most people would like to consider us Just More Negroes.”

We Are Never Meeting In Real Life: Essays by Samantha Irby

Though comedy writing—much like comedy itself—continues to be a boy’s club, Samantha Irby fuses sarcasm, self-deprecation, and toilet humor into musings and anecdotes about her life in the Midwest. Whether she is writing about The Bachelorette or mental health or falling in love, her singular voice is sure to bring you to tears of laughter or sadness, if not both at the same time. In an especially funny take on her pain she asks, “Do Black girls even get to be depressed?” and hordes of us nod in synchronized recognition.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Author, cultural critic, and professor Roxane Gay has never shied away from the story of the violent sexual assault that took place as a child, but the story extends from that experience to explore additional themes around the (her) body. Using examples from her own lived experiences, she challenges assumptions and conventional thinking about health and wellness, taking to task all the unacknowledged fatphobia we pervasively encourage in our society. Gay’s memoir is sometimes difficult to read, but necessarily so, particularly the parts where she works through her own demons and leaves us no choice but to confront ours too. “I buried the girl I had been… and perhaps I am writing my way back to her, trying to tell her everything she needs to hear.”

Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

In a series of wide-ranging essays, the university professor and MacArthur Genius covers beauty standards, Black maternal mortality, and the election of Barack Obama, told through personal stories, academic scholarship, and cultural criticism. Thick is intentional in centering herself and the experiences of Black women and girls—a revolutionary and counter cultural endeavor given how “[the] personal essay [has] become the way that black women writers claim legitimacy in a public discourse that defines itself, in part, by how well it excludes Black women.” McMillan Cottom refuses to be shut out.

The Yellow House: A Memoir by Sarah M. Broom

“Remembering is a chair that is hard to sit still in,” writes Sarah M. Broom in her National Book Award-winning debut work. The title comes from the name of her childhood home in New Orleans where she grew up with her large, loving, and complicated extended family. She moves away for college and continues to move further away from the yellow house, until the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina forces her to reckon with her home and all the historical and political context of where she came from. She looks at race, class, and inequality from a humanistic lens, using her story and the stories of her loved ones to reveal the harder truths about the country and how far left there is for us to go.

Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Tretheway

For years, former Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner ran away from the defining tragedy of her childhood—the murder of her mother by her ex-husband when Tretheway was a teenager. “All those years I thought that I had been running away from my past I had, in fact, been working my way steadily back to it,” and her memoir is her way of unpacking that journey back, beginning with her mother’s death and studying all around it. As Tretheway looks at her own life, from growing up biracial around the time of Loving v. Virginia to finding her way to becoming a writer, she is tenderly attentive to the memory of her mother and grappling with the situation of her death, taking us along the often dark journey with her.

Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine

Much like its author, Just Us is a text that defies categorization. The poet, playwright, and essayist utilizes poems, footnotes, essays, photographs, quotes, scripts, tweets and Facebook statuses to explore and indict American racism. Rankine’s writing is grounded in her own experiences, using everything from dinner party conversations with other academics and faculty members to moments between her and her White husband in couples therapy, resulting in a text that is personal, vulnerable, and filled with beauty. Rankine asks, “How does one combat the racism of a culture?” Just Us answers.

Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop by Danyel Smith

Former editor of the iconic hip-hop and R&B publication VIBE Magazine , Danyel Smith’s memoir doubles as a music history on Black women musicians. Smith chronicles her life growing up in Oakland and her journalistic path, looking to icons like Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer and Stephanie Mills as inspiration as to who she could be, and pays them their due through her own story. “I want Black women who create music to be known and understood, as I want to be known and understood,” Danyel writes, demanding that we pay attention to them and her too.

Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe

Ordinary Notes can be understood best as meditations—on Blackness, on life, on the human condition—penned deftly and poignantly by the woman described in the New York Times as “shaping a generation of Black thought.” Professor Sharpe intimately walks us through her life, from the museums she walks, to the songs she listens to, to the family histories she unearths, and in the final section, she dedicates pages considering the books she describes as “giving me a place to land in difficult times.” To Sharpe, they show “Black worlds of making and possibility.” Ordinary Notes does the same.

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Memoir coach and author Marion Roach

Welcome to The Memoir Project, the portal to your writing life.

How to Publish a Personal Essay Collection and Write From Everyday Life with Elizabeth Rau

ELIZABETH RAU IS the writer to ask about how to publish a personal essay collection. She is also the writer to ask about how to write the personal essay. Listen in, and read along as we discuss those topics, and so much more.

Marion: Welcome to Qwerty, the podcast for writers on how to live the writing life. I’m Marion Roach Smith. Each episode I talk to writers from all genres to discover what makes a good read. Along the way, we discuss their writing process, discover their tips, and talk about what matters most to writers. So, step away from the computer or typewriter for a bit and join us. Today my guest is writer Elizabeth Rau. She’s an award-winning writer and former newspaper reporter whose work has appeared in publications such as The Providence Journal , The Boston Globe , and The Providence Phoenix . Her new book is entitled The Good Slope , and is a collection of essays written from everyday life just out from Apprentice House Press. Welcome, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Oh, thank you.

Marion: I’m delighted that you’re here and I’m delighted to read this book. The personal essay is my absolute favorite form, so this was a joy for me and also a joy because of their writing, which I found a reference in the promo copy that really explained to me what I was feeling, a lovely note that states that the collection is quote, “engaging, yet never indulgent.” It goes on to say, “This collection elevates moments we take for granted into luminous stories about the experience of home.” There are a couple of things in that lovely sentence I want to explore, but my audience is writers, so they want to do this. So let’s start with that word indulgent, as in that quote that you’re writing is, quote, “engaging, but never indulgent.” Boy, oh boy, am I going to use that as a directive for writers with whom I work. So, can you explain the difference between engaging and indulgent and just spend a little time on the trap of indulgence, if you would please?

Elizabeth: Well, I like to write about everyday things, and I’ve always liked to do that, and I’ve always been really attracted to that kind of writing. I haven’t been keen on writing that is full of embellishment and purple prose and convoluted sentences and a lot of explanatory paragraphs, long quotes. I like writing that is spare, that uses detail judiciously. I’m not really keen on writing that is overly sentimental, and that’s very difficult to do when you’re writing about yourself, and you’re writing about your children or your family or something painful that has happened to you. So I like understated writing, and I think that’s what the indulgent phrase means. You don’t want to pour your heart out because then it becomes too saccharin, it becomes too sentimental. Some readers like that, but that’s not my style and never really has been.

It’s easy to fall into that trap, I think, but I always fight against it. During my many, many revisions, I always take out stuff that seems, frankly, that just doesn’t seem true. It doesn’t seem true to me, and it doesn’t seem like a true thing that could have happened to another human being. I look back at some of my early writing, not just essay writing, but journalism writing because I do have a background in journalism. In the beginning I probably was over indulgent in many ways. The more you do it, the more you write, the more you see that it’s actually the spare writing with just the perfect detail is so powerful, it’s almost lyrical. It’s almost like a long poem. So that’s what I always strive to do, and I think it’s so important to learn to do as a writer.

Marion: The other aspect of that line of promo copy I want to get under a little bit is about elevating the quotidian, those moments in life. I’m a huge believer in that ethic, but I know the confidence, I talent and work ethic to do so is not an easy combo to develop. You just talked about developing that you just have a wonderful light touch, and you don’t indulge. You don’t drill in, you don’t preach, you don’t waggle your finger at us. So let’s take apart those requirements, a bit of the writing and talk a little bit about I. I know that people listening to this want to do this. So when you spot something in your own life, in every day of your own life, what’s the first thing you do?

Elizabeth: You mean as a topic for an essay?

Marion: Yeah, a topic or a moment. You have such a fabulous combination of topics here, but there are also these moments you come around the corner and there’s EMT people in front of your house. Did you stop and make notes or do you just walk away with that, even you have some fantastic moments in this? I just wonder about when you spot a moment in your own life and you say, “I’m going to write about that. I’m going to grab that?” Or what-

Elizabeth: Well, sometimes, sometimes I do. I am very lucky, I have a great memory, and I have a very good visual memory. I can also remember very short quotes and which are significant. A lot of these pieces were written for a paper in my neighborhood. So I wrote one every month, and so I knew I was under a deadline. I always knew I had another essay that I had to write, so I was always looking around for topics all the time. So they emerged to me just in maybe one phrase or one event, like my husband cutting himself with the oyster knife. Then I would build a whole essay around that. My mind has to be active. If I know I have a deadline, if I know I have an assignment and I know I have something due, then I’m in this hyper state of, “Oh, that might make a great essay.”

My son’s yo-yoing, or I wrote a whole essay about a little boy sitting on a playground making finger shadow puppets, and it was seemingly about nothing. But then I realized after I had this long conversation with him, and I was tired and none in the best mood, I thought, “Wow, this’ll make a great essay because it’s just this innocence and wonder about life.” As a parent, I almost missed it, what he was talking about and then I came to appreciate it as he talked more. So I think it’s just being alive, being very observant that’s really important, and looking for the beauty, the joy and the humor. The humor’s really important too.

Marion: Absolutely. Do you carry a notebook with you everywhere you go? Do you jot things down? Do you speak in your phone? Do you write on the inside of your palm? What do you do when you witness one of those moments?

Elizabeth: Well, sometimes I would write on my palm and-

Marion: How did I know that?

Elizabeth: Sometimes, I have a checkbook, and I would write on the check receipt. So, I have check receipts with all sorts of doodles and everything on them. Sometimes I would read something beautiful, and I would scribble it down on the check receipt or a quote I might hear. Yeah, I’m always constantly doing something like that.

Marion: It’s such a lovely thing to tell people because I think they think that real writers retain everything, know everything. The muse visits them. It goes from their head right through their fingers. No, no, no, no, no. My checkbook absolutely has been the recipient of many, many, many notes. But my palm, the inside of my wrist, I’ve written on the inside of a skirt hem once because I was like, “Well, that’s all I’ve got. I’m sitting here in church, I’m using it.” Sometimes people give me weird looks, but I don’t really care. So I love that you snatch it, you grab it and it works. So let’s talk about the spotting of things as we did a little bit.

But are there moments of life that move us most and work best in essays, or is it the gamut? I think there’s another misunderstanding of among younger writers that, “Oh, there’s just certain kinds of things that don’t happen to me.” You just make the best argument with this collection that it’s the quotidian, that it’s your husband cutting himself with the shucking knife and with the oyster knife. It’s that your kid on the playground, that people and their things that they say and do just require that momentary observation and that warmth that starts to grow in our chests as writers where we say, “There’s something here.” So can you just go on a little bit more about that and give some people some confidence that they too are having these moments in life?

Elizabeth: Well, a lot of it is a process. Because of my journalism background, I like to work on deadlines. So I like to put that kind of pressure on me, and I start looking around the world and observing. I could be in the grocery store and see something that is really remarkable, or I could overhear a conversation on the train or a bus and that can evolve into an essay, but I’ve always been drawn to the every day. That’s really where so many beautiful things and wondrous things happen. The challenge is to really drill down and don’t just skim over it, really intensely, report it, again, my journalism background. Then it becomes just this beautiful, vivid piece.

For instance, I wrote an essay about gardening, and I was a novice gardener, and I had no idea what I was doing. It was a long essay, maybe 1200 words. I intensely reported that because first of all, I tried to make fun of myself because I didn’t know what I was doing. I would drive around to different people’s houses and leave notes and ask, “What plant is in front of your house?” I thought, “Okay, well, that’s part of this essay,” or I’d drive around with my kids and look at this beautiful tree for the millionth time, and they couldn’t stand it. “Oh, not the tree again, mom, or the bush,” so that’s great dialogue-

Marion: Right.

Elizabeth: … if you just get those three little words, “Oh, mom, not the tree again.”

Elizabeth: When I was doing it, for instance, it wasn’t enough to say I bought three shrubs at this nursery. I had to know what the shrubs were. I had to know what they looked like. That was for all the plants, and that’s how the essay becomes very personal. It becomes very vivid. It’s just around us all the time.

Marion: Yes.

Elizabeth: I’m thinking of writing an essay about my love for lap swimming, and it wouldn’t just be about physically why I do it, the exercise. I’ve been thinking about it as I’m lap swimming, and I thought, “Well, there’s a great lead,” I’m thinking. It would be about the various suits I’ve gone through and people I’ve met and how I pushing the water away from me and why I do it and some sad moments I’ve had in the water, teary-eyed under my goggles. So you just have to sit down and think about not just a superficial aspect of the event or the person, but really, really drill down and try and get to those details because they really carry the story. Also, as I said before, humor is wonderful. Try and be a little self-deprecating because-

Marion: Yeah, you’re good at that.

Elizabeth: … it’s very appealing.

Marion: It is appealing. I used to hate the early iteration of mommy bloggers where everybody was perfect. I’m 100% sure that for the first five years of my daughter’s life, I didn’t go anywhere without a booger on me, and there was the time I looked down at a board meeting and I had on mismatched shoes. I wrote about those things because I think they’re human, but perfection, it seems so inhuman to me. Those perfect mommy bloggers that did everything perfectly and their cookies always came out perfect, and it’s like, oh, no, no. The good is in the failure. The good is in the trial, I think. So I just love the stuff you chose to look at. Right from the start, the book frames and shelters these pieces under the roof of home-

Elizabeth: Right.

Marion: … or it’s the lens perhaps that you put on the nose of the reader. So let’s talk about that. Do collections of essays benefit from the writer giving us some direction? You give us this beautiful introduction that tells us this. I found it incredibly gracious of you, but also I had no doubt the territory of this book from that moment forward. So talk a little bit about framing a collection, ’cause I think everybody thinks they would like to write a collection, but I believe that they’re best written under a single roof.

Elizabeth: Well, what happened is I had written probably 150 essays, and I started rereading them, and I did discover that they did all have this theme. Not all of them, but most of them, this theme of home. It’s been a really powerful theme all my life. I grew up in St. Louis in a big family, and there was a lot of chaos and fun, and then I left and never went back. It was always very difficult for me to cut out on my own, and I wrote about it in the early day. Then I started to create my own home and wrote about that. Then now that home is disappearing, and now I’m trying to recreate another home.

So, it’s occurred to me that this is what we do. Whether it’s people, a thing, a place, we’re constantly recreating the happiness in our lives and trying to find happiness in those moments, finding happiness in those moments, and then having the courage to move on with grace and gratitude. So a lot of these essays, there’s a little bit of melancholy because life is very transitory and especially if you have children in a family and really for anyone from all backgrounds. That’s something I discovered as when I had a lot to read over. It didn’t emerge consciously for me, but because it’s been such an emotional aspect of my life, I think it emerges in my essays in different ways.

Marion: It’s such a good topic, home. It’s such an elusive one. It’s a fundamental one. I know that this is a collection of pieces that you had written over a long period of time because they’re dated, which is very helpful. But I wonder as you were reading them or you were selecting them or you were rewriting them, what did you learn about home while you were having a look at these pieces? Did it move you along your own education of your definition of home?

Elizabeth: Well, again, I really look at it as we’re constantly recreating home, and that doesn’t mean a home with six kids, and then you leave that home and you get five more. What I mean is we’re just always recreating a feeling of a nurturing place to live, and a place where we can feel comfortable and calm and safe. That’s what we do, I think, throughout our lives. Of course, you start with your first home and then you leave it and then you miss that home. Then you create your own home, and then that home changes, and then now you’re on a journey to create a new home. So it’s this never ending quest, and it’s almost a cliche, but it’s a very, very powerful, and I think it’ll be with me until I take my very last breath. I noticed when I was writing my essays, the ones that are about my kids, I started weaving in a lot of my childhood in those essays.

Marion: Yes, I loved that.

Elizabeth: They came back in such a vivid way. I loved putting them in the essays because it was a way to meander around, which I love to do in personal essay. I love to meander and get not quite off-topic, but not take the reader on an entirely linear route.

Marion: They were layered. I found that your backstory layered in really gave me a great deal to consider about this definition of home and how it changes and how we move on. So let’s talk a little bit about the actual writing. Let’s talk about leads, how we open these pieces. In this wonderful collection, The Good Slope , that’s just out, you have a number of essays. I laughed and cried my way through it, but there was one lead that I thought, “Okay, I have to ask her about this one.” You write, quote, this is the opening sentence of the piece, “Everything President Nixon demanded of me I could do except the softball throw,” and I just loved that.

There’s no way the reader’s not going to read on. I know how to write a straight news lead, a feature lead, an anecdote lead, all of those things, but not everybody does. So give us a little insight on how you wrote this and what you thought when you saw it on the page. Sometimes these things can be a little shocking to the writer, and we go, “Can I really say that?” in the pursuit of this essay as you wrote it, is that what you literally wrote first or did it come-

Elizabeth: No.

Marion: … after? Right.

Marion: So, give the writers here the confidence that that great first line may not be the first line you write.

Elizabeth: No. No. That was a while ago, but as I recalled, I had a more anecdotal lead. In fact, the lead might have been the second paragraph. “I could leap across a pile of sand, speed down the blacktop, raise my scrawny body from the gym floor dozens of times, but my arms were as thin as broomsticks.”

Elizabeth: This was a hard one for me to write. It was revised many times, and I had friends take a look at it for me and go over it. But putting Nixon in there at the top, it just gave it a little bit of humor and thought that was important For this particular one.

Marion: It’s bracing. We go, “Oh,” and then it’s softball. There’s that juxtaposition of Dick Nixon and softball that doesn’t make any sense, except we know that we have to go find it. That essay is titled, Fit , is a fine piece of characterization as well, and self-characterization, may be the hardest of all. We don’t want height, weight, and eye color, though we do want a little color around the person. We want to know who the person is and the characterization we choose must also be on brand for the piece we’re writing.

So, here’s the line that comes later on, and I’d love you to react. You write about yourself, you write, quote, “Standing before hundreds of people in my white party dress with bell sleeves, I remember hoping everyone would notice my scabby knees, the mark of a true tomboy.” So talk to me about that self characterization a bit, please, and how you settled into that line, because the scabby knees is absolutely, or the party dress is I totally got it as a tomboy of my own youth, but you’re showing us yourself. How did you settle on that one? There’s a million ways you could have described yourself, but that’s on brand for the piece. So can you talk a little bit about that process?

Elizabeth: Well, for me, honestly, there really isn’t a process. I write what I’m thinking in my head, and I’ve been doing it for such a long time. I think that my background in journalism helped so much writing these personal essays. I was a tomboy, and I was standing up there with this beautiful party dress with bell-shaped sleeves. I liked all the scars on my legs because that showed that I was climbing trees and falling and playing soccer, and the essay is about sports. So I can’t remember exactly why I put that in, but it wasn’t forced. This is why I think it’s so important to write and write and write and write, because the more you write, the more you know yourself, especially in the personal essay, and the more you remember about your life and these kinds of paragraphs come quite easily.

Marion: The personal essay, I think, is the greatest place to learn how to write. For those people who don’t have the benefit of journalism, I started in journalism, you started in journalism, but for those people who don’t have the benefit of journalism, it’s okay. They can still do this. So the essay allows us to have a little look at something, small moments of life that illuminate the larger themes of life.

Marion: I think it’s the most appealing of forms to have a little look at something, well, it is illuminative of the big stuff. So is it your favorite form of writing? Do you prefer it over journalism? Do you like it? How did you think about doing a long narrative piece and instead decide to use these because you had them? Just give me a little idea about just your preference here and why the personal essay.

Elizabeth: Well, as I said, I’m a former journalist, and I’ve covered lots of news stories. I had an opportunity to write my first personal essay for the magazine at The Providence Journal where I worked for many years. I just found the writing, it was hard at first for me, the first few essays I wrote, but it was so freeing. When you’re writing a news story, you’re under the tremendous pressure to get everything right and to make it flow and to make it logical, but the essay is so freeing. The writing is just, it was a different kind of writing, and I loved it. I loved hearing my voice in the writing, and I also liked it allowed me to pursue my obsessions.

It was challenging creatively and intellectually, so it really is my favorite form. I like doing it in a very cocoon environment. I usually think up what I’m going to write about in my head when I’m swimming or lying in bed and I can’t sleep or driving, I might think, “Ah, there’s the lead.” Then once I get that in my head, I can sit down and play around with it and meander all over the place, and it’s just pure joy for me. So I feel very lucky that I had this opportunity to write these for 10 years for our local paper and also for the other magazines, The Providence Journal and the other magazines.

Marion: You spoke about when the lead comes. I always find that if I’m doing something tremendously dangerous, so driving a car, which is a dangerous thing to do, or chopping vegetables with my sharpest chef’s knife that I tend to, because I think my brain is so engaged in not cutting my fingers off or not having a car accident, that the rest of my brain is just flying around looking for things to consider. I don’t think the bulk of the work is done here at the desk, although there’s-

Marion: … you absolutely have to write every day. I’m a huge believer in the writing practice, but I think you’ve just been very kind and generous to say that you can be doing any number of things. What I always tell people is to have a notebook on you have something.

Elizabeth: Right, I agree.

Marion: We covered that.

Elizabeth: Right. I do think you need to scribble. If you’ve got a great idea for a lead, just scribble it down somewhere as fast as you can-

Marion: Absolutely.

Elizabeth: … ’cause it’s so easy to forget that.

Marion: Oh, you figure you’re never going to forget it, “This is the best lead I ever wrote,” and 10 minutes later, the school bus has pulled up or the dog has showed up muddy or whatever, and it’s gone, and it’s gone.

Marion: That’s what’s tragic. I’ve always got a notebook on me. I teach memoir, and I coach writers, and I edit writers all day long and every day have writing conversations with writers. Every day I hear, “Oh, I should really just do this as a book of essays. It’d be so much easier,” and I don’t think so. I think the narrative piece versus the essay book is like talking about apples versus pineapples. They’re two different forms, though they’re both fruit. I don’t think it’s easier. I think it’s just a very different way of considering the world. So when you think about the form itself, do you think it’s harder, easier for people to get a book of essays published? I guess I need your advice on this for people who are considering that it might be the thing for them to do.

Elizabeth: Well, actually, I’ve been told it’s more difficult by my publisher, and I was surprised about that because I love reading essays. I will track those down in bookstores and on my Kindle, and I just love them, and they are difficult to find. I guess they don’t sell that well according to a publisher. So that’s probably why we don’t see as many.

Marion: I think it’s too bad. Yeah.

Elizabeth: I just read Patchett’s These Precious Things, or This-

Marion: Oh, Ann Patchett, yes.

Elizabeth: Ann Patchett’s what was the title of that? These Precious Day s? I love her essays. I like them, and they’re long. A lot of them ran in The New Yorker , but that’s rare to find that kind of collection these days. You don’t really see that that much, and a lot of the essays that are out there are running in literary magazines or The New Yorker . They always run wonderful, long, long-form essays.

Marion: But for someone who wants to do this, and you are doing this this year, this time, I wonder what advice you might give to somebody about where to look for submissions. You have a very good history in your local newspaper, in your area. So what about for other writers? What do you suggest if somebody says, “All right, I’m going to start doing this? I’m going to write these essays? Now, how do I go about finding a publication place?”

Elizabeth: Well, of course, there are all sorts of literary journals, but they’re looking for probably more literary type essays, but there are newspapers are still taking essays. There are magazines taking essays. If someone is really intent on that, they could just start writing a collection and do a Substack or something like that and just start. They’d have to be really driven because you don’t really see an audience yet, and then maybe you have a collection of 50 or so and then submit it to a publisher.

Marion: I love Substack, and I think that a lot of people are benefiting from having that publication vehicle available to them so they can get out in the world. It seems to me to be a wonderful way, especially if you’ve got the idea of a volume of things that you could find readers for.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Marion: Yeah. So, there’s a curious note, and as we wrap this up there, I’m thinking about the last page of your book and the acknowledgements where you thank your editor and copy editor and family, and where you specifically call out your husband who, quote, “dared me to pick up the pen again.” Had you put it down?

Elizabeth: I did for a while. I have two sons and they’re 13 months apart. So after they were born, I was exhausted.

Marion: Yeah, I bet.

Elizabeth: So I didn’t do a lot of writing for a few years, and when they got a little older, I started doing freelance and started doing writing again. But there really was a period there I was absolutely exhausted and not terribly frustrated about not writing, but knew I had to do it again. Then what did I do? I wrote about what was in front of me. So write about what you know, and that’s what I did.

Marion: Well, we’re very grateful that you did, and I thank you for staying at it and for picking up the pen again and for indulging me without indulging on the page. I just love that, no indulgence. I think that the reader for this book benefits enormously by you having picked up that pen again. Thank you so much, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Marion: I so appreciate it. The writer is Elizabeth Rau. Her new book is The Good Slope: A Collection of Essays just out from Apprentice House Press. See More on her on LinkedIn , and more on the book wherever books are sold. I’m Marion Roach Smith, and you’ve been listening to Qwerty. Qwerty is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at overitstudios dot com . Our producer is Adam Clairmont. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing? Visit marionroach dot com , the home of The Memoir Project where writers get their needs met through online classes and how to write memoir, and thanks for listening. Don’t forget to follow Qwerty wherever you get your podcasts and listen to it wherever you go. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review. It helps others to find their way to their writing lives.

Want more help? Come see me in any one of my online memoir classes. Memoirama : Live, 90 minutes. Everything you need to write what you know. Memoirama 2 . Live, two hours. Limited to seven writers. What you need to know to structure a book. How to Write Opinion Pieces: Op-eds, Radio Essays and Digital Commentary : Live, 90 minutes. Get your voice out into the world. And keep in mind that we are always keeping a list of those who want to get in the next Master Class , the prerequisites for which are Memoirama and Memoirama 2. Live, once a month. Limited to seven writers who are determined to get a first draft of their memoir finished in six months.

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Writing Tips Oasis - A website dedicated to helping writers to write and publish books.

How to Write a Collection of Essays

By Georgina Roy

Table of Contents

1. Defining the genre

2. the writing process, 3. choosing the right essays, 4. publishing multiple collections, 5. selecting compatible themes, 6. the importance of arrangement, 7. chronological arrangement, 8. arranging for impact, 9. dealing with difficult themes, 10. the importance of second opinion, 11. analysis: are you offering something new, 12. presenting radical ideas, 13. writing and language style, 14. pre-publication options, 15. publishing the collection of essays.

Welcome to Writing Tips Oasis and our newest guide – how to write a collection of essays.

This guide will be different than others, and this is due to the fact that the type of work you’re trying to publish will not fall into a traditional genre – and by that, we mean literary fiction, non-fiction, and genre fiction , including everything from chic lit to dystopian fantasy and science fiction.

If we can call philosophy a genre – and not an academic discipline – then that’s where a collection of essays would belong to. However, philosophy is not isolated from other scientific studies, it encompasses learnings from many other academic disciplines, from history to psychology. A collection of essays may touch upon these, however, most often, a collection of essays is the place where a writer shares their own views and perspective on the world, the life they’ve lived, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way.

In other words, a collection of essays can be quite a niche, and that comes with its own consequences. In this guide, we will analyze the different aspects and things that you need to be careful about when writing a collection of essays, and, at the end, we will take a look at the publishing process and how it differs from publishing a fiction or a non-fiction book.

A collection of essays might fall under the umbrella of philosophy – barely, but it has an even more difficult time falling into a genre. It’s a mix of autobiography, memoir, and, well, blog posts, and as such, it can be a tough ordeal to even find the right audience for it.

For example, you may want to explore the things you learned while in your teens, and maybe your essays will provide a fascinating insight into what it’s like to be a teenager and what you would’ve liked to know at that age. However, who will read that? The teenagers you’re writing about may be more interested in reading YA vampire novels, people in their early twenties or even thirties may not be so keen to go back to those years – or even think about what they should have known at that age – and people who are older than that may have different things on their minds, which means your book of insightful essays may fall into the hands of other writers or a small group of people who like to think about those things.

Similarly, you may want to document everything you’ve learned as a new parent. Now, that, is a different story altogether, because there will be a lot of people who will relate to that – and be interested in reading it in order to see what they could learn from you. So, from a pure business and marketing point of view, a collection of essays on parenthood will have a better chance at attracting many readers than a collection of essays on being a teenager.

So, what can you do?

Well, for starters, write the essays first. So, let’s cover that aspect before we continue.

The writing process of a collection of essays is quite different compared to a novel or a non-fiction book. Could you decide upon each title in your collection and sit down to write them? Of course, but would those essays be genuine? Chances are, they would sound more like textbook passages, or, even worse, schoolwork assignments.

As such, what you really need to have when you decide to publish a collection of essays are written essays. Whether these will be written over the course of a year, five years, or a decade, is up to you and your writing habits. However, there is one truth that we may be able to claim with relative certainty: all writers write essays. If you’re a writer and you’re not writing essays at the moment, chances are you haven’t noticed that you do. For example, many writers would write essays as a warm up to writing in their novel. Moreover, what are non-fiction books these days but the author’s knowledge and opinion on a certain, specific topic? Of course, good non-fiction novels are supported by facts and a lot of research, but at the core of it, they are still a series of essays in a very specific, very narrow even, topic.

Of course, now, you may find yourself thinking that you should better give up on your goal to publish a collection of essays because you have none at the moment. Our advice is twofold. First, dig into your writing – especially your free writing, musings in your notebooks or forgotten word files in your laptop. Chances are, there is a lot of wisdom hiding in there. Second, make a habit to write down your thoughts. Life is chaos, that’s true, but we learn something every day, and we create the narrative of our lives through our thought processes. Start creating the habit to write these things down, as often as you can. Soon, you will begin to want to do it, because writing can also serve as a form of therapy where we make sense of things. Before you realize it, you will begin to write essays, and you may have enough essays to publish in a collection within a few months or a year.

But, the process does not end there. If the first goal is to have the essays already written, the second goal is to choose the right essays.

Let’s take a look at what that means.

In the first section, we talked about two different types of collections of essays, teenage years and parenthood. But, those two are nothing but examples of the themes and topics that your collection of essays will cover. In other words, you can have collections of essays on many aspects of life. From finding love in a busy world to being a new pet owner after a lifetime of fear of animals, for example. Dealing with hypochondria, dealing with mental illnesses, becoming a parent, choosing not to be a parent and the consequences of that – both personal and social and where and how they meet. You can have collections of essays on sociology, social issues, psychology, even history – if you can offer a different perspective on past events.

The opportunities are endless. Meanwhile, chances are, your essays will revolve around your own life, and what you learn along the way. This means that there will be a variety of topics that you will cover in your essays.

As such, welcome to the one and only rule of writing and publishing an essay collection: choose the correct essays, essays that will revolve around either a single topic or a variety of topics that will revolve around a similar theme or phase in life. You will write many essays in the course of your writing career – even more so if you decide to adopt the habit of writing things down – but that does not mean that every essay you’ve ever written will get to be published. To double down on it even, not every essay you’ve written will be publishable in the first place.

But, of those that are publishable, they will cover a variety of topics, each topic as different from the other as night and day, and those essays will ideally belong in different collections. So, let’s cover that first before we continue on what it means to combine different themes and topics in a single collection.

Some authors have found their niche and publish their essay collections and that is what their career as an author is based upon. Can you do the same?

The answer to that question is complicated. In theory – yes, you can. If you have enough material for many different collections, then you have completed the first step in achieving such a goal. The second step, unfortunately, depends on the wheel of fortune and lady luck herself. You can self-publish, yes; but will your first publication be successful without the backing (and the marketing team) of a publishing house that specializes in publishing essays? Moreover, will you even have the luck to get published traditionally without an agent – who, yes, also specializes in authors who write essay collections?

However, you can publish different collections of essays even if you are predominantly a fiction author. Look at how many authors from the 20 th century, like Bukowski, Bradbury, Vonnegut, and yes, even Stephen King have published their collections of essays throughout the years. Stephen King’s On Writing is one of the most famous books that aspiring writers are recommended to read (and again, consider this mention a recommendation too, because Stephen King is the king of writer discipline, which is what has made him so prolific over the years).

So, maybe after you analyze your essays, you will realize that you have material for three or four different collections. Which then begets the task of organizing the essays into a cohesive whole.

And that’s when you need to begin to think in terms of themes.

Before you even begin to think about which essays to select for your collection, you need to decide on the theme or themes that you will talk about. As writing essays can often be a stream-of-consciousness effort rather than a planned one, you may be tackling different themes as you write them. So, when the moment comes to decide which theme will be prevalent in the essays, you may feel strangled by the need to choose just one.

However, that is the furthest thing from the truth. The goal here is to not promise something that you will not deliver upon – in the title, in the description, in the blurb of the book. If you wish to gather all the essays you’ve written while living in a certain town – whether your hometown or not – then, by all means, allow the reader to understand that the town will be what connects all of them. On the other hand, if you wish to cover your life experiences as an expat for example, or what living as an expat has taught you, then make sure to keep within that margin. The difference between the first and the second example is that the first one is a lot narrower. To continue with the example, let’s say that you were born in one town, but are writing about your experiences while living in another town. In this case, your essays about your hometown will not belong in that collection.

On the other hand, if what connects all your essays together is your life as an expat (still continuing on the other example above), then you can include not only essays about your hometown, and the new town where you moved, but you can include every other essay where your perspective as an expat comes into play.

Again, these two are just examples. You may wish to write about being a feminist (or, as is the case of Roxane Gay, about being a Bad Feminist), and what that means to you. In this case, you would include all the essays where the ideas you express come from that aspect – and it doesn’t matter whether you are talking about the interpretation of dreams or the most prevalent pop culture ideas of the current times.

As such, do not mix essays that do not have a correlation between them. For example, you should not really mix essays on the prevalent homelessness in NYC, while in the same collection, include an essay about what partying at Columbia University was really like. Not only are those two topics quite disconnected from one another, but it would also be in bad taste and give an impression that you, as the writer, are unaware of your own privilege.

Once you make a decision on what would be the theme or aspect about yourself or your life that will connect all of the essays in your collection, you can begin to think about the arrangement of the essays.

How you arrange the essays in your collection is just as important as the essays themselves. There are a few different ways that you can do this: chronologically, for impact, or, to create a cohesive narrative whole.

First and foremost, each essay you have chosen needs to present a point and argue for or against that point, based on your perspective. A collection of essays is not a memoir or an autobiography that will recount past events or experiences – but, an essay will contain those past experiences, along with a certain amount of established, confirmed research findings if you’re dwelling into themes and topics where you need the support of such findings to argue your points. But, an essay needs to have a point, it should end on an abrupt note where it feels unfinished, even if that note may seem powerful to you personally.

A collection of essays, in turn, needs two things: each essay needs to correspond well with the overall theme that connects all of them, and, ultimately, it needs to form a cohesive collection of ideas on the established theme. Whether this will be done through a chronological arrangement, an arrangement for impact, or through an arrangement that hints at a narrative without delving too much into fiction, will depend on both the theme and the author themselves – or, upon you as the author. But, once you decide on which path to take, then make sure to stick to it to ensure that reader gets to close your book after reading all of your essays with the feeling that they have, by reading your essays, gained a new perspective of the theme you are talking about in the essays.

Since it’s impossible to distil these different arrangements without using examples, we will go back to our two previous examples: a collection of essays written in one town, and a collection of essays about your (supposed) life as an expat. And, since we mentioned three ways, we will add another example theme, which can be feminism.

Of our previous examples of themes, the example of life as an expat works best for chronological arrangement of essays. There will be a difference in the essays one would have written in the beginning of such a major change in life, and as time goes along, those essays will have gained a different tone and perspective.

There are other themes that can benefit from chronological arrangement. For example, coming of age in a certain country, coming of age in a certain time period (the 60’s, the 70’s, the 80’s and so forth), coming of age in the time period of the early to late 2000’s, and the major worldwide changes that ensued as a result of the technology boom, or, growing up with a smartphone in hand (something that we assume newly fledged adults will be writing about in the next decade).

The common correlation between all of these themes is time: as time passes, the perspective changes. There is always a change in the tone from the first to the last essay, and the last essay should wrap things up and offer a conclusion on the overall theme presented in the collection. In the end, reading such a collection makes the reader feel that they have gone through a philosophical journey just as much as the author did, and are able to understand the author’s perspective and ideas – even if they don’t agree with them.

Another title for this section could be “arranging due to impact” because there are two different paths the author can take here. First, you can arrange the essays to create a different impact with each of them. Meaning, each essay’s impact will be calculated and placed specifically in that spot in the collection because that essay will be more painful, powerful, or maybe, more humorous than the ones before and after it. Depending on the difficulty of the themes you’re tackling, you might want to arrange the essays in such a way so as to not overwhelm your readers.

To go back to our example, let’s say that your collection is about living a single town. Life in a single town, in which case you can have essays about life, which yes, will include death and birth and everything in between. For example, if your first essay is about death, grief, or mourning, you may have exhausted the reader completely, even though they’ve just begun reading your collection of essays.

However, on the other hand, maybe you do want to start with a bang and then continue on with the other essays. In this case, you want to ensure that you do not use up the most powerful essays all at once in the beginning of the collection, because then your readers might not stick around when the individual themes and topics of the essays become lighter.

In the end, when it comes to arranging for impact – or as a result of the impact of the individual essays – you are the one who should make the final decision on which way you will go. However, it’s very important to keep this impact in mind because ultimately, you want the readers to enjoy reading your collection, even if it deals with difficult themes (and, truthfully, though often humorous, most collection of essays do deal with difficult themes that would make most people even a little uncomfortable). So, the idea is to ease your readers into it before presenting them with some of the most difficult essays – essays that would have a great emotional impact on the readers.

Which brings us to arranging with hints of narrative – and dealing with difficult themes.

When it comes to dealing with difficult themes – or, perhaps the better word here would be traumatic themes – like rape, grief, mourning, murder, suicide, – arranging the essays in such a collection can be a huge challenge.

And the truth is that there is no “correct” way of arranging the essays when it comes to themes like these. Your readers will always fall into two categories: people who have gone through that traumatic experience, and people who haven’t. And each individual from both groups will experience your collection differently.

The reason why we mentioned arranging the essays with a hint of a narrative is because when it comes to themes like dealing with trauma and grief, arranging the essays in such a way can give the reader hope – especially if you do have essays that focus on the aspect of healing. If that’s the case, you have the opportunity to divide the essays in three parts (just like a novel has a beginning, a middle, and an ending). You have the essays that talk about life before the traumatic event, the traumatic event, the post-traumatic period, and the healing period.

Please note that this doesn’t mean that you need to create a fictional story or to rewrite your essays so that they read like fiction, or a string of loosely connected short stories. If you do that, you’ve delved either into fiction territory, or the territory of a memoir or an autobiography (about a certain time period of life). What we talk about is having the essays arranged in such a manner as to show the process of dealing with the trauma and healing.

Or, in other words, you are not always right. Here, we will get a bit away from difficult themes and talk about the other type of difficult topics that we are dealing with today: social issues. As the year 2020 showed, the world is full of social injustices based on race, religion, ethnicity, wealth, sexual orientation, gender (or non-gender) … we can go on and on.

And you may have some strong opinions on these issues. That, however, automatically, will not make you right. In fact, these issues are so complicated, and each person’s views will differ so much that the writer’s background always gets involved into the importance of their opinion – which is not necessarily a good thing – but it happens. Even when a woman writes about what it means to be a feminist, there may be other women who will disagree with her views. Or, a person of color might write about what it means to be oppressed, and then another person of color may come forward and dispute all of those claims. Alas, that is the world we live in.

The best thing you can do is try to get a second opinion – not from a friend, a lover, or a family member, or a person who you know will agree with your views. Quite the opposite actually. Have your essays read by someone who may actually disagree with your views. Have your essays beta read by strangers whose opinion you cannot gauge before you give them your collection. Try to get as many unbiased opinions as possible, and then listen to their feedback.

And this isn’t just because you’re not always right. Additionally, there will always be the chance that some people will not understand your essays. Maybe you did not express your views in the correct manner (which happens quite often), maybe you said something that can be easily taken in a negative connotation out of context – which can later on be posted in reviews of your collection. And don’t forget that cancel culture exists – these days, any public figure can get “cancelled” really quickly because of a wrong word in a wrong spot in a single sentence. It’s not just about not offending a person, a group of people, or a whole nation or gender, it’s about not having your career ruined before it has even begun.

We’ll talk more later about the difference between being honest in your views and being offensive, but first, let’s take a look at what you would be offering in the essays themselves.

Like with any other genre of fiction or non-fiction niche, before you start with the publishing process of your essay collection, read other author’s collections – yes, in the particular theme or topic you wish to tackle.

Read as many as you can. And then, start analyzing.

In fiction, it is advisable to read as many novels in your genre so that you will ensure that you will not publish something that has been seen before. For example, you may have a great idea about a love story between an overbearing, overprotective Alpha-male, and a not-quite-submissive heroine who still needs the hero to rescue her on occasion. And if you thought how that sounds like Twilight (and its adult spawn, 50 Shades of Grey ), you’d be correct.

The same applies to non-fiction niches too. You may have a great idea about a cookbook full of your grandmother’s southern cooking recipes. But then, you do your research and discover that there are about a hundred books out there on southern cooking, and about half of them have the same recipes that you thought were unique to your grandmother’s kitchen.

The same applies to essay collections. You may think that you have great ideas and great insight into life, the universe, and everything, but you may also discover that about a hundred other authors have already said the same thing in different words.

However, do not despair! The chances of that particular scenario happening with a collection of essays is quite slim (but not impossible). Worst case scenario, a few of your essays may present ideas that have been explored by other authors. But, that doesn’t mean that your particular individual perspective will not offer anything new to the table. Because of that, read as many collections as you can, and then analyze your own essays. Decide which essays fall into the category of “no one has said this before” and the category of “someone has talked about this, but they haven’t proposed this idea’ and “people have already talked at length about this, and I’m not really offering anything new.”

And, even better news: the chances of your essays falling into the third category are even slimmer, unless you’re talking about how it’s really bad to hit and abuse street animals, for example. In other words, your essays would need to be written about universal topics with views that are easily shared by most good and kind people in the world. On the other hand, if you’re proposing new and radical ideas about what society should do to protect these street cats and street dogs, then, most of the same good and kind people in the world would probably be all ears.

So, what happens when you do have radical ideas?

First and foremost, the term “radical idea” is both vague and specific, because an idea that was radical fifty years ago is a normal and accepted idea today. An idea that goes against the established common norm is a radical idea, even if it may seem like a normal idea to you, personally. Some radical ideas are positive, however, some can be quite negative. And then, there are the ideas that appeared radical at a first glance, but in reality, they are what should have been the norm all along (like, for example, women having the right to vote and the right to equal wages in comparison to men).

As such, the first thing to do is to analyze – in the same way as in the previous section – whether your ideas can or would be considered radical by your readers. The second step is to see whether you are presenting your ideas properly. As we talked before, you do not want to be misunderstood, because that can be something that will kill your career before you’ve even begun it properly, and this can be especially important if you are planning on making a career as a public speaker and writer of essay collections.

To put it into an example, let’s use feminism as a theme here. Today, the word feminist can often be correlated with a person who believes in equal rights for all genders. On the other hand, a feminist can be also correlated with a person who believes that women need and should not only get special rights, but also special treatment. And, the line between those two gets really, really blurry quite often, so much so that, as we’ve mentioned before, a feminist can read an essay written by another feminist and disagree with the writer and call their views radical (and maybe even harmful).

The best thing to do to avoid being mislabeled and misunderstood is to be very clear in your essays that you do not discard the established norm – or the general view of the idea, but that your idea also deserves merit and consideration. To go back to feminism, or, even deeper, rape culture. Today, it is widely considered that one in five women will be the recipient of unwanted sexual and/or romantic attention. A study in the The New England Journal of Medicine suggested that this number can be lessened by teaching young girls and women to speak up when they feel that their boundaries are being threatened. However, it would be easy for that statement to be misinterpreted as “we need to teach women how to defend themselves, but there is no need to teach men about consent.”

You might think, “Oh, they are my essays, and I will write them in any writing style I want.”

You’d be very wrong.

The language and writing style is your choice – however, remember what we talked about in a previous section: you do not wish to alienate your readers by false advertising. Meanwhile, different topics will require a different writing style. For example, observations about life in the modern small town will sound the best written in a language style that would be easy to follow and understand. You might even call it, workman-like prose that does not ask the readers to have had a high SAT score to understand.

On the other hand, if you’re writing about grief and dealing with grief, your language style will have a different requirement. Yes, it’s okay to use workmanlike prose in it too; but, since you would also want to add credibility to your opinions through established psychological research, you might want to find a balance between an academic style and workmanlike prose.

Moreover, you have essays on topics that require a more academic-sounding voice, like societal issues and similar topics. In this case, it’s best to lean slightly towards a more formal, more academic prose that will convince the readers that you know what you’re talking about.

The good news is that this is an issue you would have to deal with in the editing process – after you have chosen your essays and determined their arrangement in the collection. When the time comes for you to edit the collection – and editing is necessary, even if your essays have already been written – you can work on the writing style and use of language in your prose. That is to say, you will not be changing your views or opinions on anything, you will basically be tightening the prose.

Another thing to ensure when you’re editing the essays (which is the final step before starting the publication process), is that all of the essays use the same writing style – regardless of whether the style is humorous, serious, academic, or workmanlike prose. Even so, we would not recommend using workmanlike prose too much in your essays as this can harm your credibility and make people feel that they are reading your blog posts in print – or eBook version of them. Your writing style needs to reassure the readers that your opinions are worth reading about, that they are worth something, and that your insights into the topics you’re talking about are valuable and worth paying for (since ultimately, readers would be buying your essay collection, and you want to ensure that they have gotten their value for the money).

Finally, you would have to proofread your collection. In this step, you should pay attention to spelling and grammar mistakes, yes, but also, pay attention to repetitive words and phrases. When you’re writing in free form (or free writing), you may tend to use the same phrases over and over again without even realizing it. If your essay collection will be beta read, then ask your beta readers (even if they are your friends), to tell you about the phrases that you use most often. In fact, a good beta reader will tell you this even without you asking for that.

Finally, your collection will be ready and in mint condition. And the question that arises after that is: what now?

Well, let’s take a look at some of your options.

First and foremost, understand that publishing any book requires a lot of patience. The road to a successful release of a book is long and difficult, and it will ask you to work for a long time before you will see the fruits of your labor. This is true for any book.

Sure, you might say, but how did this author or that author do it? Well, the answer to that is: it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what the experience was for another author because each author will have their own unique story of how they got published, and, even if you follow their way step by step, you still might not get the same result because publication – successful publication – depends half on luck, and half on the quality of your work.

However, the good news is that there are some things that you can do to make the road to publication for your own essay collection easier.

1) Get out there: Meaning, establish yourself online. Create professional social media accounts for yourself, create a website and a blog. Make sure you’re not an unknown commodity because in that case, publishers will not bet on your book collection being successful, which will make it more difficult for you to get traditionally published. And, if you’re self-publishing, the same applies. A self-published book by an author with a large following online will get more traction, because you would already have a fan base waiting for your book – even if that fan base is small.

2) Get published in magazines: Both online and in print. This will require you to do your homework – meaning, do a lot of research. There are plenty of online magazines out there, as well as magazines that are still in print. Analyze your essays. The good news is that you can publish your essays individually in these magazines to gain traction, and then you will be able to attract publishers for the whole collection. The bad news is that you need to pitch your essays to the right magazines. First, you want to get published in magazines that have a large reader base. Second, you need to make sure that the content and writing style will match the magazine’s style and content. However, you can try to get published in many different magazines, which in this case, can be very helpful because it might enable you to gain traction as an essay writer (or a columnist) quicker. In other words, depending on the content of your essays, you can seek out different types of magazines that will match different essays from your collection.

3) Be a columnist or a guest blogger: Seek out bloggers who have a wide audience and try to be a guest blogger on their blog. Make sure, again, that the topics of your essays will match the topics of the blogger, and, make sure that that particular blogger is a person whom you would not mind to be associated with later on. On the other hand, when it comes to magazines, instead of trying to sell your essays to them, try to become their guest columnist. Again, this doesn’t mean that you need to track down a cooking magazine and try to write a column for them. The magazine should be publishing material that fits you as a writer and fits the themes that you like to write about, especially because a column is a piece that is very close to an essay – meaning, the writer shares their own personal opinion about a certain theme, topic or an issue.

To conclude here, before you begin the publishing process – of which we’ll talk about next – try to make a name for yourself out there. For example, some vloggers from YouTube have landed publishing deals due to garnering a big following there. Having a platform that will wait for your work to get published can be a huge help in having a successful publication that will kick-start your career as a writer – even if you’re not getting traditionally published.

As with any other publication process, you can take two different routes: self-publishing, or traditional publishing. And, if you think that one or the other is easier, you’d be terribly wrong, because both routes are difficult, and, as we’ve already said in this guide, it will require patience.

First, getting an online platform – or getting followers online on social media and websites like YouTube or even Twitch, can be a huge help. It’s not a guarantee that when you publish your essay collection, it will be a major success. You may sell a lot of copies, but the general feedback might not be as optimal as you’d hoped (and nothing will hurt your ratings like bad reviews or Goodreads and Amazon, the two platforms that people use the most these days when they choose the next books).

But, let’s talk about the two publishing processes so far.

Self-publishing: it can be done through Amazon and other platforms, but Amazon also offers print-on-demand, which means that you can get published both in print and in eBook format easily. In this case, your job will involve becoming your own marketing consultant, your own publicist, and your own sponsor for ads and other paid promotion options. And yes, this can be a huge cost for you, and you will not have the guarantee that your investment will pay off. What you can do is ensure that the book has a catchy title and a blurb. Focus on who you are: what makes you unique? Is it your cultural background, or is it your personal experience with the topics you would be covering in your essay collection? Whatever makes you, the writer, unique, needs to be put in the blurb for your essay collection. Read other books’ blurbs.

For example, Roxane Gay’s extremely successful Bad Feminist has what makes her unique in the title: she considers herself an unconventional feminist, and the essays in that essay collection all revolve around that topic. On the other hand, you have Aleksandar Hemon’s The Book of My Lives , which chronicles his life in Sarajevo before the war, and his life in Chicago while his hometown is under siege, where the only thing he was able to do was watch from afar. The one similarity it has with Bad Feminist is in the title: it immediately points to what makes the author unique and what makes their perspective unique. So, your book collection’s title itself should point out to both what makes you, as the writer, unique, and it should point to the topics you are talking about in your essays.

Meanwhile, don’t forget about the cover. Again, it should suit the themes and topics you are covering, and, it should look professional and well done. If you have the skills to create a cover on your own, that’s great, but if your cover looks like something a teenager created while writing fanfiction on Wattpad (and even on that platform, fanfiction covers have become better and better), then you might consider hiring a professional to do it for you.

Traditional publishing: you might think that getting traditionally published will save you the headache of dealing with everything we’ve described above. Again, you’d be wrong. Getting traditionally published means finding a publisher for your novel. Many publishing houses do not accept unsolicited manuscripts, no matter how well written they are, and if they do, you might end up in the slush pile that gets touched upon once or twice every quarter. With a lot of other manuscripts, essay collections written by authors like yourself.

To avoid this, you would need an agent, someone who will pitch your essay collection to the correct publishing houses that, in turn, might want to sign you on. First, you need the right agent – someone who is established in the niche that is essay collections, and who has successfully worked with other authors who’ve published similar works, like biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Even so, your best bet might be an agent who’s worked with author’s who’ve published essay collections – or at least one or two authors. Next, it would be a good idea if the agent also has experience in publishing essay collections in similar topics to the ones in your collection.

Furthermore, the publishing house you will be aiming for – if you have a good agent, they will probably already know which publishing houses would be interested in publishing your work. However, if you do not have an agent yet and you still want to send your manuscripts to publishing houses that do accept unsolicited manuscripts, make sure it’s the right publishing houses – meaning, again, they will have published similar work before. Do not send your manuscript of essay collections to a publishing house – or an imprint of a publishing house – that publishes collections of short stories or anthologies. First, they will probably not sign you on, second, even if they do, their audience is not the right audience for your essay collection.

Again, even if you do get an agent, that agent will need something to work with, and not just your essays and the topics you’re covering. For example, sure, you might have written several essays on race and social injustice, but, today, there are many essay collections that deal with that topic, so, there has to be something about you – or your essays – that sets your work apart from all of those that have come before. Moreover, a publisher might reject your manuscript simply because you’re an unknown author who hasn’t established themselves yet, and, even though your essays are well written and have great insights into many problems of the world today, they might not sign you on because they don’t believe that your essay collection will sell well.

That’s why we can’t recommend this enough: create an online presence for yourself, first and foremost. Even if it takes you a year to actually publish your essay collection, start building that online presence right now. Moreover, there are different ways to use social media in a way that will benefit you, the author, and your brand (or the brand you will build around your name as an author). Be careful not to post something or say something online that will backfire on you in the future.

If you want to self-publish, do not do it immediately. Start with the online presence. Then, create a book page for your book on Goodreads. Set up a publication date some months in the future, and create a pre-order page on Amazon. Create a website and a blog, and connect your online presence with the website and the blog. Send out ARCs (advanced reading copies) to reviewers who have a following, and, more importantly, who have reviewed essay collections before. Try to gain traction by being a guest blogger with bloggers who focus on similar themes as yours, and who, ideally, have a large platform themselves and are willing to have you on their blog.

Ultimately, whichever publication route you take, prepare yourself for a lot of work and a lot of patience. It might be a while before your work sees the light of day. Make sure that your essays in the collection have a timeless value (for example, if your essay is talking about a topic that was prevalent and specific when you originally wrote it in 2014, it might not be quite relevant in 2021). More importantly, once you start building your author’s brand online, do not stop, and do not quit. Keep going, even if it takes you a while to build your platform – because, without it, all of your effort might not lead to the commercial success you want. And again, while a platform is no guarantee, it certainly will help to an extent.

Georgina Roy wants to live in a world filled with magic. As a screenwriting student, she is content to fill notebooks and sketchbooks with magical creatures and amazing new worlds. When she is not at school, watching a film or scribbling away in a notebook, you can usually find her curled up, reading a good urban fantasy novel, or writing on her own.

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The Writer’s Journey: Where To Publish Personal Essays

Table of contents:, 1. what is a personal essay , 2. key features of personal essays:, authenticity: , individual perspective: , emotional connection: , 3. how to write a personal essay, choosing a topic: , organizing your thoughts: , adding details: , being honest: , 4. where can you publish personal essays, online literary magazines: , writing communities and blogs: , newspaper and magazine op-ed sections: , literary anthologies and essay collections: , online writing contests: , specialized niche websites: , 5. guidelines for submission:, 6. reading submission guidelines:, word count: , formatting requirements: , theme or topic preferences: , submission method: , rights and originality: , 7. craft an engaging title and introduction:, 8. polishing your essay:, proofreading: , clarity and coherence: , conciseness: , 9. originality and avoiding plagiarism:, 10. adhering to ethics and sensitivity:, 11. submission process and follow-up:, key concepts and profound details, conclusion:.

Just Press Play To Hear The Piece.

While no one can deny the power of personal essays, there are many reasons why you might be looking for a place to publish your own. You may have been asked to submit an essay to a contest or publication and want to know if it meets their standards, or maybe you’re just hoping to get some feedback on your latest writing project.

Whatever your reason is for Essay Publishing, book publishers New York got you covered! Keep reading for information on where to publish personal essays and what they look like.

Personal essays are a great way for individuals to express their thoughts, experiences, and opinions on a personal topic. Whether a lighthearted tale or a heartfelt reflection, these essays give readers a glimpse into the writer’s mind and emotions.

To ensure that your essay is impactful and engaging, it can be beneficial to seek professional assistance. Ghostwriting services can help you bring your ideas to life and create a well-crafted essay that resonates with your readers. These services enable you to collaborate with an experienced writer who can transform your thoughts into clear and engaging prose.

Moreover, proofreading services can play a crucial role in enhancing the quality of your essay. These services involve meticulously reviewing your essay to identify and correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. Additionally, professional proofreaders can offer valuable feedback on the overall clarity, structure, and coherence of your writing.

It’s important to find your unique voice and share your personal experiences with the reader when it comes to personal essays. However, don’t underestimate professional assistance’s impact on the final result.

When writing a personal essay, make sure that the following key features are included in it

Personal essays are all about being true to yourself. You can be honest and authentic, sharing your genuine feelings and experiences.

Each personal essay is unique because it comes from your viewpoint. It’s your chance to share what matters and how you see the world.

These essays often aim to connect with readers emotionally. Whether it’s joy, sadness, excitement, or contemplation, personal essays can evoke various emotions in readers.

By understanding and emphasizing the key features of personal essays, writers can craft compelling pitches to attract publishers’ attention. Pitching to publishers opens doors for personal essays to be published, shared, and appreciated by a wider readership, creating opportunities for meaningful connections and impact.

For Essay Publishing, you first need to know how to write it. Here is how you can write a personal essay in a few steps:

Select a topic, akin to finding a book title by its plot, that is meaningful to you…

. It could be a personal story, an idea, or an experience you want to share.

Plan how you want to present your story. Consider the beginning, middle, and end of your essay. You also need to plan on formatting for publishing according to the requirements of where you want to publish. When you think through all of this, the process of writing an essay further can be easy.

Use descriptive language, as detailed in how a writer can edit a narrative , to paint a vivid picture for your readers. Include sensory details to make your essay more engaging.

Be true to yourself. Don’t be afraid to share your true feelings and experiences, even if they might feel vulnerable.

When it comes to sharing your work with the world, finding the right platform is crucial. Here are various places where you can consider sharing your stories:

These websites are like treasure troves of interesting content. Places such as “The Sun Magazine,” “Tin House,” and “Narratively” love personal essays.

They’re on the lookout for captivating stories that touch the hearts of their readers. These platforms aim to collect different perspectives and thoughts, making them perfect for your essays.

Websites like “Medium” and “WordPress” offer spaces for writers for Essay Publishing. They provide an excellent opportunity to showcase your work to a broad audience.

Additionally, Medium has a Partner Program that could reward you based on how much people enjoy reading your essays.

Consider sharing your essays with the opinion sections of well-known newspapers like “The New York Times,” “The Guardian,” or “The Washington Post.”

These places have lots of readers and discussions. Contributing here allows you to be part of important conversations happening in society.

Some organizations create collections of essays on particular themes. Submitting your work to these collections can get your essays published in print or online, giving you exposure to a wider audience.

Writing contests hosted by websites like “Writer’s Digest” and “The Writer Magazine” are great avenues for getting your essays noticed.

These contests often have different themes and offer prizes, making them an exciting way to share your stories.

Depending on the topic of your essay, there are websites dedicated to specific interests. Whether about travel, parenting, mental health, or lifestyle, these platforms cater to diverse topics, providing a perfect space for your unique stories.

Submitting your essays to different platforms requires attention to specific publishing contracts , guides and practices. Here’s a comprehensive breakdown to help you ace the submission process:

Before submitting, carefully read and understand the submission guidelines and publisher-author relations of the platform you’re interested in.

Each platform has its own set of rules, preferences, and expectations for submissions. Pay close attention to details such as:

Ensure your essay meets the specified word count requirements. Some platforms might have a specific range they prefer.

Check for specific formatting guidelines, such as font size, spacing, or file format (e.g., .docx, .pdf).

Some platforms might have themes or topics they’re particularly interested in. Align your essay’s subject matter accordingly.

Note whether submissions are accepted via email, online forms, or submission portals. Follow the specified submission procedure.

Understand the platform’s policies regarding ownership of the content. Ensure your essay is original and not previously published elsewhere.

Capturing the attention of editors or readers starts with an enticing title and introduction. Craft a title, similar to how you’d write a thank you note , that reflects the essence of your essay and compels the reader to delve deeper.

Your introduction should be engaging, drawing in the audience and setting the tone for the rest of the essay.

Editing and revising your essay are crucial steps before submission. Ensure your writing is clear, concise, and error-free. Here are some tips:

Check for grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and punctuation issues. Consider using grammar-checking tools or seeking assistance from a trusted proofreader.

Ensure your ideas flow logically and are presented coherently. Avoid overly complex sentences or jargon that might hinder readability.

Eliminate unnecessary details or repetitive information. Keep your essay focused on its central theme or message.

Maintain the authenticity of your work by ensuring it is entirely original. Avoid plagiarism by attributing sources correctly if using external references or quotes. Plagiarism can severely impact the credibility of your submission.

Be mindful of sensitive topics or personal information shared in your essay. Respect the privacy of the individuals mentioned and adhere to ethical considerations. Ensure your content does not harm or offend any particular group or individual.

Follow the platform’s submission instructions meticulously. Submit your essay within the specified timeframe, if provided. After submission, be patient. Responses may take time. If allowed, follow up politely if you haven’t received a response within the expected timeframe.

The world of personal essays offers a myriad of opportunities for aspiring writers. From online journals to renowned newspapers, the options are vast. Selecting the right platform involves understanding your essay’s theme, audience, and aspirations as a writer.

Authenticity, clarity, and adherence to submission guidelines are paramount for Essay Publishing. Lastly, embracing your unique voice makes your essays resonate with readers across the globe.

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Philip Roth: The Biography

Appointed by Philip Roth and granted independence and complete access, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth’s personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations. The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the postwar literary scene.

Bailey shows how Roth emerged from a lower-middle-class Jewish milieu to achieve the heights of literary fame, how his career was nearly derailed by his catastrophic first marriage, and how he championed the work of dissident novelists behind the Iron Curtain.

Bailey examines Roth’s rivalrous friendships with Saul Bellow, John Updike, and William Styron, and reveals the truths of his florid love life, culminating in his almost-twenty-year relationship with actress Claire Bloom, who pilloried Roth in her 1996 memoir, Leaving a Doll’s House.

Tracing Roth’s path from realism to farce to metafiction to the tragic masterpieces of the American Trilogy, Bailey explores Roth’s engagement with nearly every aspect of postwar American culture.

The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country

In New York Times bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub's riveting thriller, uncovering secrets in the past draws one woman into a killer's web.

On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, Gorman captivated the nation and brought hope to viewers around the globe. Her poem “The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country” can now be cherished in this special gift edition. Including an enduring foreword by Oprah Winfrey, this keepsake celebrates the promise of America and affirms the power of poetry.

The Midnight Library: A Novel

A dazzling novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived, from the internationally bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How To Stop Time.

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

Over twenty years ago, the heiress Patricia Lockwood was abducted during a robbery of her family's estate, then locked inside an isolated cabin for months. Patricia escaped, but so did her captors — and the items stolen from her family were never recovered.

Until now. On the Upper West Side, a recluse is found murdered in his penthouse apartment, alongside two objects of note: a stolen Vermeer painting and a leather suitcase bearing the initials WHL3. For the first time in years, the authorities have a lead — not only on Patricia's kidnapping, but also on another FBI cold case — with the suitcase and painting both pointing them toward one man.

Windsor Horne Lockwood III — or Win, as his few friends call him — doesn't know how his suitcase and his family's stolen painting ended up with a dead man. But his interest is piqued, especially when the FBI tells him that the man who kidnapped his cousin was also behind an act of domestic terrorism — and that the conspirators may still be at large. The two cases have baffled the FBI for decades, but Win has three things the FBI doesn't: a personal connection to the case; an ungodly fortune; and his own unique brand of justice.

The Hate U Give

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

Want more of Garden Heights? Catch Maverick and Seven’s story in Concrete Rose, Angie Thomas's powerful prequel to The Hate U Give.

But with the odds decidedly not in her favor, Amelia knows this feeling can’t last forever. After all, what can?

The Lost Apothecary: A Novel

Hidden in the depths of eighteenth-century London, a secret apothecary shop caters to an unusual kind of clientele. Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure named Nella who sells well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives. But the apothecary’s fate is jeopardized when her newest patron, a precocious twelve-year-old, makes a fatal mistake, sparking a string of consequences that echo through the centuries.

Meanwhile in present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, running from her own demons. When she stumbles upon a clue to the unsolved apothecary murders that haunted London two hundred years ago, her life collides with the apothecary’s in a stunning twist of fate—and not everyone will survive.

With crackling suspense, unforgettable characters and searing insight, The Lost Apothecary is a subversive and intoxicating debut novel of secrets, vengeance and the remarkable ways women can save each other despite the barrier of time.

Good Company: A Novel

Flora Mancini has been happily married for more than twenty years. But everything she thought she knew about herself, her marriage, and her relationship with her best friend, Margot, is upended when she stumbles upon an envelope containing her husband’s wedding ring—the one he claimed he lost one summer when their daughter, Ruby, was five.

Flora and Julian struggled for years, scraping together just enough acting work to raise Ruby in Manhattan and keep Julian’s small theater company—Good Company—afloat. A move to Los Angeles brought their first real career successes, a chance to breathe easier, and a reunion with Margot, now a bona fide television star. But has their new life been built on lies? What happened that summer all those years ago? And what happens now?

With Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s signature tenderness, humor, and insight, Good Company tells a bighearted story of the lifelong relationships that both wound and heal us.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

Opal is a fiercely independent young woman pushing against the grain in her style and attitude, Afro-punk before that term existed. Coming of age in Detroit, she can’t imagine settling for a 9-to-5 job—despite her unusual looks, Opal believes she can be a star. So when the aspiring British singer/songwriter Neville Charles discovers her at a bar’s amateur night, she takes him up on his offer to make rock music together for the fledgling Rivington Records. In early seventies New York City, just as she’s finding her niche as part of a flamboyant and funky creative scene, a rival band signed to her label brandishes a Confederate flag at a promotional concert. Opal’s bold protest and the violence that ensues set off a chain of events that will not only change the lives of those she loves, but also be a deadly reminder that repercussions are always harsher for women, especially black women, who dare to speak their truth. Decades later, as Opal considers a 2016 reunion with Nev, music journalist S. Sunny Shelton seizes the chance to curate an oral history about her idols. Sunny thought she knew most of the stories leading up to the cult duo’s most politicized chapter. But as her interviews dig deeper, a nasty new allegation from an unexpected source threatens to blow up everything. Provocative and chilling, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev features a backup chorus of unforgettable voices, a heroine the likes of which we’ve not seen in storytelling, and a daring structure, and introduces a bold new voice in contemporary fiction.

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20 Must-Read Queer Essay Collections

Laura Sackton

Laura Sackton is a queer book nerd and freelance writer, known on the internet for loving winter, despising summer, and going overboard with extravagant baking projects. In addition to her work at Book Riot, she reviews for BookPage and AudioFile, and writes a weekly newsletter, Books & Bakes , celebrating queer lit and tasty treats. You can catch her on Instagram shouting about the queer books she loves and sharing photos of the walks she takes in the hills of Western Mass (while listening to audiobooks, of course).

View All posts by Laura Sackton

I love essay collections, and I love queer books, so obviously I love queer essay collections. An essay collection can be so many things. It can be an opportunity to examine one particular subject in depth. Or it can be a wonderful messy mix of dozens of themes and ideas. The books on this list are a mix of both. Some hone in on an author’s own life, while others look outward, examining current events, history, and pop culture. Some are funny, some are very serious, and some are decidedly both.

In making this list, I used two criteria: 1) queer authors and 2) queer content. There are, of course, plenty of wonderful essay collections out there by queer authors that aren’t about queerness. But this list focuses on essays that explore queerness in all its messy glory. You’ll also find essays here about many other things: tornadoes, step-parenthood, the internet, tarot, activism, online dating, to name just a few. But taken together, the essays in each of these books add up to a queer whole.

I limited myself to living authors, and even so, there were so many amazing queer essay collections I wanted to include but couldn’t. This is just a drop in the bucket, but it’s a great place to start if you need more queer essays in your life — and who doesn’t?

Personal Queer Essay Collections

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel- Essays by Alexander Chee

How to Write An Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee

It’s hard for me to put my finger on the thing that elevates an essay collection from a handful of individual pieces to a cohesive book. But Chee obviously knows what that thing is, because this book builds on itself. He writes about growing roses and working odd jobs and AIDS activism and drag and writing a novel, and each of these essays is singularly moving. But as a whole they paint a complex portrait of a slice of the writer’s life. They inform and converse with each other, and the result is a book you can revisit again and again, always finding something new.

I Hope We Choose Love by Kai Cheng Thom

In this collection of beautiful and thought-provoking essays, Kai Cheng Thom explores the messy, far-from-perfect realties of queer and trans communities and community movements. She writes about what many community organizers, activists, and artists don’t want to talk about: the hard stuff, the painful stuff, the bad times. It’s not all grim, but it’s very real. Thom addresses transphobia, racism, and exclusion, but she also writes about the particular joys she’s found in creating community and family with other queer and trans people of color. This is a must-read for anyone involved in social justice work, or immersed in queer community.

Here For It by R. Eric Thomas

If you enjoy books that blend humor and heartfelt wisdom, you’ll love this collection. R. Eric Thomas writes about coming of age as a writer on the internet, his changing relationship to Christianity, the messy intersections of his queer Black identity. It’s a lovey mix of grappling and quips. It’s full of pop culture references and witty asides, as well as moving, vulnerable personal stories.

The Rib Joint by Julia Koets

This slim memoir-in-essays is entirely personal. Although Koets does weave some history, pop culture, and religion into the work — everything from the history of organs to Sally Ride — her gaze is mostly focused inward. The essays are short and beautifully written; she often leaves the analysis to the reader, simply letting distinct and sometimes contradictory ideas and images sit next to each other on the page. She writes about her childhood in the South, the hidden and often invisible queer relationships she had as a teenager and young adult, secrets and closets, and the tensions and overlaps between religion and queerness.

I Can’t Date Jesus by Michael Arceneaux

This is another fantastic humorous essay collection. Arceneaux somehow manages to be laugh-out-loud funny while also delivering nuanced cultural critique and telling vulnerable stories from his life. He writes about growing up in Houston, family relationships, coming out, and so much more. The whole book wrestles with how to be a young Black queer person striving to make meaning in the world. His second collection, I Don’t Want to Die Poor , is equally wonderful.

Tomboyland by Melissa Faliveno

If you’re wondering, this is the book that contains an essay about tornadoes. It also contains a gorgeous essay about pantry moths (among other things). Those are just two of the many subjects Faliveno plumbs the depths of in this remarkable book. She writes about gender expression and how her relationship with gender has changed throughout her life, about queer desire and family, about Midwestern culture, about place and home, about bisexuality and bi erasure. Her far-ranging essays challenge mainstream ideas about what queer lives do and do not look like. She asks more questions than she answers, delving into the murky terrain of desire and identity.

Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery

Is this book even an essay collection? It is, and it isn’t. Some of these pieces are deeply personal stories about Lavery’s experience with transition. Others are trans retellings of mythology, literature, and film. All of it is weird and smart and impossibly to classify. Lavery examines the idea of transition from every angle, creating new stories about trans history, trans identity, and transformation itself.

Brown White Black: An American Family at the Intersection of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Religion by Nishta J. Mehra book cover

Brown White Black by Nishta J. Mehra

If there’s one thing I love most in an essay collection, it’s when an author allows contradictions and messy, fraught truths to live next to each other on the page. I love when an essayist asks more questions than they answer. That’s what Mehra does in this book. An Indian American woman married to a white woman and raising a Black son, she writes with openness and curiosity about her particular family. She explores how race, sexuality, gender, class, and religion impact her life and most intimate relationships, as well as American culture more broadly.

Blood, Marriage, Wine, & Glitter by S. Bear Bergman

This essay collection is an embodiment of queer joy, of what it means to become part of a queer family. Every essay captures some aspect of the complexity and joy that is queer family-making. Bergman writes about being a trans parent, about beloved friends, about the challenges of partnership, about intimacy in myriad forms. His tone is warm and open-hearted and joyful and celebratory.

Forty-Three Septembers by Jewelle Gómez

In these contemplative essays, Jewell Gómez explores the various pieces of her life as a Black lesbian, writing about family, aging, and her own history. Into these personal stories she weaves an analysis of history and current events. She writes about racism and homophobia, both within and outside of queer and Black communities, and about her life as an artist and poet, and how those identities, too, have shaped the way she sees the world.

Pass With Care by Cooper Lee Bombardier

Set mostly against the backdrop of queer culture in 1990s San Francisco, this memoir in essays is about trans identity, being an artist, masculinity, queer activism, and so much more. Bombardier brings particular places and times to life (San Francisco in the 1990s, but other places as well), but he also connects those times and experiences to the present in really interesting ways. He recognizes the importance of queer and trans history, while also exploring the possibilities of queer and trans futures.

Care Work by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

This is a beautiful, rigorous collection of essays about disability justice centering disabled queer and trans people of color. From an exploration of the radical care collectives Piepzna-Samarasinha and other queer and trans BIPOC have organized to an essay where examines the problems with the “survivor industrial complex,” every one of these pieces is full of wisdom, anger, transformation, radical celebration. It challenged me on so many levels, in the best possible way. It’s a must read for anyone engaged in any kind of activist work.

I’m Afraid of Men by Vivek Shraya

I’m cheating a little bit here, because technically I’d classify this book as one essay, singular, rather than a collection of essays. But I’m including it anyway, because it is brilliant, and because I think it exemplifies just what a good essay can do, what a powerful form of writing it can be. By reflection on various experiences Shraya has had with men over the course of her life, she examines the connections and intersections between sexism, transmisogyny, toxic masculinity, and sexual violence. It’s a heavy read, but Shraya’s writing is anything but. It’s agile and graceful, flowing and jumping between disparate thoughts and ideas. This is a book-length essay you can read in one sitting, but it’ll leave you with enough to think about for many days afterward.

Gender Failure by Rae Spoon and Ivan Coyote

Gender Failure by Ivan E. Coyote and Rae Spoon

In this collaborative essay collection, trans writers and performers Ivan E. Coyote and Rae Spoon play with both gender and form. The book is a combination of personal essays, short vignettes, song lyrics, and images. Using these various kinds of storytelling, they both recount their own particular journeys around gender — how their genders have changed throughout their lives, the ways the gender binary has continually harmed them both, and the many communities, people, and experiences that have contributed to joyful self-expression and gender freedom.

The Groom Will Keep His Name by Matt Ortile

Matt Ortile uses his experiences as a gay Filipino immigrant as a lens in these witty, insightful, and moving essays. By telling his own stories — of dating, falling in love, struggling to “fit in” — he illuminates the intersections among so many issues facing America right now (and always). He writes about the model minority myth and many other myths he told himself about assimilation, sex, power, what it means to be an American. It’s a heartfelt collection of personal essays that engage meaningfully, and critically, with the wider world.

Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby

I’m not a big fan of humorous essays in this vein, heavy on pop culture references I do not understand and full of snark. But I absolutely love Irby’s books, which is about the highest praise I can give. I honestly think there is something in here for everyone. Irby is just so very much herself: she writes about whatever the hell she wants to, whether that’s aging or the weirdness of small town America or snacks (there is a lot to say about snacks). And whatever the subject, she’s always got something funny or insightful or new or just super relatable to say.

Queer Essay Anthologies

Cover of She Called Me Woman by Azeenarh Mohammed

She Called Me Woman Edited by Azeenarh Mohammed, Chitra Nagarajan, and Aisha Salau

This anthology collects 30 first-person narratives by queer Nigerian women. The essays reflect a range of experiences, capturing the challenges that queer Nigerian women face, as well as the joyful lives and communities they’ve built. The essays explore sexuality, spirituality, relationships, money, love, societal expectations, gender expression, and so much more.

Untangling the Knot: Queer Voices on Marriage, Relationships & Identity by Carter Sickels

When gay marriage was legalized, I felt pretty ambivalent about it, even though I knew I was supposed to be excited. But I have never wanted or cared about marriage. Reading this book made me feel so seen. That’s not to say it’s anti-marriage — it isn’t! It’s a collection of personal essays from a diverse range of queer people about the families they’ve made. Some are traditional. Some are not. The essays are about marriages and friendships, parenthood and siblinghood, polyamorous relationships and monogamous ones. It’s a book that celebrates the different forms queer families take, never valuing any one kind of family or relationship over another.

Cover of Nonbinary by Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane

Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity Edited by Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane

This book collects essays from 30 nonbinary writers, and trans and gender-nonconforming writers whose genders fall outside the binary. The writers inhabit a diverse range of identity and experience in terms of race, age, class, sexuality. Some of the essays are explicitly about gender identity, others are about family and relationships, and still others are about activism and politics. As a whole, the book celebrates the expansiveness of trans experiences, and the many ways there are to inhabit a body.

Cover of Moving Truth(s) edited by Aparajeeta Duttchoudhury

Moving Truth(s): Queer and Transgender Desi Writings on Family Edited by Aparajeeta ‘Sasha’ Duttchoudhury and Rukie Hartman

This anthology brings together a collection of diverse essays by queer and trans Desi writers. The pieces explore family in all its shapes and iterations. Contributors write about community, friendship, culture, trauma, healing. It’s a wonderfully nuanced collection. Though there is a thread that runs through the whole book — queer and trans Desi identity — the range of viewpoints, styles and experiences represented makes it clear how expansive identity is.

Looking for more queer books? I made a list of 40 of my favorites . If you’re looking for more essay collections to add to your list, check out 10 Must-Read Essay Collections by Women , and The Best Essays from 2019 . And if you’re not in the mood for a whole book right now, why not try one of these free essays available online (including some great queer ones)?

8 Creepy and Compelling Historical Horror Novels

11 Funny Memoirs That Will Make You Laugh Out Loud

A colorful collection of book covers from various genres, including memoirs, fiction, and self-help, creatively floating against a pastel background, showcasing the diversity in modern literature.

Love to laugh? You’ve come to the right place. From uproarious and award-winning personal essay collections to sidesplitting new narratives by stand-up comedy legends, the following funny memoirs will tug on your heartstrings and tickle your funny bone.

Man in a suit confidently walking with his dog, with caricature silhouettes of a film crew in action behind them, under the title 'number one is walking: my life in the movies and other diversions.'.

Number One Is Walking

By steve martin, drawings by harry bliss.

A must-read for comedy lovers, Number One Is Walking is the highly anticipated film career memoir by Steve Martin and marks the first time the legendary stand-up comic and actor has written about his life in the movies. The narrative is chock-full of never-before-heard anecdotes from the sets of films like The Jerk and Father of the Bride and is brought to life by artwork from New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss. Readers will find a perfect comedic pairing in Martin’s smartly humorous musings and Bliss’s wry cartoons.

In fact, this isn’t the first time Martin and Bliss have teamed up: In 2020 they released A Wealth of Pigeons , a New York Times bestselling collection of comics wherein Martin provided the ideas and captions while Bliss created the artwork. Whether you’re a fan of Martin’s pioneering stand-up from the 1970s or his recent turn as Charles-Haden Savage on Hulu’s award-winning crime dramedy Only Murders in the Building, you’re sure to love his newest book.

A portrait of a historical figure in elaborate attire, featuring a large white wig and a red robe, humorously juxtaposed with modern text that reads "david sedaris me talk pretty one day," suggesting a witty contrast between past and present.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

By david sedaris.

David Sedaris is a beloved humor essayist, and Me Talk Pretty One Day, his second collection of essays, makes for an uproarious read. Divided into two parts, the first section of Sedaris’s memoir-in-essays chronicles the author’s childhood in North Carolina, where he grew up surrounded by his offbeat family members, including his hilarious sister Amy Sedaris . In the second section, Sedaris recounts his adult life living in Normandy with his partner, Hugh. “Go Carolina” opens the collection and relates the time Sedaris was sent to a speech therapist in elementary school for his lisp. Instead of “fixing” the way he spoke, he simply decided to stop using the letter “s,” much to the consternation of his instructor. Sedaris is known the world over for his acerbic wit and dry observations on the absurdities of everyday life. He’s also an excellent live reader and performer. If you want a taste of his comedic presence, listen to his brilliant reading of “The Santaland Diaries” on NPR, in which recounts his experience working as an elf in Macy’s.

Wow, No Thank You

By samantha irby.

Samantha Irby’s sharp humor is known for making readers cackle with delight. Her third book of essays, following We Are Never Meeting in Real Life and Meaty, finds the 40-year-old riding a wave of literary success while still learning to be comfortable in her own skin. Like the best comedic writers, Irby finds healing through humor, whether it’s skewering the bourgeois-dream home life she shares with her wife, reliving awkward meetings with eccentric TV execs, or facing down the insecurity, guilt, and existential dread of the modern era. Irby’s comedic gifts lie not just in her ability to talk candidly about her personal experiences but also in her piercing analysis of media, social trends, and popular culture. Pick up the Lambda Literary Award–winning Wow, No Thank You ASAP to see why outlets like The New Republic are calling Irby “America’s most talented comic writer.”

By Lindy West

After establishing herself as a writer for Seattle’s The Stranger, Lindy West catapulted to the national level with her debut book of essays that’s part memoir and part takedown of our culture’s treatment of fat women. Shrill , which was adapted as a Hulu series starring Aidy Bryant, is a laugh-out-loud-funny memoir, displaying West’s signature exuberance and over-the-top conversational style. It’s also a searing indictment of the misogyny and fat hatred that West has endured throughout her life. The essays cover everything from fat Disney characters to the death threats West received for existing as a successful fat woman on the internet. As The Guardian writes: “ Shrill mixes humour with pathos so effectively that those qualities magnify each other rather than cancelling each other out.” This book will make you laugh, cry, scream, and go out and fight for a better, kinder world.

Born a Crime

By trevor noah.

In the bestselling and Thurber Prize–winning Born a Crime, Daily Show host Trevor Noah reflects on his life from growing up in apartheid-era South Africa to becoming a successful stand-up comedian on the global stage. Noah’s birth in 1980s South Africa to a white Swiss father and Black Xhosa mother was considered a criminal act at the time, punishable by up to five years in prison. As a result, young Noah spent much of his childhood hidden from government officials who might take him away from his family. Like other authors on this list, Noah employs humor to chronicle and counteract life’s most harrowing blows; he also presents a moving portrait of his mother, who bravely fought to provide him with a life free of poverty and violence. Blending political and social critique with candid personal accounts, Born a Crime radiates humor and tragedy. And judging from the way Noah was raised to question authority and fight oppression, it’s no wonder he ended up becoming the incisive political comic he is today.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

By mindy kaling.

Mindy Kaling is an actor and writer, and the creator of The Mindy Project, Never Have I Ever, and The Sex Lives of College Girls — and if you loved any of those shows, then reading this funny memoir will feel like chatting with your best friend. Charting her path from growing up as the dutiful child of immigrant parents to her early success as a TV writer and performer on The Office, Kaling’s first book is a warmly funny reflection on fame, friends, family, dating, and celebrity culture. Critics and readers alike have championed Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? for its relatability, with Elle praising Kaling for her “neurotic charm and hilarious everywoman musings.” Come for the humor in Kaling’s bestselling memoir, stay for the behind-the-scenes look at achieving comedy success in Hollywood.

A woman with voluminous curly hair and a thoughtful expression, holding her chin, featured on a vibrant book cover titled "everything's trash, but it's okay" by phoebe robinson.

Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay

By phoebe robinson.

You may know Phoebe Robinson from 2 Dope Queens, the comedy podcast turned HBO stand-up special she hosts with Jessica Williams. More recently, Robinson starred in a brand-new Freeform series Everything’s Trash, which is based on this 2018 memoir/cultural critique. As with all of her comedy, Robinson seamlessly blends pop culture musings and personal reflections with eye-opening explorations of racism and sexism in Everything’s Trash , but It’s Okay . You’ll find essays on everything from meeting Bono to feminism’s intersectionality problem, personal money problems, and dating horror stories. Readers of all stripes are sure to discover something to love here, while elder millennials who’ve faced cultural dumpster fire after dumpster fire will connect with the way Robinson laughs out loud to keep from crying.

An ecstatic raccoon with wide eyes and a broad smile is bursting out with joy against a vibrant yellow background scattered with sparkles, promoting the book "furiously happy" by jenny lawson, acclaimed as a humorous take on personal struggles.

Furiously Happy

By jenny lawson.

In her #1 New York Times bestseller, Jenny Lawson writes candidly about her experiences with severe depression and anxiety. While this might not sound like ideal material for a funny memoir, Lawson shines at finding humor and catharsis in the darkest of places. Lawson’s fans agree, showing up to her standing-room-only book readings to tell the author how her books have made them feel like they can keep going. While ostensibly about the struggles of facing mental illness, Furiously Happy, which is written in a style that mimics fighting with your own brain, is really about finding and holding on to joy.

A woman in a chic, sequined burgundy dress sits confidently on a pink armchair, her pose and expression exuding elegance and strength, while the cover boasts engaging content from intimate tales to advice for living your best life.

By Ali Wong

In Dear Girls, acclaimed stand-up comedian Ali Wong writes bitingly funny and sweetly touching letters to the daughters with whom she was pregnant during her breakout Netflix stand-up specials. In her letters, Wong shares insights she’s learned both on- and offstage, from finding success in a male-dominated field and dating in New York to growing up in San Francisco and reconnecting with her Vietnamese heritage. Fiercely funny, Dear Girls marries unflinching gross-out humor with thoughtful reflections on feminism, motherhood, and comedy stardom. It’s perfect for comedy nerds, moms, and comedy nerd moms.

I'll Show Myself Out

By jessi klein.

As the executive producer of Inside Amy Schumer, Jessi Klein thrived at using humor to critique the way society treats women. In the bestselling I’ll Show Myself Out, Klein applies her sharp comedic eye to encroaching middle age and the impossible expectations our culture puts on moms. Throughout this poignant and funny memoir-in-essays collection, Klein digs deep into the joy, pain, and ambivalence of having a kid at 39. And you know you’re in for a comedic treat when the chapter titles alone crack you up: “Listening to Beyoncé in the Parking Lot of Party City,” “Your Husband Will Remarry Five Minutes After You Die,” and “On the Starbucks Bathroom Floor” is just a sampling of the laughs that lie within.

Nobody Will Tell You This But Me

By bess kalb.

We end our list with a unique and funny memoir told not from the perspective of the author but from the author’s beloved grandmother. Emmy-nominated TV writer Bess Kalb adored her one-of-a-kind grandmother Bobby Bell. In Nobody Will Tell You This But Me, Kalb channels Bobby’s voice, stories, and irrepressible spirit to reconstruct the multigenerational saga of her family, stretching all the way back to the 1880s, when Bobby’s mother escaped the pogroms in Belarus to come to the U.S. “A funny, touching, and timely reminder of the solace to be found in kindred spirits” ( People ), Kalb’s family memoir will delight anyone lucky enough to have an indomitable nana in their life.

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The Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2022 ‹ Literary Hub
4. Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos. "In her new book, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, memoirist Melissa Febos handily recuperates the art of writing the self from some of the most common biases against it: that the memoir is a lesser form than the novel.
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The Art of the Personal Essay — anthology, edited by Phillip Lopate. 6. Bad Feminist — Roxane Gay. 7. The Best American Essays of the Century — anthology, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. 8. The Best American Essays series — published every year, series edited by Robert Atwan. 9. Book of Days — Emily Fox Gordon.
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Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me by Bill Hayes. "Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change.
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After the jump, our picks for the 25 greatest essay collections of all time. Feel free to disagree with us, praise our intellect, or create an entirely new list in the comments. The Book of My ...
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Baldwin's famous essay collection about racism and the lives of Black people in America was written in the 1940s and early 1950s, at the start of the Civil Rights movement. ... while weaving very personal, heartbreaking information into each one. There's a discussion of the trial of jailed teacher Mary Kay Letourneau, the work of J.D ...
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Essay collections offer a unique kind of reader experience, one that can be rewarding in a different way from novels or even other types of nonfiction. Essays often provide multiple angles of attack on a certain theme, providing a kind of literary 3-D effect. Sometimes they work as little first-person short stories.
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Watch for lists over the next couple of weeks that highlight reported essays, investigative reporting, features, and profiles. The Gradual Extinction of Softness, Chantha Nguon and Kim Green, Hippocampus Magazine, November 8, 2021. For this category, I'm recommending a moving, lyrical personal essay from Kim Green and Chantha Nguon.
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A collection of good essays is a work of art all its own. In an effort to find the really good stuff, we've collected below the essay collections that have generated the most reviews and discussion threads from Goodreads regulars. You'll find some heavyweight literary types ( Joan Didion, Bret Easton Ellis, Toni Morrison) and some familiar ...
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A collection of personal essays on mental illness Amazon "The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays" by Esmé Weijun Wang, free with Audible trial, $9.99 on Kindle, $12.53 for hardcover
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Men Explain Things To Me is a slim little essay collection with a provocative title and a brilliant premise. Rebecca Solnit writes about the lived experience of women in the patriarchy in seven essays (or nine, if you get a later edition) from the last twenty years. She addresses violence against women, marriage equality, the influence of ...
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The Anthropocene Reviewed (2021) offers a unique collection of essays exploring the human experience in the current geological age known as the Anthropocene. It delves into various aspects of human life and the world, reviewing them on a somewhat satirical five-star scale, blending humor with deep reflection on the complexities and paradoxes of modern human existence.
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The following contemporary memoirs and personal essay collections released in the past ten years exemplify this growing urgency by Black women to tell our side of the story. Their words illuminate the realities of the world and the impact of racist and sexist systems of powers on the lives of the most disenfranchised. These works are affecting ...
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Erosion: Essays of Undoing by Terry Tempest Williams (Sarah Crichton Books, October 8) This volume collects essays written between 2016 and 2018 covering the topic she has always written so beautifully about: the natural world. The essays focus on the concept of erosion, including the erosion of land and of the self.
What are your favorite personal essay collections?
How to Ruin Everything by George Watsky. In Lin-Manuel Miranda's words: "Funny, subversive... with such brutally honest sentences that you find yourself nodding your head in wonder and recognition.". Or in his own words: "How to Ruin Everything is a debut essay collection about embracing failure in all of life's most absurd situations
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The personal essay is my absolute favorite form, so this was a joy for me and also a joy because of their writing, which I found a reference in the promo copy that really explained to me what I was feeling, a lovely note that states that the collection is quote, "engaging, yet never indulgent."
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A collection of essays may touch upon these, however, most often, a collection of essays is the place where a writer shares their own views and perspective on the world, the life they've lived, and the lessons they've learned along the way. In other words, a collection of essays can be quite a niche, and that comes with its own consequences.
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By understanding and emphasizing the key features of personal essays, writers can craft compelling pitches to attract publishers' attention. Pitching to publishers opens doors for personal essays to be published, shared, and appreciated by a wider readership, creating opportunities for meaningful connections and impact. 3.
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Personal Queer Essay Collections. How to Write An Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee. It's hard for me to put my finger on the thing that elevates an essay collection from a handful of individual pieces to a cohesive book. But Chee obviously knows what that thing is, because this book builds on itself. He writes about growing roses and ...
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David Sedaris is a beloved humor essayist, and Me Talk Pretty One Day, his second collection of essays, makes for an uproarious read. Divided into two parts, the first section of Sedaris's memoir-in-essays chronicles the author's childhood in North Carolina, where he grew up surrounded by his offbeat family members, including his hilarious sister Amy Sedaris.