nonfiction essay memoir

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

When you buy through our links, Business Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more

• 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

Memoir Magazine

2024 Memoir Prize For Books-Deadline Extended- February 29, 2024!

Deadline Extended: February 29, 2024! Now, in its 4th year, the Memoir Prize awards Memoir and Creative Nonfiction book length works of exceptional merit in the...

How Can Black People Go Camping at a Time Like This? by Debra Stone

We bought the trailer after Trump became president, a safety net, in the probability of needing a means of escape. Maybe Canada then on to Cuba? At least it eas...

Dinner In Apartment 4N by Nancy Reckler

*Artwork by Elisa Peterson This time, their argument began in the kitchen. I sat next to my sister as my parents stood over us yelling and cursing across the bl...

Passenger Trains and Other Forbidden Loves by Jonathan Odell

People are quick to ask me when I discovered I was gay, like one day I got a registered letter in the mail. Or maybe they are fishing for a steamy sex story exp...

What Love Looks Like in Public by Jacqueline St. Joan

The urge to move is nameless, both voluntary and involuntary. The trick is to get that far and then get out of the way. Follow it to the first words and then ...

Vigil by Shirlee Jellum

*Featured Artwork by Tara Koger/Columbus Community Deathcare “…when the time comes to let it go…” —Mary Oliver I Outside the door I linger, close my eyes, breat...

A Lunchtime by Kate Dowling

*Featured Artwork: “Rain” by Ann Marie Sekeres I had to go out that lunchtime. Some DVDs were due back at Blockbuster, we were nearly out of milk an...

Along Came Bobby by Jordan Midgley

Every now and again, Bobby will call me, or I’ll call him. We talk about politics, drama, scandal, funny stories, old friends, his son’s service in the Navy, my...

The Sweetness of His Breath by Kristen Lambertin

My son looked so small in the hospital bed. “Will this change my life? Will I still be able to play soccer?” he asked. “Yes and yes,” I said, “but not necess...

Atlantic Terminal 2015 by Tanya E. Friedman

The child whose hand I held, my daughter whose brown skin matched the boys and the police and not my whiteness: I lifted her, not to see the scene, but the oppo...

Dead Weight by Claire O’Brien

I’ve been to thousands of death scenes. I knew what your family would say even before they found you. I know you’re the third suicide that this firefighter has ...

Your Greatest Fear by Sherri Wright

In the United States about six million people over 65 live with Alzheimer’s disease. You wonder how much your mother knew and if she suffered. Looking back, ...

The Body History by Jessica Marks

My body is a series of numbers. I weigh 204, I wear a size 16. My waist is eight inches smaller than my hips, my breasts are 38B. I should probably go up to a 4...

Children of a Deaf(er) God, Part 1 of 2  by Kevin Garrison

I read the Bible each morning partly because I want to know the scriptures; I read partly because I want my ears to be healed; I read partly because I want to b...

2023 Memoir Book Prize Winners

Memoir Magazine is delighted to share the winners of the 2023 Memoir Prize for Books! Congratulations to our Grand Prize winner, Finalists, and Category winners...

Hearts Are Public By Lola Kelly

“People can have crushes just on boys or just on girls???… Why? How does it work? What’s wrong with-” “There is NOTHING wrong with them! Don’t say that!” ...

Waiting on the Stair by Jonathan Odell

This was 1972 and gay sex was definitely taboo. Not only was it against the law, the president of the university, a rabid segregationist, also hated queers. He ...

Pesach 5770 by Deborah Adelman

On this night, I have to beg permission from the hospital authorities to let you leave so you can join the Seder...I don’t look up to the heavens when I am on t...

Drowning by Natasha Williams

He was disheveled and smelled like cooked grease and cigarettes. It was an odor I associated with his being poor and hemmed in. There was so much about our life...

Frankenstein’s Daughter by Sherry Shahan

Maybe I should tell her that Daddy drives with his knees while poking triangle holes in beer cans? Or that he once fell out his car door while rounding a corner...

Short, sweet and infrequent! Stay up-to-date with curated content, links to book reviews, interviews, craft essays, contest and submission announcements, and other excellent resources for memoir writers! All for FREE!

If you’ve thought about putting your life to the page, you may have wondered how to write a memoir. We start the road to writing a memoir when we realize that a story in our lives demands to be told. As Maya Angelou once wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

How to write a memoir? At first glance, it looks easy enough—easier, in any case, than writing fiction. After all, there is no need to make up a story or characters, and the protagonist is none other than you.

Still, memoir writing carries its own unique challenges, as well as unique possibilities that only come from telling your own true story. Let’s dive into how to write a memoir by looking closely at the craft of memoir writing, starting with a key question: exactly what is a memoir?

How to Write a Memoir: Contents

What is a Memoir?

• Memoir vs Autobiography

Memoir Examples

Short memoir examples.

• How to Write a Memoir: A Step-by-Step Guide

A memoir is a branch of creative nonfiction , a genre defined by the writer Lee Gutkind as “true stories, well told.” The etymology of the word “memoir,” which comes to us from the French, tells us of the human urge to put experience to paper, to remember. Indeed, a memoir is “ something written to be kept in mind .”

A memoir is defined by Lee Gutkind as “true stories, well told.”

For a piece of writing to be called a memoir, it has to be:

• Nonfictional
• Based on the raw material of your life and your memories
• Written from your personal perspective

At this point, memoirs are beginning to sound an awful lot like autobiographies. However, a quick comparison of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love , and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin , for example, tells us that memoirs and autobiographies could not be more distinct.

Next, let’s look at the characteristics of a memoir and what sets memoirs and autobiographies apart. Discussing memoir vs. autobiography will not only reveal crucial insights into the process of writing a memoir, but also help us to refine our answer to the question, “What is a memoir?”

Memoir vs. Autobiography

While both use personal life as writing material, there are five key differences between memoir and autobiography:

1. Structure

Since autobiographies tell the comprehensive story of one’s life, they are more or less chronological. writing a memoir, however, involves carefully curating a list of personal experiences to serve a larger idea or story, such as grief, coming-of-age, and self-discovery. As such, memoirs do not have to unfold in chronological order.

While autobiographies attempt to provide a comprehensive account, memoirs focus only on specific periods in the writer’s life. The difference between autobiographies and memoirs can be likened to that between a CV and a one-page resume, which includes only select experiences.

The difference between autobiographies and memoirs can be likened to that between a CV and a one-page resume, which includes only select experiences.

Autobiographies prioritize events; memoirs prioritize the writer’s personal experience of those events. Experience includes not just the event you might have undergone, but also your feelings, thoughts, and reflections. Memoir’s insistence on experience allows the writer to go beyond the expectations of formal writing. This means that memoirists can also use fiction-writing techniques , such as scene-setting and dialogue , to capture their stories with flair.

4. Philosophy

Another key difference between the two genres stems from the autobiography’s emphasis on facts and the memoir’s reliance on memory. Due to memory’s unreliability, memoirs ask the reader to focus less on facts and more on emotional truth. In addition, memoir writers often work the fallibility of memory into the narrative itself by directly questioning the accuracy of their own memories.

Memoirs ask the reader to focus less on facts and more on emotional truth.

5. Audience

While readers pick up autobiographies to learn about prominent individuals, they read memoirs to experience a story built around specific themes . Memoirs, as such, tend to be more relatable, personal, and intimate. Really, what this means is that memoirs can be written by anybody!

Ready to be inspired yet? Let’s now turn to some memoir examples that have received widespread recognition and captured our imaginations!

If you’re looking to lose yourself in a book, the following memoir examples are great places to begin:

• The Year of Magical Thinking , which chronicles Joan Didion’s year of mourning her husband’s death, is certainly one of the most powerful books on grief. Written in two short months, Didion’s prose is urgent yet lucid, compelling from the first page to the last. A few years later, the writer would publish Blue Nights , another devastating account of grief, only this time she would be mourning her daughter.
• Patti Smith’s Just Kids is a classic coming-of-age memoir that follows the author’s move to New York and her romance and friendship with the artist Robert Maplethorpe. In its pages, Smith captures the energy of downtown New York in the late sixties and seventies effortlessly.
• When Breath Becomes Air begins when Paul Kalanithi, a young neurosurgeon, is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Exquisite and poignant, this memoir grapples with some of the most difficult human experiences, including fatherhood, mortality, and the search for meaning.
• A memoir of relationship abuse, Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House is candid and innovative in form. Machado writes about thorny and turbulent subjects with clarity, even wit. While intensely personal, In the Dream House is also one of most insightful pieces of cultural criticism.
• Twenty-five years after leaving for Canada, Michael Ondaatje returns to his native Sri Lanka to sort out his family’s past. The result is Running in the Family , the writer’s dazzling attempt to reconstruct fragments of experiences and family legends into a portrait of his parents’ and grandparents’ lives. (Importantly, Running in the Family was sold to readers as a fictional memoir; its explicit acknowledgement of fictionalization prevented it from encountering the kind of backlash that James Frey would receive for fabricating key facts in A Million Little Pieces , which he had sold as a memoir . )
• Of the many memoirs published in recent years, Tara Westover’s Educated is perhaps one of the most internationally-recognized. A story about the struggle for self-determination, Educated recounts the writer’s childhood in a survivalist family and her subsequent attempts to make a life for herself. All in all, powerful, thought-provoking, and near impossible to put down.

While book-length memoirs are engaging reads, the prospect of writing a whole book can be intimidating. Fortunately, there are plenty of short, essay-length memoir examples that are just as compelling.

While memoirists often write book-length works, you might also consider writing a memoir that’s essay-length. Here are some short memoir examples that tell complete, lived stories, in far fewer words:

• “ The Book of My Life ” offers a portrait of a professor that the writer, Aleksandar Hemon, once had as a child in communist Sarajevo. This memoir was collected into Hemon’s The Book of My Lives , a collection of essays about the writer’s personal history in wartime Yugoslavia and subsequent move to the US.
• “The first time I cheated on my husband, my mother had been dead for exactly one week.” So begins Cheryl Strayed’s “ The Love of My Life ,” an essay that the writer eventually expanded into the best-selling memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail .
• In “ What We Hunger For ,” Roxane Gay weaves personal experience and a discussion of The Hunger Games into a powerful meditation on strength, trauma, and hope. “What We Hunger For” can also be found in Gay’s essay collection, Bad Feminist .
• A humorous memoir structured around David Sedaris and his family’s memories of pets, “ The Youth in Asia ” is ultimately a story about grief, mortality and loss. This essay is excerpted from the memoir Me Talk Pretty One Day , and a recorded version can be found here .

So far, we’ve 1) answered the question “What is a memoir?” 2) discussed differences between memoirs vs. autobiographies, 3) taken a closer look at book- and essay-length memoir examples. Next, we’ll turn the question of how to write a memoir.

How to Write a Memoir: A-Step-by-Step Guide

1. how to write a memoir: generate memoir ideas.

how to start a memoir? As with anything, starting is the hardest. If you’ve yet to decide what to write about, check out the “ I Remember ” writing prompt. Inspired by Joe Brainard’s memoir I Remember , this prompt is a great way to generate a list of memories. From there, choose one memory that feels the most emotionally charged and begin writing your memoir. It’s that simple! If you’re in need of more prompts, our Facebook group is also a great resource.

2. How to Write a Memoir: Begin drafting

My most effective advice is to resist the urge to start from “the beginning.” Instead, begin with the event that you can’t stop thinking about, or with the detail that, for some reason, just sticks. The key to drafting is gaining momentum . Beginning with an emotionally charged event or detail gives us the drive we need to start writing.

3. How to Write a Memoir: Aim for a “ shitty first draft ”

Now that you have momentum, maintain it. Attempting to perfect your language as you draft makes it difficult to maintain our impulses to write. It can also create self-doubt and writers’ block. Remember that most, if not all, writers, no matter how famous, write shitty first drafts.

Attempting to perfect your language as you draft makes it difficult to maintain our impulses to write.

4. How to Write a Memoir: Set your draft aside

Once you have a first draft, set it aside and fight the urge to read it for at least a week. Stephen King recommends sticking first drafts in your drawer for at least six weeks. This period allows writers to develop the critical distance we need to revise and edit the draft that we’ve worked so hard to write.

5. How to Write a Memoir: Reread your draft

While reading your draft, note what works and what doesn’t, then make a revision plan. While rereading, ask yourself:

• What’s underdeveloped, and what’s superfluous.
• Does the structure work?
• What story are you telling?

6. How to Write a Memoir: Revise your memoir and repeat steps 4 & 5 until satisfied

Every piece of good writing is the product of a series of rigorous revisions. Depending on what kind of writer you are and how you define a draft,” you may need three, seven, or perhaps even ten drafts. There’s no “magic number” of drafts to aim for, so trust your intuition. Many writers say that a story is never, truly done; there only comes a point when they’re finished with it. If you find yourself stuck in the revision process, get a fresh pair of eyes to look at your writing.

7. How to Write a Memoir: Edit, edit, edit!

Once you’re satisfied with the story, begin to edit the finer things (e.g. language, metaphor , and details). Clean up your word choice and omit needless words , and check to make sure you haven’t made any of these common writing mistakes . Be sure to also know the difference between revising and editing —you’ll be doing both. Then, once your memoir is ready, send it out !

Learn How to Write a Memoir at Writers.com

Writing a memoir for the first time can be intimidating. But, keep in mind that anyone can learn how to write a memoir. Trust the value of your own experiences: it’s not about the stories you tell, but how you tell them. Most importantly, don’t give up!

Anyone can learn how to write a memoir.

If you’re looking for additional feedback, as well as additional instruction on how to write a memoir, check out our schedule of nonfiction classes . Now, get started writing your memoir!

25 Comments

Thank you for this website. It’s very engaging. I have been writing a memoir for over three years, somewhat haphazardly, based on the first half of my life and its encounters with ignorance (religious restrictions, alcohol, and inability to reach out for help). Three cities were involved: Boston as a youngster growing up and going to college, then Washington DC and Chicago North Shore as a married woman with four children. I am satisfied with some chapters and not with others. Editing exposes repetition and hopefully discards boring excess. Reaching for something better is always worth the struggle. I am 90, continue to be a recital pianist, a portrait painter, and a writer. Hubby has been dead for nine years. Together we lept a few of life’s chasms and I still miss him. But so far, my occupations keep my brain working fairly well, especially since I don’t smoke or drink (for the past 50 years).

Hi Mary Ellen,

It sounds like a fantastic life for a memoir! Thank you for sharing, and best of luck finishing your book. Let us know when it’s published!

Best, The writers.com Team

Hello Mary Ellen,

I am contacting you because your last name (Lavelle) is my middle name!

Being interested in genealogy I have learned that this was my great grandfathers wife’s name (Mary Lavelle), and that her family emigrated here about 1850 from County Mayo, Ireland. That is also where my fathers family came from.

Is your family background similar?

Hope to hear back from you.

Richard Lavelle Bourke

Hi Mary Ellen: Have you finished your memoir yet? I just came across your post and am seriously impressed that you are still writing. I discovered it again at age 77 and don’t know what I would do with myself if I couldn’t write. All the best to you!! Sharon [email protected]

I am up to my eyeballs with a research project and report for a non-profit. And some paid research for an international organization. But as today is my 90th birthday, it is time to retire and write a memoir.

So I would like to join a list to keep track of future courses related to memoir / creative non-fiction writing.

Hi Frederick,

Happy birthday! And happy retirement as well. I’ve added your name and email to our reminder list for memoir courses–when we post one on our calendar, we’ll send you an email.

We’ll be posting more memoir courses in the near future, likely for the months of January and February 2022. We hope to see you in one!

Very interesting and informative, I am writing memoirs from my long often adventurous and well travelled life, have had one very short story published. Your advice on several topics will be extremely helpful. I write under my schoolboy nickname Barnaby Rudge.

[…] How to Write a Memoir: Examples and a Step-by-Step Guide […]

I am writing my memoir from my memory when I was 5 years old and now having left my birthplace I left after graduation as a doctor I moved to UK where I have been living. In between I have spent 1 year in Canada during my training year as paediatrician. I also spent nearly 2 years with British Army in the hospital as paediatrician in Germany. I moved back to UK to work as specialist paediatrician in a very busy general hospital outside London for the next 22 years. Then I retired from NHS in 2012. I worked another 5 years in Canada until 2018. I am fully retired now

I have the whole convoluted story of my loss and horrid aftermath in my head (and heart) but have no clue WHERE, in my story to begin. In the middle of the tragedy? What led up to it? Where my life is now, post-loss, and then write back and forth? Any suggestions?

My friend Laura who referred me to this site said “Start”! I say to you “Start”!

Hi Dee, that has been a challenge for me.i dont know where to start?

What was the most painful? Embarrassing? Delicious? Unexpected? Who helped you? Who hurt you? Pick one story and let that lead you to others.

I really enjoyed this writing about memoir. I ve just finished my own about my journey out of my city then out of my country to Egypt to study, Never Say Can’t, God Can Do It. Infact memoir writing helps to live the life you are writing about again and to appreciate good people you came across during the journey. Many thanks for sharing what memoir is about.

I am a survivor of gun violence, having witnessed my adult son being shot 13 times by police in 2014. I have struggled with writing my memoir because I have a grandson who was 18-months old at the time of the tragedy and was also present, as was his biological mother and other family members. We all struggle with PTSD because of this atrocity. My grandson’s biological mother was instrumental in what happened and I am struggling to write the story in such a way as to not cast blame – thus my dilemma in writing the memoir. My grandson was later adopted by a local family in an open adoption and is still a big part of my life. I have considered just writing it and waiting until my grandson is old enough to understand all the family dynamics that were involved. Any advice on how I might handle this challenge in writing would be much appreciated.

I decided to use a ghost writer, and I’m only part way in the process and it’s worth every penny!

Hi. I am 44 years old and have had a roller coaster life .. right as a young kid seeing his father struggle to financial hassles, facing legal battles at a young age and then health issues leading to a recent kidney transplant. I have been working on writing a memoir sharing my life story and titled it “A memoir of growth and gratitude” Is it a good idea to write a memoir and share my story with the world?

Thank you… this was very helpful. I’m writing about the troubling issues of my mental health, and how my life was seriously impacted by that. I am 68 years old.

[…] Writers.com: How to Write a Memoir […]

[…] Writers.com: “How to Write a Memoir” […]

I am so grateful that I found this site! I am inspired and encouraged to start my memoir because of the site’s content and the brave people that have posted in the comments.

Finding this site is going into my gratitude journey 🙂

We’re grateful you found us too, Nichol! 🙂

Firstly, I would like to thank you for all the info pertaining to memoirs. I believe am on the right track, am at the editing stage and really have to use an extra pair of eyes. I’m more motivated now to push it out and complete it. Thanks for the tips it was very helpful, I have a little more confidence it seeing the completion.

Well, I’m super excited to begin my memoir. It’s hard trying to rely on memories alone, but I’m going to give it a shot!

Thanks to everyone who posted comments, all of which have inspired me to get on it.

Best of luck to everyone! Jody V.

I was thrilled to find this material on How to Write A Memoir. When I briefly told someone about some of my past experiences and how I came to the United States in the company of my younger brother in a program with a curious name, I was encouraged by that person and others to write my life history.

Based on the name of that curious program through which our parents sent us to the United States so we could leave the place of our birth, and be away from potentially difficult situations in our country.

As I began to write my history I took as much time as possible to describe all the different steps that were taken. At this time – I have been working on this project for 5 years and am still moving ahead. The information I received through your material has further encouraged me to move along. I am very pleased to have found this important material. Thank you!

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

In 2024, we're changing how we do reading challenges. Make yours work for you

In 2024, we're changing how we do reading challenges ->   Make yours work for you

30 Memoirs and Nonfiction Books for Your Reading Bucket List

This post may include affiliate links. That means if you click and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Please see Disclosures for more information.

I’m back with more reading bucket list recommendations! This week’s recommendations for your bucket list are must-read memoirs and great nonfiction books .

Last week, I kicked off this series with 30 contemporary fiction novels to add to your reading bucket list . For more lists in this series, check out the full list of links at the end of this post.

What’s a Reading Bucket List?

In short, a reading bucket list is a manageable list of books you want to read in your life. Mine has only 50 books on it . 

Creating this list helps guide you to meet your reading goals, without overwhelming you or leaving you feeling deprived from newer or more “fun” books you might want to read.

Here is more guidance on how to create a reading bucket list that you’ll actually finish .

Reading More Nonfiction

Nonfiction books are not typically the first reads that I reach for, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to read them. There have been some amazing, riveting memoirs and nonfiction books released in the last few years.

Nonfiction November is a great time to get in more nonfiction reads, but I’ve also been trying to squeeze in a few others throughout the year.

If you’re also looking to add more memoirs or nonfiction to your reading, some of these might be good additions to your own lifetime reading list.

The list includes a variety of types of books, from personal memoirs to historical explorations, so if you don’t read much nonfiction now, these ideas might get you started.

Don’t be afraid to stop reading books that aren’t working for you. Reading time is precious, and you should use it to read books you love–not books you think you *should* finish.

As with the previous list, when I haven’t yet read a book or if I don’t have a good summary/review of my own, I’ve included the publisher’s summary in italics.

Print the Lists

Want to print this and other book lists? Subscribe to my email newsletter and you’ll get to access my library of downloadable book lists, as well as a template for creating your own reading bucket list.

You’ll also receive regular updates on what’s new on the blog.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

This tale of Louis Zamperini’s trials during World War II is so harrowing, you’ll have to remind yourself that it’s not fiction—because you won’t believe that one person could survive all that he did: a plane crash, months at sea on a raft, shark encounters…and that’s just the start. This book was hard to read, but also hard to put down. It stuck with me long after I finished it and provided perspective when day-to-day concerns threatened to overwhelm. It’s worth the reread for that reason alone.

More info →

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo immersed herself in a slum of Mumbai to tell the stories of the people who live there. Annawadi sits ironically in the shadow of a billboard reading “The Beautiful Forevers” and is pressed on all sides by the growth of the city that is leaving it behind. Boo herself is not part of the story, and she doesn’t need to be. The lives, hopes, and hurts of the families are richly painted and bring home the individual struggles and systemic obstacles that stand in the way of people rising above the inequality into which they are born. For those of us in the U.S., the stories of struggling families in this faraway country feel closer to home than ever in today’s political climate and stratified economy.

What Is the What

The story of Achak Deng, one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan,” who as a child was separated from his family during the Second Sudanese Civil War. He encounters danger, violence, disappointment, and surprising moments of humor and humanity as he flees to unknown places in search of safety and a life. This book couldn’t truly be called non-fiction—Dave Eggers himself describes it as “fictionalized autobiography” because of lapses in Deng’s memory and imagined conversations. Eggers writes in Deng’s voice to tell of the horrors faced by these children in Sudan and the difficulties they face as immigrants in the United States.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

In the 1950s, Henrietta Lacks was a poor black woman in her thirties who died of cancer. Doctors at Johns Hopkins University, where she was treated, took some of her unique cells without permission and used them for research. Those cells then became the basis for important medical advances, and they are still sold today for medical research—yet Lacks’s family has never received any compensation. Heavy on science, but interesting to all readers because of the human element, Rebecca Skloot follows the path of the cells, the research, and Lacks’s family, while discussing important questions of ethics and morality in science and medicine.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

I have never read any Stephen King before because I’m a big fat wimp and I know I’d have nightmares and be afraid to go in my basement (anyone else still give those wide-open storm sewers the side-eye after that clown appeared in It? And I only watched about five minutes of that movie.). But this book is pretty much required reading for anyone who wants to write. King is a prolific writer who knows how to tell a story, and he has great lessons to share with other storytellers.

The Glass Castle

I’ve seen this memoir recommended by readers for years, but it was actually the movie trailer that prompted me to pick it up. My impression was that the book was dark and heartbreaking, while the trailer gave the impression that it was about a carefree, inspiring family. I hadn’t yet seen the movie when I read this, but I did find the book heartbreaking. Walls seems to cling to the uplifting moments of her childhood, when her father in particular infused their family with a reckless sense of freedom and privilege in their free-spirited rootlessness. While there are appealing elements of his spirit, ultimately the parents’ selfishness and neglect is breathtaking, but the resourcefulness of the children is inspiring. (And thankfully, the movie trailer was somewhat misleading. It did stay pretty true to the spirit of the book.)

The Gratitude Diaries: How a Year Looking on the Bright Side Can Transform Your Life

Janice Kaplan spent a year focusing on gratitude in her own life and talking to experts about the ways that gratitude affects our lives. In all areas of life–family, career, health, and even grief –gratitude has a measurable effect on our well-being, our relationships, and our overall happiness. Daily conscious efforts to be grateful can actually change the neural connections in our brains and retrain the ways that we automatically respond to negative situations. This book made me more conscious of my own responses and the ways that I can build gratitude into my own thoughts and actions; read my full review and thoughts on moving through life with more gratitude.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

Roxane Gay’s life was changed forever at 12. The victim of a gang rape, Gay began building a fortress around herself, attempting to both keep herself safe and regain control. Instead, she found herself in what she calls an “unruly body,” one that, in its obesity, provides some measure of safety while also shrinking her world in various ways. At the same time, she asserts herself as fully human in a world that is determined to dehumanize her: highly intelligent, fully able to love and be loved, and in no way ignorant of the health and nutrition facts people throw at her. Gay is brutally honest and raw in this memoir about her struggles to understand and care for herself–weight, past, and all.

Tiny Beautiful Things

A book of “advice on love and life” is not the kind of thing I would normally read, but the raves piqued my curiosity. Strayed, known as “Sugar,” the anonymous advice columnist for The Rumpus, gives the kind of advice we all hope to get from our best friends , or our therapists. She doesn’t always have the answers, but she does have perspective, and she is searingly honest in her analysis of some of life’s biggest questions. At the heart of all of her columns is one life essential: love.

Seabiscuit: An American Legend

I was blown away by Hillenbrand’s Unbroken –the storytelling, the research, the detail–and after resisting Seabiscuit despite all the raves, I finally gave in and read it, hoping for a similar experience. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t love it. I’m still impressed with Hillenbrand, but I wasn’t able to overcome my overall disinterest in horse racing.

However, many other readers adore this book and list it among their favorites. While it wasn’t my favorite, it’s still worth a try if you’re looking for great nonfiction storytelling.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

Educated: A Memoir

As a young child, Tara Westover’s upbringing seemed almost charming and old fashioned. Living on a mountain in Idaho, the family strived for self-sufficiency based in faith and closeness to one another. As Tara grew up, however, she realized that their lives were driven by paranoid survivalism, religious extremism, abuse, and possibly mental illness.

Tara’s memoir traces the path from her cloistered upbringing–during which she never set foot in school–to her eventual education at BYU, Cambridge, and Harvard.

But more important than her formal educational path is her move toward awareness and a sense of self that wasn’t allowed in her mountaintop life. Educated explores her attempts to reconcile this new sense of self and the boundaries she learns to set with the love and longing she feels for her family.

An incredible read both for the excellent writing and the author’s thoughtful, unblinking, nuanced look at herself and her own life.

Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening

A ferociously intimate memoir by a devout woman from a modest family in Saudi Arabia who became the unexpected leader of a courageous movement to support women’s right to drive. Writing on the cusp of history, Manal offers a rare glimpse into the lives of women in Saudi Arabia today. Her memoir is a remarkable celebration of resilience in the face of tyranny, the extraordinary power of education and female solidarity, and the difficulties, absurdities, and joys of making your voice heard.

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

Night is Elie Wiesel’s masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

In Cold Blood

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.

As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia’s Roanoke Valley. Annie Dillard sets out to see what she can see. What she sees are astonishing incidents of “beauty tangled in a rapture with violence.”

Her personal narrative highlights one year’s exploration on foot in the Virginia region through which Tinker Creek runs. In the summer, Dillard stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope. She unties a snake skin, witnesses a flood, and plays King of the Meadow with a field of grasshoppers. The result is an exhilarating tale of nature and its seasons.

The Boys of My Youth

Jo Ann Beard beautifully evokes her childhood in the early ’60s, a time in which mothers continued to smoke right up to labor, one’s own scabs were deeply interesting, and Barbie dolls seemed to get naked of their own volition, knowing that Ken would be the one to get in trouble if they were caught. Beard’s memories of the next 30 years are no less sharp and wry, powered by antic melancholy, perfect juxtapositions, and “the push of love.” When she was little, “the words of grown-ups rarely made sense,” and even now, with the exception of her best friend and a few colleagues, not much seems to have changed.

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder

I was a huge fan of everything Little House when I was a kid. I read the books over and over, and I watched the television series. This past year, I’ve been diving back into that world. I’ve been reading the books aloud with my daughter, but I’ve also been taking a more nuanced look at the world presented by Laura Ingalls Wilder. First, I read (and loved) Caroline: Little House, Revisited (Ma’s fictional perspective on the Little House on the Prairie story), and then I dove into the true story with this detailed biography.

There are parts of Prairie Fires that read like a history textbook; the book is long, and it can get quite dry. It presents the broader historical context in which the Ingalls and Wilder families lived, and that included things like farm loans, railroads, crop pricing, and politics.

At the same time, when the book circles back to the families, it makes clear how these things affected their lives and decisions. As a reader of the books, it was gratifying to learn that many of the events actually happened–but also interesting as an adult to learn of the omissions, both of events and of character flaws. Most illuminating was the incessant devastation that occurred through their lives: fires, grasshoppers, storms, illness–and ongoing poverty that resulted. While these things were present in the books, the reality of them is a contrast to the idyllic lives we remember.

The later years of Wilder’s life were also fascinating–especially her relationship with her volatile daughter, Rose. Their partnership brought the books we love to life, but they would have been quite different without both Laura’s measured approach and Rose’s editing talent and flair for the dramatic (inserted sparingly, thanks to her mother’s reserve). Rose herself is an interesting character, and there were moments when the author seemed to question her sanity. Laura’s husband, Almanzo, unfortunately, is not a strong presence. The author drew heavily from the letters and writing of the women, and he was not a writer.

While I enjoyed this biography, because of the length and level of detail, I would only recommend this to other avid fans of the Little House books.

When Breath Becomes Air

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. When she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. I AM MALALA is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls’ education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.

Truth & Beauty: A Friendship

Truth & Beauty: A Friendship is the story of the two-decade friendship between author Ann Patchett and the late poet and author Lucy Grealy. The two women met in college and cemented their friendship in graduate school and the years that followed, as both pursued writing careers. Grealy, who in childhood battled cancer that left her without part of her lower jaw, endured ongoing health difficulties and reconstructive surgeries.

Grealy was a needy, all-consuming friend–talented, tortured, and plagued by both addiction and her need for love, even as love surrounded her. Patchett, for her part, longed to be a part of Grealy’s inner circle long before she ever was, and she basked in Lucy’s need for her, as well as their shared goals and talent. The two moved toward success together, and the journey must have felt magical and pre-destined, if not always healthy. As always, I love Patchett’s writing, and listening to her narrate was a pleasure.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Ishmael Beah was a regular 12-year-old boy in Sierra Leone when the war came. He went to school, hung out with friends, and loved to dance and rap in local talent shows. All of that was lost in an instant as the rebels rampaged through villages, killing everyone they found. He found himself on the run. After surviving for months, at times with a small group of boys, at times completely alone, starvation and desperation brought him to a village that seemed safe. Instead, he was pressed into service by the government army, drugged, and trained as a killer. Beah tells his story in a way that is both matter-of-fact and fully cognizant of the innocence that was stolen from him and so many other children. A word of warning: this was so hard to read–at times I struggled to continue, knowing that things were only going to get worse. That it’s a true story, for Beah and for thousands of other children, made it feel important to finish.

Between the World and Me

In this letter to his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses how the United States was built on and by the bodies of black people, and how those bodies continue to be endangered, used, and abused to maintain a system that thrives on their subjugation. Coates recalls recent incidents of police brutality as well as the long history of race and its importance to those in power–“the people who believe themselves to be white.” Powerful, emotional, and filled with brutal, uncomfortable truths that demand to be known and acknowledged.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

In this “artful, informative, and delightful” (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized religion—as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war—and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.

As Hurricane Katrina headed toward New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun never considered leaving. He was used to riding out the storm and keeping watch over his painting business and the properties he and his wife, Kathy, owned. Kathy and the four kids would leave, eventually making their way to Arizona to stay with friends, but Zeitoun stayed. As everyone knows, New Orleans soon turned into a disaster area. Zeitoun was largely isolated from it, staying on the second floor and roof of his home at night and paddling through the nearby neighborhoods by day, feeding dogs and helping people who needed it.

He and a friend are in a home he owns, visiting a tenant, when heavily armed authorities burst in and arrest them all. Thus begins an imprisonment filled with indignities, no standard rights, and accusations of terrorism. It’s an insightful look into one of the only parts of the machine that seemed to run like clockwork during Katrina: arrests and imprisonment.

This book is especially interesting not just for its content, which paints Zeitoun as quirky but noble, but also for its aftermath. Since Katrina and the writing of this book, Zeitoun and Kathy divorced, and he was accused of trying to beat her with a tire iron and then with soliciting a hitman in prison to kill her. He was acquitted of both but later convicted of stalking her. He was recently freed from prison after a deportation order couldn’t be carried out because of the war in Syria.

It’s always interesting to look at the larger story outside of a book, to find out if there are other perspectives or if new events have occurred since the writing–particularly when a person in a nonfiction book is portrayed in a certain way. I believe that most of the story in Zeitoun is probably true, but I also believe that people can be nice to dogs, help out a few neighbors, and still do other horrible things.

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

“One mark of a great book is that it makes you see things in a new way, and Mr. Friedman certainly succeeds in that goal,” the Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote in The New York Times reviewing The World Is Flat in 2005. In this new edition (3.0), Thomas L. Friedman includes fresh stories and insights to help us understand the flattening of the world. Weaving new information into his overall thesis, and answering the questions he has been most frequently asked by parents across the country, this third edition also includes two new chapters–on how to be a political activist and social entrepreneur in a flat world; and on the more troubling question of how to manage our reputations and privacy in a world where we are all becoming publishers and public figures.

A Circle of Quiet

This journal shares fruitful reflections on life and career prompted by the author’s visit to her personal place of retreat near her country home.

Hidden Figures

Set amid the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program.

Before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as ‘Human Computers’, calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts, these ‘colored computers’ used pencil and paper to write the equations that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.

Great nonfiction books aren’t my specialty, so I’m hoping you’ll add your own recommendations in the comments! What are your must-read memoirs and nonfiction books?

Other posts in this series:

• 30 Middle Grade Books for Your Reading Bucket List
• 30 20th Century Classics Written by Women for your Reading Bucket List
• 30 Contemporary Fiction Novels for Your Reading Bucket List
• 30 Historical Fiction Novels for Your Reading Bucket List
• How to Create a Reading Bucket List that You’ll Actually Finish
• 50 Books on My Reading Bucket List

Allison is a dedicated book lover, writer, and lifelong learner with an undeniable passion for books and reading. As the founder of Mind Joggle, she helps busy, overwhelmed women reclaim their mental space and make books a transformative part of their lives. She holds an Ed.M in Technology in Education from Harvard University and a BS in Scientific and Technical Communication from the University of Minnesota.

Privacy Overview

What Is Creative Nonfiction?

By Lee Gutkind

I am often asked: “What is creative nonfiction?” Or, in some cases, “what the hell is creative nonfiction?”  The answer—or answers—can be complicated because creative nonfiction may mean different things to different people, a characteristic that makes this form so elusive and alluring.

On its very baseline creative nonfiction is a literary genre. Some people call it the fourth genre, along with poetry, fiction and drama. And it’s an umbrella term for the many different ways one can write what is called creative nonfiction. Memoir, for example, personal essay, biography, narrative history and long form narrative reportage may all fit under the creative nonfiction umbrella. Recently, as the genre has evolved, there have been offshoots to the genre like speculative nonfiction, auto(biographical) fiction, lyric essay, and the visual essay, to name only a few.

Writers who write creative nonfiction are very different in voice, orientation and purpose. But what they have in common is that they are, in one way or the other, writing true stories that provide information about a variety of subjects, enriched by relevant thoughtful ideas, personal insight, and intimacies about life and the world we live in.  And this scope and variety is exactly what makes creative nonfiction significant and, these days, so incredibly popular.

“Freedom” and “flexibility” are words I like to use when defining creative nonfiction, for the genre invites writers to push boundaries and open doors, offering them the opportunity to use all of the techniques of the fiction writer (or the poet)—dialogue, setting, description, inner point of view (seeing the world through the eyes of the person about whom they are writing)—in order to capture a reader’s attention and enlighten and intrigue them through nonfiction.

There are very few rules for writers of creative nonfiction. You can predict the future, speculate about the past, or imagine what could have happened or what someone might have been thinking, as long as you don’t violate the reader’s trust, and in the process your own credibility. There are, however, limits to the freedom and flexibility that make creative nonfiction so attractive and compelling—legal, ethical and moral issues that are challenging and, in many ways, impossible to clearly define. Freedom and flexibility—and daring—are governed by responsibility, not just to the people about whom we write, but to those who read and publish our work.

Nonfiction itself has had a bad rap in the literary world. For a long time, it was commonly believed that writing nonfiction was generally inferior to the writing of poetry and fiction. “Nonfiction is a pleasant way to walk,” Larry McMurtry once wrote, “but the novel puts one on horseback, and what cowboy, symbolic or real, would walk when he could ride?”

I remember reading this from McMurtry, who had written a great deal of nonfiction, in addition to his many novels and stories, and feeling more than a little annoyed and, at the same time, amused. He had to be joking, I thought. Or maybe he had just fallen off his horse. I pictured the comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who became rich and famous for the line “I get no respect,” which in many ways has been the story of creative nonfiction in a nutshell-up until present day.

The addition of the word “creative” to nonfiction was at first controversial, but it gradually reversed the belief that nonfiction was somehow second class, a cut below poetry and fiction. It liberated all writers, journalists especially, releasing them from longstanding rules and boundaries that had been so restrictive and inhibiting.  For novelists, poets and essayists, “creative” encouraged experimentation and offered new avenues of expression. Scientists, physicians, engineers (Atul Gawande, Hope Jahren, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Henry Petroski, to name just a very few) were intrigued by the notion of being creative and began to write true stories that humanized and revealed the behind-the-scenes intimacies of their professions.  

The interest in true stories motivated and opened doors for others who were not writers by trade to share their life experiences, finding meaning in the process and fulfillment in the connections they forged with readers.

This transition—an awakening to the potential and power of nonfiction that allowed and encouraged creativity—did not happen overnight and was not without resistance and often bitter infighting. Change was difficult for the literary, journalistic and academic communities, steeped in tradition and long resistant to new ideas, to accommodate. Indeed, the resistance in some corners far exceeded the scale of the change itself.  The change was hardly drastic and was not really, when one looks back over the history of nonfiction, much of a change at all. Writers had been writing nonfiction that was creative and imaginative for centuries, familiar and famous names you will recognize–Daniel Defoe, George Orwell, Charles Dickens and many others—for centuries. The change, the adjustment that it precipitated, had much more to do with the approach or attitude toward nonfiction rather than its content and, of course, the idea that creative and nonfiction were not mutually exclusive. That change in approach and attitude is ongoing. The scope of nonfiction today, most especially what we call creative nonfiction, continues to evolve, informing and inspiring readers with stories that are true, compelling, revealing and always surprising.

“What is Creative Nonfiction” has been adapted from Lee Gutkind’s new book, The Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting: How a Bunch of Rabble-Rousers, Outsiders and Ne’er-do-wells Created Creative Nonfiction,  to be published later this year by Yale University Press.

More About the Genre

Get started with the best CNF has to offer.

Brian Broome

Brenda Miller

Regeneration

Jennifer Lunden

The Butterfly Effect

Ruthann Robson

Notes from a Difficult Case

Email newsletter.

The best of Creative Nonfiction in your inbox. Sign up to stay up-to-date on genre-related news and updates from the Creative Nonfiction Foundation.

Explore Creative Nonfiction

Can’t get enough? Browse 25 years of archives.

View by Issue

View by Type

View by Topic

About Lee Gutkind

Lee Gutkind is the author and editor of more than thirty books, including  You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: The Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction–from Memoir to Literary Journalism and Everything in Between ,  Almost Human: Making Robots Think, The Best Seat in Baseball: But You Have to Stand, Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather,  and the award-winning , Many Sleepless Nights: The World of Organ Transplantation.

Lee's Latest Book

My Last Eight Thousand Days

This revealing, candid, and vivid portrait of one man’s view of aging written by the man who played a crucial role in establishing literary, narrative nonfiction in the marketplace and in the academy, examines male aging in a way we’ve not seen before.

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

The Personal Memoir

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

These resources discuss some terms and techniques that are useful to the beginning and intermediate creative nonfiction writer, and to instructors who are teaching creative nonfiction at these levels. The distinction between beginning and intermediate writing is provided for both students and instructors, and numerous sources are listed for more information about creative nonfiction tools and how to use them. A sample assignment sheet is also provided for instructors.

Because the personal memoir is more demanding than the personal essay, for both writer and reader, it doesn’t fit into introductory courses as well as the personal essay. An intermediate level course is a good place to introduce the memoir. However, if the instructor takes the time to explain and introduce the memoir form, it can be adapted for introductory courses.

Difference Between the Personal Essay and the Memoir

While the personal essay can be about almost anything, the memoir tends to discuss past events. Memoir is similar to the personal essay, except that the memoir tends to focus more on striking or life-changing events. The personal essay can be a relatively light reflection about what’s going on in your life right now.

Where the personal essay explores, free from any need to interpret, the memoir interprets, analyzes, and seeks the deeper meaning beneath the surface experience of particular events. The memoir continually asks the following questions:

• Why was this event of particular significance?
• What did it mean?
• Why is it important?

In this sense, the memoir is heavier than the personal essay, and it mines the past to shed light on the present. The memoir seeks to make sense of an individual life. The questions that are left unanswered in Wole Soyinka’s essay from the personal essay resource, Why do I Fast? are answered in the memoir.

Generating Ideas for Personal Memoirs

Moore’s memoir exercise from The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction is useful in both beginning and intermediate courses:

“Make a list of six to ten events or circumstances in your own life, or the lives of those very close to you, that still provoke your curiosity. Mine your own life for the events and circumstances that still raise questions in your mind. Once you have the list (and this list should be private - don’t share it with others - and don’t hold back because you think someone else will be looking), pick one of the questions on the list that you are willing to explore.“

The potential questions Moore asks in this exercise are meant to be answered in the memoir. While the memoir tries to make sense of experience, it also shares something in common with the personal essay - the exploration of the question, and the process of trying to arrive at an answer, is at least as important as the answer or resolution you may arrive at.

Writing the memoir is not a simple Q & A with yourself; rather, the complicated process of trying to seek the answers is what makes the memoir engaging to write, and read. Here is an example from Carlos Fuentes’ How I Started to Write :

Fuentes is constantly questioning and answering, interpreting and analyzing his experience, trying to make sense of why and how he did what he did in order to become a writer. He seeks answers and tries to make sense of his life by interpreting his own experience, the cultural and political life of his time, the meaning of language and literary influence, and by stepping over imagined nationalist borders.

Subscribe to our newsletter

100 short memoir examples - narrative personal essays, scars by david owen, these precious days by ann patchett, the same river twice by david quammen, 50 more great articles about life, after life by joan didion, now we are five by david sedaris, feet in smoke by john jeremiah sullivan, when things go missing by kathryn schulz, 25 more great articles about death.

Love and Relationships

True love by haruki murakami, dating online by emily witt, no labels, no drama by jordana narin, the worst friend date i ever had by samantha irby, 50 more great articles about love and relationships, my first time, twice by ariel levy, tragedy averted. minimal gagging. by lidia yuknavitch, a girl's guide to sexual purity by carmen maria machado, deeply, truly (but not physically) in love by lauren slater, 50 more great articles about sex, peculiar benefits by roxane gay, thanksgiving in mongolia by ariel levy, long day's journey by elizabeth gilbert, trapped by aron ralston, the kingdom of the lotus by patrick symmes, 50 more great articles about travel, ultimate glory by dave gessner, skating home backward by bill vaughn, off diamond head by william finnegan, tennis, trigonometry, tornadoes by david foster wallace, 50 more great articles about sport.

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

How to slowly kill yourself and others in america by kiese laymon, the price of black ambition by roxane gay, 25 more great essays about race, the comfort zone by jonathan franzen, on being an only child by geoff dyer, a raccoon of my own by lauren slater, my dad tried to kill me with an alligator by harrison scott key, difficult girl by lena dunham, seventeen by steve edwards, age appropriate by jen doll, richard by allie brosh, 50 more great articles about growing up, lost in the meritocracy by walter kirn, dumb kids' class by mark bowden, fragments from an education by christopher hitchens, 20 more great articles about education, having children, joy by zadie smith, channel b by megan stielstra, a birth story by meaghan o'connell, i was pregnant, and then i wasn't by laura turner, 10 more great articles about having children.

Patient by Rachel Riederer

The empathy exams by leslie jamison, 50 more great articles about health, mental illness, adventures in depression by allie brosh, darkness visible by william styron, insane after coronavirus by patricia lockwood, 20 more great articles about mental health, explicit violence by lidia yuknavitch, heroin/e by cheryl strayed, me & my monkey by anonymous, me and my girls by david carr, my addicted son by david sheff, how i let drinking take over my life by william leith, 10 more great articles about addiction, autobiography of a body by lucy grealy, a few words about breasts by nora ephron, a thin line between mother and daughter by jennifer egan, the broken country by molly mccully, the trash heap has spoken by carmen maria machado, saying goodbye to my chest by naomi gordon-loebl, the onset by my ngoc to, 20 more great articles about body image, see also..., 150 great articles and essays.

The Unspeakable Things Between Our Bellies by Lidia Yuknavitch

Woven by lidia yuknavitch, girl by alexander chee, pause by mary ruefle, lost cat by mary gaitskill, three by david sedaris, my life as an undocumented immigrant by jose antonio vargas, been down so long it looks like debt to me by m.h. miller, lucky girl by bridget potter, goodbye to all that by joan didion, my misspent youth by meghan daum, lost and found by colson whitehead, night-shifting for the hip fleet by mark jacobson, 25 more great articles about new york, the muse of coyote ugly saloon by elizabeth gilbert, quitting the paint factory by mark slouka, the loading dock manifesto by john hyduk, 40 more great articles about work, the real heroes are dead by james b. stewart, remains of the day by mary lee hannell, 10 more great articles about 9/11.

Book-Length Memoirs

Slouching towards bethlehem by joan didion, me talk pretty one day by david sedaris, just kids by patti smith, the chronology of water by lidia yuknavitch, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius by dave eggers, the glass castle by jeannette walls, brain on fire by susannah cahalan, irritable hearts by mac mcclelland, hunger by roxane gay, a sliver of light by shane bauer, joshua fattal and sarah shourd, 100 more great nonfiction books.

About The Electric Typewriter We search the net to bring you the best nonfiction, articles, essays and journalism

How to Write a Query Letter: Nonfiction and Memoir

This post is regularly updated with new information.

For years, I’ve offered a lengthy guide on how to write a query letter for a novel . When you’re pitching fiction to an agent or publisher through a query letter, your ultimate goal is to get your manuscript read. Therefore, the query is a sales piece, and it’s all about the art of seduction.

A query letter for a nonfiction book isn’t all that different from a fiction query: you’re still trying to get an agent or editor interested in looking at your work, but that may mean a book proposal and sample chapters, rather than the full manuscript. ( Nonfiction is often sold on the basis of a proposal .)

Unfortunately, there’s a bit of complication when querying a nonfiction project; it’s not as straightforward and formula-driven as querying a novel. With a novel, you’re always trying to craft the perfect hook that encapsulates the essence of your protagonist and the conflict—and it doesn’t matter what type of novel it is. All novels are narratives with character, plot, setting, conflict, and resolutions (of some kind).

With nonfiction, you may be pitching:

• a narrative about yourself (memoir)
• a narrative about someone else (biography)
• a narrative about some thing (broadly called narrative nonfiction; think Seabiscuit )
• a prescriptive book (a book that helps the reader learn or do something better, such as a how-to, self-help or business book)
• a reference book
• an illustrated book

… and so on.

There isn’t a single formula that can cover all these categories or types of books. But for our purposes, to provide some kind of roadmap, we’ll split up nonfiction queries into two types:

• Narrative-driven nonfiction (including memoir, biography, and narrative nonfiction)
• Information-driven nonfiction

Before you begin the query process: you should have a finished and polished book proposal ready to go , which should include at least one sample chapter, if not more.   It should be the best you can make it.

It’s also important that prospective authors give some thought to their author platform, or their ability to market and promote their book to an existing audience they can reach, without the publisher’s help, through online or offline activities. I discuss platform here.  Your query and book proposal not only have to present an effective argument for why your book should exist, but also should reflect your authority and platform as a book author. (This is  not the case for novelists.)

Query Letter Elements: Narrative-Driven Nonfiction

The query for this type of nonfiction may end up looking very similar to a novel query, especially if you’re writing a memoir. Include these elements, in no particular order (except the closing):

• Personalization: where you customize the letter for the recipient
• What you’re selling: genre/category, anticipated word count, title/subtitle
• Hook: a compelling description of the narrative
• Target readership: who will buy this book and why? (it  cannot be everyone and anyone)
• Your bio, platform and credentials to write the book
• Thank you and closing

Query Letter Elements: Information-Driven Nonfiction

If you’ve written a book proposal (and you probably should), then your query letter is often a more condensed version of your book proposal’s overview or summary—those first 500 words (or first one to three proposal pages) should summarize the most important and salable qualities of your book. Your query and your proposal overview should both answer three questions: (1) So what? Why is this book unique, special or needed in the current marketplace? (2) Who cares? Who is the identifiable and specific audience who will spend $20 on this book? (3) Who are you? Why are you the best author for this book—what are your platform and credentials? It’s okay if your query and proposal include the same or similar language.

Whether or not you’re starting from scratch, include these elements, in no particular order (except the closing):

• What makes your book unique—or its unique selling proposition

What’s in the very first paragraph of the query?

Put your best foot forward—lead with your strongest selling point. Examples:

• Personalization. Let’s say you’ve been vouched for or referred by an existing client of the agent’s—or if you’re querying a publisher, you might be referred by one of their authors. Put that first! Or maybe you heard the agent/editor speak at a conference or you read something they wrote that indicates they’re a good fit for your work. Mention it.
• Hook.  If you have confidence about the compelling nature of your narrative, start with that. Example: “When I was eighteen years old, I moved from my hometown in Oregon (population: 7,500) to live with the most powerful man in Hollywood and be a nanny to his three children.” ( See the full query here. )
• Platform or credentials.  If your blog receives 100,000 visits a month, if you have an email newsletter of 20,000 readers who can’t wait to receive your updates, or if you’re a YouTube star, then you mention your powerful reach up-front. If you’re a previously published author, experienced professional, or highly regarded authority in your field, you can start with that. Example: “As the former CEO of three successful startups …”
• Target readership.  If your book will address a timely or emerging demographic, or if it solves the problems of a specific audience, then you can open by discussing the compelling market for the book: “Between 2000 and 2013, births by women ages 50 to 54 rose by more than 165 percent. This book tells the story of [or tackles the problems of] …”

The Most Difficult Challenge for Narrative Nonfiction: Pitching a High-Quality Story for a Big Enough Target Audience

For most narrative-driven nonfiction, the writing and storytelling matters as much as it would for a novel, and your hook plays an important role in conveying the quality of the story. But the publisher has to envision a sizable audience for that story, too. It’s instructive to look at the rejections that Rebecca Skloot collected for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks , now an award-winning work of narrative nonfiction. Skloot had trouble convincing editors that her story was marketable to a wide audience. Here’s what those rejection letters said:

• “She has done a wonderful job presenting the personal and scientific dimensions of this unusual and often eerie story. Unfortunately in the end I really see this as an extended magazine article, and not a full book.”
• “Skloot is a first rate stylist and explainer, so I’m sorry to say I can’t make an offer. I believe her story, though it throws a bright light on issues of race and science, is better suited to an article than book length.”
• “I’m sorry to say that I’m not entirely confident that the approach taken here to tell us the story is the kind of treatment which will reach the broad nonfiction readership that we’re looking for.”
• “Though the proposal breaches a timely and interesting topic in light of renewed interest in genetic research, it does not seem to be right for [our] list.”
• “She’s a graceful writer with a real talent for presenting scientific material in a lucid and very human way. That said, though, I have to admit I can’t quite imagine how a book on this chapter in science might reach more than a very limited audience. To me, the real heart of the story is somehow too short-lived to create a strong sense of narrative tension, and its repercussions, I think, may not spark the interest of a wide enough readership for [our] list.”
• “I think this is an amazing story and perhaps an important one to be told. What I’m less certain about is the eventual angle that Skloot will be telling it from. It is entirely clear that she is passionate about her subject matter; however, until more of the story unfolds, I remain uncertain of the power of the narrative.”

Some of the more common rejections you’ll encounter: this book should be a magazine article, the book’s audience is too small, or the story or approach is not distinctive or unique enough.

Writing a Narrative-Driven Hook That’s Not a Tired Storyline

Whether you’re writing memoir or nonfiction narrative, you need to boil down your story to these three key elements:

• Protagonist and her conflict
• The choices the protagonist has to make (the stakes)

If you’re writing a memoir, then write the hook in first person—meaning you are the protagonist.

What does sizzle mean? It’s that thing that sets your work apart from all others in the genre, that makes your story stand out, that makes it uniquely yours. Sizzle means: this idea isn’t tired and hasn’t been done a million times before. When it comes to memoir, there are a lot of tired storylines out there. In this agent roundtable on memoir in Writer’s Digest in 2010 , you can get a feel for what makes agents’ eyes glaze over:

• “On some days it seems as though every therapist in the country who is dealing with addicts of one kind or another has told them to journal their recovery and then turn it into a book. Quitting booze or drugs is a good thing to do, but it isn’t the triumph of the human spirit.”
• “I’m sick of dysfunctional family stories, but I’m a big fan of memoirs by people who have lived lives the rest of us only dream of.”
• “Though books by cancer and disease survivors are prevalent, I find them very tough to sell to publishers unless the survivor has some kind of name recognition.”
• “I try to steer [writers] away from, ‘I was born in a big/small town, and I liked listening to punk music, and I hated my mother and blahdee blahda blah blah.'”

Sometimes great hooks can be botched because there is no life, voice, or personality in them. Sometimes so-so hooks can be taken to the next level because they convey a liveliness or personality that is seductive. You want to be one of those seductive writers, of course.

The Most Difficult Challenge for Information-Based Nonfiction: Having a Sufficient Platform

You may have a killer concept or method to share with the world, but for information-based nonfiction, unless you have platform muscle, it’s unlikely that New York publishers will be interested in your book. Platform basically equates to visibility, or the ability to sell books. You should have visibility to the specific target audience you expect to buy your book. And it’s not enough to  say you have visibility—you have to be able to point to it, quantify it, and show how you’re ready to lift off into the stratosphere of book sales.

A secondary challenge is having a unique enough selling proposition to set your book apart from the competition. You’re likely entering a crowded field, and especially if your platform is on the weaker side, you need to nail the concept and make it irresistible.

So how do you do this?

It’s very powerful to claim that your book will be the first and only book to do X. Or you could discuss how your book offers a compelling solution to a problem faced by your target audience. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What special features or content does your book offer?
• What special research or investigation does your book include that can be found nowhere else?
• What proven systems, methods, secrets, or lessons do you share?
• How will readers benefit from your book? How will their lives change for the better?

How to Describe a Meaningful Target Audience

Most authors have trouble identifying their target audience—and the most common sin is to go way too broad. Here are two examples that miss the point entirely:

• “Anyone who has children will be interested in this parenting book.” Really? Will parents of two-year-olds and parents of twenty-year-olds both be interested? Will rich parents and lower-class parents both be interested? Will urban and rural parents both be interested?
• “Anyone who’s had a friend or family member with cancer will be interested in this book.” That probably describes nearly every person in the United States—this is not a meaningful target audience.

You should also avoid citing meaningless statistics, such as “Google returns more than 152 million search results for the term climate change ” or “Amazon lists more than 10,000 titles in the environmental science category.” Neither of these figures indicate or describe the target audience for your work.

Here are examples of a meaningful target audience:

• This book targets the 2 million corporate employees who quit their jobs  every month .
• This book targets degree-seeking students in the more than 500 creative writing programs in the United States, as well as those who have graduated within the last five years.

If you’re wondering if this is like a case of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, yes. Even inside publishing houses, there’s always disagreement about the ideal target audience for a book and its size.

Sometimes it can be helpful to point to other titles similar to your own, or competitive titles, to give an idea of the target audience you’re after. Just be careful: mentioning the latest New York Times bestseller or the latest book to be made into a movie won’t be very helpful. (Agents quickly tired of memoirs being pitched as the next  Eat, Pray, Love or  Wild .)

What You Should Mention in Your Bio

• Publication credits or publishing history—especially if you’ve previously published any part of the work at a major website, magazine, or literary journal. (Your own site does not count unless traffic is in the six figures.) Be specific about your credits for this to be meaningful. Don’t say you’ve been published “in a variety of journals.” You might as well be unpublished if you don’t want to name them.
• Any professional background or experience that’s relevant to the content of the book and your authority to write it
• Any professional recognition or awards you’ve received—or positions that you hold—that give you visibility to influencers or to your readership
• Relevant national or mainstream media attention you’ve received.
• Any ongoing gigs that put you in front of the target audience (columns, podcasts, radio/TV shows, and so on)
• The size of your current audience through online or offline media.
• Any major personalities or influencers who have agreed to write a foreword or blurb your book

Many authors ask if they should mention any previously self-published work in the query. That’s totally up to you. Sooner or later this information will have to come out, so it’s usually just a matter of timing. Lots of people have done it, and it doesn’t hurt your chances. If you do mention it, it’s best if you’re proud of your efforts and are ready to discuss your success (or failure) in doing it. If you consider it a mistake or irrelevant to the project at hand, leave it out, and understand it may come up later.

Do not make the mistake of thinking your self-publishing credits make you somehow more desirable as an author—unless you have really incredible sales success, in which case, mention the sales numbers of your book and how long it’s been on sale.

Other Tips for Your Query Letter

• The appropriate length for a nonfiction query is somewhere between 1 and 1.5 pages, single spaced. Usually the shorter, the better. If you can send the book proposal along with the query, you should. In such cases, the query really ends up being a cover letter and doesn’t have to be labored over that much. (The good news: just about every agent/editor will flip through a book proposal if it’s in front of them.)
• If your book’s estimated word count is much higher than 100,000, you may be courting rejection before an agent has read a word of your proposal or manuscript. Eighty thousand words is the industry standard for a narrative nonfiction work. Information-based nonfiction varies tremendously, but still, high word counts will raise a red flag for most publishers and agents.
• You don’t have to state that you are simultaneously querying. In today’s environment, everyone assumes this. I do not recommend exclusive queries; send queries out in batches of three to five—or more, if you’re confident in your query quality.
• Don’t mention your “history” with the work (e.g., how many agents you’ve queried, or how many near misses you’ve suffered, or how many compliments you’ve received on the work from others).
• Resist the temptation to editorialize. Don’t directly comment on the quality of your work. Your query should show what a good writer you are, rather than telling or emphasizing what a good writer you are. Editorializing is whenever you proclaim how much the agent will love the work, or how exciting it is, or how it’s going to be a bestseller if only someone would give it a chance, or how much your kids enjoy it, or how much the world needs this work. On the flip side: don’t criticize yourself, or the quality of the work, in the letter.
• There’s no need to go into great detail about when and how you’re available. Simply put at the bottom of your query (unless using letterhead) your phone number and e-mail address. Include a self-addressed stamped envelope for snail mail queries.
• Do not introduce the idea of an in-person meeting with the agent or editor. Don’t say you’ll be visiting their city soon, and ask if they’d like to meet for coffee. The only possible exception to this is if you know you’ll hear them speak at an upcoming conference—but don’t ask for a meeting. Just say you look forward to hearing them speak. Use the conference’s official channels to set up an appointment if any are available.
• Email queries can lead to faster response times. However, I often hear writers complain that they never receive a response. (Sometimes silence is the new rejection.) This is a phenomenon that (regrettably) must be accepted. Send one follow-up to inquire, but don’t keep sending emails to ascertain if your emailed query was received.
• While you should list your website or blog as part of your contact info, there’s almost never any need to tell agents in the body of the query to visit your website for more info. Most of them will Google you anyway and check out your online presence to get a sense of how you might be to work with and if you have a meaningful platform.

Looking for query letter examples?

I keep a list of example query letters at my book-related site, The Business of Being a Writer .

How to Identify Agents to Query

• PublishersMarketplace  (for in-depth info on agents and publishing deals, costs $25/month)
• Don’t forget to look at agency websites to help you customize your queries and submissions for each agent appropriate for your work

Jane Friedman has spent nearly 25 years working in the book publishing industry, with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of The Hot Sheet , the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2023. Her latest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal. In addition to serving on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund, she works with organizations such as The Authors Guild to bring transparency to the business of publishing.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

[…] Learn how to pitch your nonfiction book to agents and publishers—whether you're writing memoir, narrative nonfiction, or prescriptive nonfiction.  […]

[…] woman is a wealth of information for writers. Today’s post is a super helpful breakdown on how to write query letters for nonfiction. Check it […]

[…] The Complete Guide to Query Letters: Nonfiction Books (Jane Friedman) For years, I’ve offered a lengthy guide on how to write a query letter for a novel. When you’re pitching fiction to an agent or publisher through a query letter, your ultimate goal is to get your manuscript read. Therefore, the query is a sales piece, and it’s all about the art of seduction. A query letter for a nonfiction book isn’t all that different from a fiction query: you’re still trying to get an agent or editor interested in looking at your work, but that may mean a book proposal and sample chapters, rather than the full manuscript. […]

[…] https://janefriedman.com/the-complete-guide-to-query-letters-nonfiction/ […]

[…] The Complete Guide to Query Letters: Nonfiction Books (Jane Friedman) For years, I’ve offered a lengthy guide on how to write a query letter for a novel. When you’re pitching fiction to an agent or publisher through a query letter, your ultimate goal is to get your manuscript read. Therefore, the query is a sales piece, and it’s all about the art of seduction. A query letter for a nonfiction book isn’t all that different from a fiction query: you’re still trying to get an agent or editor interested in looking at your work, but that may mean a book proposal and sample chapters, rather than the full manuscript. […]

Thanks Jane, love the advice!

Thanks for this article Jane. I am trying to get an agent for my memoir with only rejections to show for my efforts so far. Reading your article has told me that I’m doing something right with my query, although the book’s description needs more sizzle. I always find your articles insightful and helpful.

Thanks, Brian!

[…] The Complete Guide to Query Letters: Nonfiction Books – January 5, 2016 […]

Thank you for the comprehensive explanations

What about when you are writing a book based on interviews given by subject matter experts? People who have been there and done that and are successful thought leaders in their industries. Do you have to be a subject matter expert also or have achieved the level of success that your interviewees have in order to write the book?

No, you don’t need to have achieved the same level of success as your interviewees, but you still need a platform, discussed here: https://janefriedman.com/author-platform-definition/ – one example would be SCHOOL OF GREATNESS by Lewis Howes

Thank you for the reply! I see what you mean and the example was very helpful in adding clarity.

The Best (and Most Anticipated) Nonfiction Books of 2024, So Far

Here’s what memoirs, histories, and essay collections we’re indulging in this spring.

Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

Truth-swallowing can too often taste of forced medicine. Where the most successful nonfiction triumphs is in its ability to instruct, encourage, and demand without spoon-feeding. Getting to read and reward this year’s best nonfiction, then, is as much a treat as a lesson. I can’t pretend to be as intelligent, empathetic, self-knowledgeable, or even as well-read as many of the authors on this list. But appreciating the results of their labors is a more-than-sufficient consolation.

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka

There’s a lot to ponder in the latest project from New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka, who elegantly argues that algorithms have eroded—if not erased—the essential development of personal taste. As Chayka puts forth in Filterworld , the age of flawed-but-fulfilling human cultural curation has given way to the sanitization of Spotify’s so-called “Discover” playlists, or of Netflix’s Emily in Paris, or of subway tile and shiplap . There’s perhaps an old-school sanctimony to this criticism that some readers might chafe against. But there’s also a very real and alarming truth to Chayka’s insights, assembled alongside interviews and examples that span decades, mediums, and genres under the giant umbrella we call “culture.” Filterworld is the kind of book worth wrestling with, critiquing, and absorbing deeply—the antithesis of mindless consumption.

American Girls: One Woman's Journey Into the Islamic State and Her Sister's Fight to Bring Her Home by Jessica Roy

In 2019, former ELLE digital director Jessica Roy published a story about the Sally sisters , two American women who grew up in the same Jehovah’s Witness family and married a pair of brothers—but only one of those sisters ended up in Syria, her husband fighting on behalf of ISIS. American Girls , Roy’s nonfiction debut, expands upon that story of sibling love, sibling rivalry, abuse and extremism, adding reams of reporting to create a riveting tale that treats its subjects with true empathy while never flinching from the reality of their choices.

Leonor: The Story of a Lost Childhood by Paula Delgado-Kling

In this small but gutting work of memoir-meets-biography, Colombian journalist Paula Delgado-King chronicles two lives that intersect in violence: hers, and that of Leonor, a Colombian child solider who was beckoned into the guerilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) only to endure years of death and abuse. Over the course of 19 years, Delgago-King followed Leonor through her recruitment into FARC; her sexual slavery to a man decades her senior; her eventual escape; and her rehabilitation. The author’s resulting account is visceral, a clear-eyed account of the utterly human impact wrought by war.

Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum by Antonia Hylton

A meticulous work of research and commitment, Antonia Hylton’s Madness takes readers deep inside the nearly century-old history of Maryland’s Crownsville State Hospital, one of the only segregated mental asylums with records—and a campus—that remain to this day. Featuring interviews with both former Crownsville staff and family members of those who lived there, Madness is a radically complex work of historical study, etching the intersections of race, mental health, criminal justice, public health, memory, and the essential quest for human dignity.

Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections by Emily Nagoski

Out January 30.

Emily Nagoski’s bestselling Come As You Are opened up a generations-wide conversation about women and their relationship with sex: why some love it, why some hate it, and why it can feel so impossible to find help or answers in either camp. In Come Together , Nagoski returns to the subject with a renewed focus on pleasure—and why it is ultimately so much more pivotal for long-term sexual relationships than spontaneity or frequency. This is not only an accessible, gentle-hearted guide to a still-taboo topic; it’s a fascinating exploration of how our most intimate connections can not just endure but thrive.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer

A remarkable volume—its 500-page length itself underscoring the author’s commitment to the complexity of the problem—Jonathan Blitzer’s Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here tracks the history of the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border through the intimate accounts of those who’ve lived it. In painstaking detail, Blitzer compiles the history of the U.S.’s involvement in Central America, and illustrates how foreign and immigration policies have irrevocably altered human lives—as well as tying them to one another. “Immigrants have a way of changing two places at once: their new homes and their old ones,” Blitzer writes. “Rather than cleaving apart the worlds of the U.S., El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the Americans were irrevocably binding them together.”

How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir by Shayla Lawson

Out February 6.

“I used to say taking a trip was just a coping mechanism,” writes Shayla Lawson in their travel-memoir-in-essays How to Live Free in a Dangerous World . “I know better now; it’s my way of mapping the Earth, so I know there’s something to come back to.” In stream-of-consciousness prose, the This Is Major author guides the reader through an enthralling journey across Zimbabwe, Japan, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Bermuda, and beyond, using each location as the touchstone for their essays exploring how (and why) race, gender, grief, sexuality, beauty, and autonomy impact their experience of a land and its people. There’s a real courage and generosity to Lawson’s work; readers will find much here to embolden their own self-exploration.

Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker

There’s no end to the arguments for “why art matters,” but in our era of ephemeral imagery and mass-produced decor, there is enormous wisdom to be gleaned from Get the Picture , Bianca Bosker’s insider account of art-world infatuation. In this new work of nonfiction, readers have the pleasure of following the Cork Dork author as she embeds herself amongst the gallerists, collectors, painters, critics, and performers who fill today’s contemporary scene. There, they teach her (and us) what makes art art— and why that question’s worth asking in an increasingly fractured world.

Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

A profoundly unusual, experimental, yet engrossing work of not-quite-memoir, Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries is exactly what its title promises: The book comprises a decade of the author’s personal diaries, the sentences copied and pasted into alphabetical order. Each chapter begins with a new letter, all the accumulated sentences starting with “A”, then “B,” and so forth. The resulting effect is all but certain to repel some readers who crave a more linear storyline, but for those who can understand her ambition beyond the form, settling into the rhythm of Heti’s poetic observations gives way to a rich narrative reward.

Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon

Out February 20.

“Even now, I can taste my own history,” writes Chantha Nguon in her gorgeous Slow Noodles . “One occupying force tried to erase it all.” In this deeply personal memoir, Nguon guides us through her life as a Cambodian refugee from the Khmer Rouge; her escapes to Vietnam and Thailand; the loss of all those she loved and held dear; and the foods that kept her heritage—and her story—ultimately intact. Interwoven with recipes and lists of ingredients, Nguon’s heart-rending writing reinforces the joy and agony of her core thesis: “The past never goes away.”

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison

The first time I stumbled upon a Leslie Jamison essay on (the platform formerly known as) Twitter, I was transfixed; I stayed in bed late into the morning as I clicked through her work, swallowing paragraphs like Skittles. But, of course, Jamison’s work is so much more satisfying than candy, and her new memoir, Splinters , is Jamison operating at the height of her talents. A tale of Jamison’s early motherhood and the end of her marriage, the book is unshrinking, nuanced, radiant, and so wondrously honest—a referendum on the splintered identities that complicate and comprise the artist, the wife, the mother, the woman.

The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider by Michiko Kakutani

The former chief book critic of the New York Times , Michiko Kakutani is not only an invaluable literary denizen, but also a brilliant observer of how politics and culture disrupt the mechanics of power and influence. In The Great Wave , she turns our attention toward global instability as epitomized by figures such as Donald Trump and watershed moments such as the creation of AI. In the midst of these numerous case studies, she argues for how our deeply interconnected world might better weather the competing crises that threaten to submerge us, should we not choose to better understand them.

Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg

From the author of the now-ubiquitous The Power of Habit arrives Supercommunicators , a head-first study of the tools that make conversations actually work . Charles Duhigg makes the case that every chat is really about one of three inquiries (“What’s this about?” “How do we feel?” or “Who are we?”) and knowing one from another is the key to real connection. Executives and professional-speaker types are sure to glom on to this sort of work, but my hope is that other, less business-oriented motives might be satisfied by the logic this volume imbues.

Whiskey Tender by Deborah Jackson Taffa

Out February 27.

“Tell me your favorite childhood memory, and I’ll tell you who you are,” or so writes Deborah Jackson Taffa in Whiskey Tender , her memoir of assimilation and separation as a mixed-tribe Native woman raised in the shadow of a specific portrait of the American Dream. As a descendant of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe, Taffa illustrates her childhood in New Mexico while threading through the histories of her parents and grandparents, themselves forever altered by Indian boarding schools, government relocation, prison systems, and the “erasure of [our] own people.” Taffa’s is a story of immense and reverent heart, told with precise and pure skill.

Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley

With its chapters organized by their position in the infamous five stages of grief, Sloane Crosley’s Grief is For People is at times bracingly funny, then abruptly sober. The effect is less like whiplash than recognition; anyone who has lost or grieved understands the way these emotions crash into each other without warning. Crosley makes excellent use of this reality in Grief is For People , as she weaves between two wrenching losses in her own life: the death of her dear friend Russell Perreault, and the robbery of her apartment. Crosley’s resulting story—short but powerful—is as difficult and precious and singular as grief itself.

American Negra by Natasha S. Alford

In American Negra , theGrio and CNN journalist Natasha S. Alford turns toward her own story, tracing the contours of her childhood in Syracuse, New York, as she came to understand the ways her Afro-Latino background built her—and set her apart. As the memoir follows Alford’s coming-of-age from Syracuse to Harvard University, then abroad and, later, across the U.S., the author highlights how she learned to embrace the cornerstones of intersectionality, in spite of her country’s many efforts to encourage the opposite.

The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul

Out March 5.

A raw and assured account by one of the most famous queer icons of our era, RuPaul’s memoir, The House of Hidden Meanings , promises readers arms-wide-open access to the drag queen before Drag Race . Detailing his childhood in California, his come-up in the drag scene, his own intimate love story, and his quest for living proudly in the face of unceasing condemnation, The House of Hidden Meanings is easily one of the most intriguing celebrity projects of the year.

Here After by Amy Lin

Here After reads like poetry: Its tiny, mere-sentences-long chapters only serve to strengthen its elegiac, ferocious impact. I was sobbing within minutes of opening this book. But I implore readers not to avoid the heavy subject matter; they will find in Amy Lin’s memoir such a profound and complex gift: the truth of her devotion to her husband, Kurtis, and the reality of her pain when he died suddenly, with neither platitudes nor hyperbole. This book is a little wonder—a clear, utterly courageous act of love.

Thunder Song by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe

Red Paint author and poet Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe returns this spring with a rhythmic memoir-in-essays called Thunder Song , following the beats of her upbringing as a queer Coast Salish woman entrenched in communities—the punk and music scenes, in particular—that did not always reflect or respect her. Blending beautiful family history with her own personal memories, LaPointe’s writing is a ballad against amnesia, and a call to action for healing, for decolonization, for hope.

Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against "The Apocalypse" by Emily Raboteau

Out March 12.

In Emily Raboteau’s Lessons For Survival , the author (and novelist, essayist, professor, and street photographer) tells us her framework for the book is modeled loosely after one of her mother’s quilts: “pieced together out of love by a parent who wants her children to inherit a world where life is sustainable.” The essays that follow are meditations and reports on motherhood in the midst of compounding crises, whether climate change or war or racism or mental health. Through stories and photographs drawn from her own life and her studies abroad, Raboteau grounds the audience in the beauty—and resilience—of nature.

What to Read in 2024

Shelf Life: Téa Obreht

Carissa Broadbent On the Next 'Crowns of Nyaxia'

The Best Mystery and Thriller Books of 2024

Shelf Life: Cathleen Schine

Xochitl Gonzalez on 'Anita de Monte'

Shelf Life: Xochitl Gonzalez

Black Jane Austen Fans Have Never Had It Better

With 'Dead Weight,' Emmeline Clein Addresses ED

Shelf Life: Tommy Orange

Shelf Life: Leslie Jamison

Dr. Akilah Cadet on Her Major Depressive Disorder

Submissions

Hippocampus wants to publish and promote your truth., what do we publish in our magazine.

During our regular submissions periods we accept previously unpublished work in the following categories:

• Personal Essays & Memoir Excerpts, max 4,000 words. Submit here (we reopen 3/1) .
• Flash Creative Nonfiction, max 800 words. Submit here (we reopen 3/1) .

(You can also view our main Hippocampus Magazine Submittable landing page here, which will highlight all current opportunities, including sub-free periods in December.)

Reviews, interviews, craft articles, and writing life articles by invitation.

What we publish elsewhere:

• Memoirs, Essay Collections, Craft Books: View our Books by Hippocampus manuscript submission guidelines .
• Anthologies: Open anthology calls are also listed at our Books by Hippocampus submissions page .

When can I submit to Hippocampus Magazine?

We have two regular submission periods per year:

• March 1 through May 31
• Additionally, our 2024 submission-fee free period is Dec. 1–14, 2024

Occasionally, we may open a call for special theme issues and other magazine-related projects.

What are we looking for in creative nonfiction submissions?

True tales from your life. Honesty that possesses both the situation AND the story. Intensely personal experiences that reflect universal truths about what it means to be human. Firsthand accounts from the FULL spectrum of humanity – folx from the LGBTQIA+ community, Black writers, Indigenous writers, and writers of Color, disabled writers, writers of all genders, backgrounds, experiences, lifestyles, and identities.

What isn’t right for us?

Fiction, poetry, academic works, editorials, social/political commentary, satire, criticism. Timely pieces responding to a current event. Pieces that require special formatting. Pieces that include footnotes. Pitches. Pieces that are prescriptive or come with a lesson. Pieces that undermine, judge, marginalize, or “other” the voices and experiences of different individuals or communities.

What will you get out of publishing with us? 

Hippocampus runs on volunteer energy, submission fees, and generous support from our Friends . We also believe that writing should be valued, and the labor of writers should be compensated.

We offer a $40 honorarium to authors who publish Memoir Excerpts, Personal Essays, and Flash Nonfiction with us. Honoraria are paid via PayPal within about 90 days of publication.

Writers who contribute to our Book Reviews, Interviews, Craft Column, and Writing Life Column are considered volunteer contributors and are not currently compensated.

All pieces are shared via our social channels (Facebook & Twitter) after publication. All magazine contributors are also eligible for a discount to our annual creative nonfiction conference, HippoCamp.

What do we need from you?

• Formatting Requirements: Your submission should be double-spaced and in a 12-point readable font (ex: Times/Arial/Calibri)
• Why this matters: We have a concealed reading process, which means your work is judged on the work itself. Our reading panel members do not see your name, cover letter, or any other submission details: they only see the manuscript.

Other requests:

• Regular submissions come with a $3 submission fee. However, for those unable to cover the fee, we maintain a Submission Fund. To access the fund, contact us here .
• Please only send us one piece for submission at a time. If you want to send us something else, wait until you hear from us about the first piece you sent.
• Please be patient. We review pieces as we receive them, and we’re all volunteers, so it might take us a minute. Our typical turnaround time is 4 months.
• You can submit an excerpt, essay, or flash piece if you have an outstanding query with Books by Hippocampus.
• We’re happy to accept simultaneous submissions, but if your piece gets accepted by someone else, please withdraw it through Submittable as soon as possible!
• Take your time. We generally only publish each author once a year. We want to give everyone a chance to be heard.

Want to get in touch about an existing submission? It’s best to send an email to [email protected]; you may also use this contact form . We can’t guarantee that if you DM us on Twitter or send a Facebook message that we’ll see it and respond.

Publishing Info & Editorial Calendar

• We publish 6 regular issues per year: January/February, March/April, May/June, July/August, September/October, and November/December.
• New issues typically go live the Monday of first full week of the month.
• Reviews, interviews, and articles typically come out the first week of each month.

Remember that publishing is inherently subjective, and therefore, inherently imperfect. Like every other literary publication out there, we do our best to assume best intentions and publish and promote the work we’re moved and inspired by. Just because your piece wasn’t a fit for us doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable and worthy of publication at any one of these amazing platforms for creative nonfiction . Keep writing, keep editing, keep submitting.

These guidelines were updated on Aug. 22, 2023. We can’t wait to read your work!

Contributor Updates

Contributor Updates: Fall 2023

Contributor & Alumni Updates: Spring 2023

Contributor Updates: Spring 2022

Contributor Updates: January 2022

Looking to publish? Meet your dream editor, designer and marketer on Reedsy.

Find the perfect editor for your next book

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Best Memoir Writing Contests in 2024

Showing 35 contests that match your search.

The Letter Review Prize for Books

The Letter Review

Genres: Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novella, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

The Letter Review Prize for Books is open to writers from anywhere in the world. Seeking most unpublished (we accept some self/indie published) novels, novellas, story collections, nonfiction, poetry etc. 20 entries are longlisted.

💰 Entry fee: $25

📅 Deadline: October 31, 2023 (Expired)

Vocal Challenges

Genres: Essay, Fiction, Memoir, Non-fiction, and Short Story

Enter themed storytelling contests to put your creativity to the test and be in with a chance of winning cash prizes and more. To submit, you'll need to sign up for a monthly fee of $9.99, or $4.99/month for 3 months.

💰 Entry fee: $15

📅 Deadline: March 07, 2024 (Expired)

Military Anthology: Partnerships, the Untold Story

Armed Services Arts Partnership

Genres: Essay, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Humor, Memoir, Non-fiction, Poetry, and Short Story

Partners are an integral aspect of military life, at home and afar, during deployment and after homecoming. Partnerships drive military action and extend beyond being a battle buddy, wingman, or crew member. Some are planned while others arise entirely unexpectedly. Spouses, family, old or new friends, community, faith leaders, and medical specialists all support the military community. Despite their importance, the stories of these partnerships often go untold. This anthology aims to correct that: We will highlight the nuances, surprises, joy, sorrow, heroism, tears, healing power, and ache of partnerships. We invite you to submit the story about partnerships from your journey, so we can help tell it.

Additional prizes:

$250 for each genre category (prose, poetry, visual art)

📅 Deadline: March 01, 2024 (Expired)

Craft your masterpiece in Reedsy Studio

Plan, write, edit, and format your book in our free app made for authors.

Learn more about Reedsy Studio .

International Voices in Creative Nonfiction Competition

Vine Leaves Press

Genres: Essay, Memoir, Non-fiction, and Novel

Small presses have potential for significant impact, and at Vine Leaves Press, we take this responsibility quite seriously. It is our responsibility to give marginalized groups the opportunity to establish literary legacies that feel rich and vast. Why? To sustain hope for the world to become a more loving, tolerable, and open space. It always begins with art. That is why we have launched this writing competition.

Book publication

📅 Deadline: July 01, 2024

Anthology Personal Memoir Competition 2024

Anthology Magazine

Genres: Memoir

Everyone has a story to tell. What’s yours? Authors are invited to share a unique life experience. Whether your memoir recounts a transformative journey, a poignant moment, or a life-altering event, we welcome your story. The Anthology Personal Memoir Competition is open to original and previously unpublished memoirs in the English language by writers of any nationality, living anywhere in the world.

Publication

💰 Entry fee: $12

📅 Deadline: August 31, 2024

Red Hen Press Women's Prose Prize

Red Hen Press

Genres: Fiction, Non-fiction, Short Story, Essay, Memoir, and Novel

Established in 2018, the Women’s Prose Prize is for previously unpublished, original work of prose. Novels, short story collections, memoirs, essay collections, and all other forms of prose writing are eligible for consideration. The awarded manuscript is selected through a biennial competition, held in even-numbered years, that is open to all writers who identify as women.

Publication by Red Hen Press

📅 Deadline: February 28, 2024 (Expired)

The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction

Genres: Essay, Memoir, and Non-fiction

The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction (0-5000 words) is open to writers from anywhere in the world and has no theme or genre restrictions. Winners are published and every entry is considered for publication. 20 entries are Shortlisted.

Publication by The Letter Review

📅 Deadline: February 29, 2024 (Expired)

Brink Literary Journal Award for Hybrid Writing

Genres: Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Humor, Memoir, Non-fiction, Poetry, Science Writing, and Short Story

The Brink Literary Journal Award for Hybrid Writing will be administered to the winner of a literary contest designed to champion innovative hybrid and cross-genre work.

💰 Entry fee: $22

📅 Deadline: February 16, 2024 (Expired)

The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books

Genres: Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novel, Novella, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books (Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction) is open to writers from anywhere in the world. Three Winners are awarded, and 20 entries are Shortlisted.

💰 Entry fee: $20

Fish Short Memoir Prize

Fish Publishing

Genres: Memoir, Non-fiction, and Short Story

Everyone has a memoir in them. Go for it! Write a piece of your life, send it to Fish. Qian Julie Wang, author of her memoir Beautiful Country, will select 10 short memoirs to be published in the Fish Anthology 2022, which will be launched during the West Cork Literary Festival.

2nd: Writing Course (online) + €300 | 3rd: €300

💰 Entry fee: $18

📅 Deadline: January 31, 2024 (Expired)

Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award

Killer Nashville

Genres: Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novel, Poetry, Science Fiction, Script Writing, Short Story, and Thriller

The Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award is committed to discovering new writers, as well as superlative books by established authors and, upon discovery, sharing those writers and their works with new readers. There are a large number of both fiction and non-fiction categories you can enter.

💰 Entry fee: $79

📅 Deadline: June 15, 2024

Narratively 2023 Memoir Prize

Narratively

Genres: Essay, Humor, Memoir, and Non-fiction

Narratively is currently accepting submissions for their 2023 Memoir Prize. They are looking for revealing and emotional first-person nonfiction narratives from unique and overlooked points of view. The guest judge is New York Times bestselling memoirist Stephanie Land.

$1,000 and publication

📅 Deadline: November 30, 2023 (Expired)

Rigel 2024: $500 for Prose, Poetry, Art, or Graphic Novel

Sunspot Literary Journal

Genres: Essay, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Memoir, Non-fiction, Novel, Novella, Poetry, Script Writing, and Short Story

Literary or genre works accepted. Winner receives $500 plus publication, while runners-up and finalists are offered publication. No restrictions on theme or category. Closes: February 29. Entry fee: $12.50. Enter as many times as you like through Submittable or Duotrope

Runners-up and finalists are offered publication

Share Your Story

FanStory.com Inc.

Genres: Essay and Memoir

Write about an event in your life. Everyone has a memoir. Not an autobiography. Too much concern about fact and convention. A memoir gives us the ability to write about our life with the option to create and fabricate and to make sense of a life, or part of that life.

💰 Entry fee: $10

📅 Deadline: September 15, 2022 (Expired)

Geminga: $250 for Tiny Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, or Art

Sunspot Lit

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Memoir, Non-fiction, Poetry, Script Writing, Short Story, and Novella

Geminga is a neutron star so small it was difficult to detect. With Geminga: $500 for Tiny Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, or Art, Sunspot Lit honors the power of the small. No restrictions on theme or category. Word limit is 100 for fiction and nonfiction. Micropoetry is limited to 140 characters. Graphic novels should be 4 pages or less.

Publication in digital and print

Flash Memoir

Writer Advice

Genres: Memoir and Flash Fiction

WriterAdvice seeks flash memoir, a personal life story running 750 words or less.

Publication in our e-zine

💰 Entry fee: $5

📅 Deadline: March 02, 2024 (Expired)

Reader Views Literary Awards

Reader Views

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Non-fiction, Novel, Novella, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

The Reader Views Literary Awards program helps level the playing field for self-published authors, recognizing the most creative and exciting new books in the industry. Our awards program is recognized industry-wide as one of the top literary awards programs for independent authors.

Several marketing prizes (e.g. book review)

💰 Entry fee: $89

📅 Deadline: December 15, 2024

The Book of the Year Awards

The Independent Author Network

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novel, Novella, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Thriller, Young Adult, Crime, and Short Story

The Independent Author Network presents the 10th Annual IAN Book of the Year Awards, an international contest open to all authors with 55 fiction and non-fiction categories. Winners are eligible to receive a share of cash prizes of $6,000 USD. Open to all English language print and eBooks available for sale, including small presses, mid-size independent publishers, university presses, and self-published authors.

$6,000.00 USD in total cash prizes

💰 Entry fee: $49

📅 Deadline: August 16, 2024

The 2022 First Chapter Book Contest

TheNextBigWriter, LLC

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Novel, Science Fiction, Thriller, and Young Adult

Have a book or a novel idea you've been noodling? Enter your first chapter into the Booksie First Chapter Contest and see how it does. You don't need to have finished the book. You don't even need more than the first chapter. We're looking for a start that will grab our attention, that is original, that is well written, and that makes us want to beg you to see what comes next. And for those we find, we'll provide some awards to inspire you to finish writing the book or, if finished, to help get it published.

Gold contest badge.

📅 Deadline: May 14, 2022 (Expired)

Aurora Polaris Creative Nonfiction Award

Trio House Press

We seek un-agented full-length creative nonfiction manuscripts including memoir, essay collections, etc. 50,000 - 80,000 words.

📅 Deadline: May 15, 2024

Indignor Play House Annual Short Story Competition

Indignor House Publishing

Genres: Fiction, Flash Fiction, Short Story, Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novella, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Thriller, and Young Adult

Indignor House Publishing is proud to announce that our annual writing competition (INDIGNOR PLAYHOUSE Short Story Annual Competition) is officially open with expected publication in the fall of 2024. Up to 25 submissions will be accepted for inclusion in the annual anthology.

2nd: $250 | 3rd: $150

Storytrade Book Awards

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novel, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Script Writing, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

The Storytrade Book Awards recognizes excellence in small and independent publishing. Open to all indie authors and publishers including self-published authors, university presses, and small or independent presses, our annual awards program spotlights outstanding books in a number of fiction and nonfiction categories.

Medal, Book Stickers, Digital Seal

💰 Entry fee: $75

📅 Deadline: June 30, 2024

Memoir/Fiction Book Contest for IML Publications

Genres: Fiction, Memoir, Non-fiction, and Novel

We are a boutique publishing company that is dedicated to amplifying the voices of contemporary writers who are nomads and explorers of language, form, and the psyche. High-quality “unpublished” manuscript submissions of memoir, fiction and non-fiction entrusted to us will be read, sorted and pondered by our esteemed author, Jacqueline Gay Walley.

Possible publication

💰 Entry fee: $35

📅 Deadline: October 01, 2024

Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize

Gotham Writers Workshop

Genres: Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Romance, Science Fiction, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

The Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize is a writing competition sponsored by the stage and radio series Selected Shorts. Selected Shorts is recorded for Public Radio and heard nationally on both the radio and its weekly podcast. This years entries will be judged by Carmen Maria Machado (In the Dream House, Her Body and Other Parties).

Literary and Photographic Contest 2023-2024

Hispanic Culture Review

Genres: Essay, Fiction, Memoir, Non-fiction, and Poetry

As we move forward we carry our culture wherever we go. It keeps us alive. This is why we propose the theme to be “¡Hacia delante!”. A phrase that means to move forward. This year we ask that you think about the following questions: What keeps you moving forward? What do you carry with you going into the future? How do you celebrate your successes, your dreams, and your culture?

Publication in magazine

📅 Deadline: February 07, 2024 (Expired)

Writing MAGIC

Sadie Tells Stories

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Romance, Science Fiction, Short Story, and Young Adult

Are you an author who loves magic? Do you have an idea for a super short story that needs to be shared with the world? If you answered yes to both of those questions this contest is for you! The story can be about anything magical. Maybe it’s something that you’ve experienced in real life or it’s something you’ve created. Maybe it’s the start of a great idea. Maybe it’ll be the thing that inspires you to finally publish your book.

📅 Deadline: April 01, 2024

Clash of the Query Letters

Darling Axe Editing

Genres: Fiction, Memoir, Non-fiction, Novel, Crime, Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Novella, Romance, Science Fiction, Thriller, and Young Adult

Our judge, Michelle Barker, will be asking herself one question: does this query letter convince me that I'm in the hands of an adept novelist with a unique and engaging story to tell?

CAD $200 for 2nd place, $100 for 3rd place

💰 Entry fee: $4

Personal Essay Competition 2024

Write the World

We want to hear about an experience in your life, rife with characters and description and conflict and scene… but we also want to hear how you make sense of this experience, how it sits with you, and why it has surfaced as writing. Open a window into your life and invite your readers to enter.

Runner up: $50 | Best peer review: $50

📅 Deadline: June 24, 2024

100 Word Writing Contest

Tadpole Press

Genres: Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Thriller, Young Adult, Children's, Poetry, Romance, Short Story, Suspense, and Travel

Can you write a story using 100 words or less? Pieces will be judged on creativity, uniqueness, and how the story captures a new angle, breaks through stereotypes, and expands our beliefs about what's possible or unexpectedly delights us. In addition, we are looking for writing that is clever or unique, inspires us, and crafts a compelling and complete story. The first-place prize has doubled to $2,000 USD.

2nd: writing coach package

📅 Deadline: April 30, 2024

Write By The Sea Literary Festival 2024

Write By the Sea

Genres: Fiction, Flash Fiction, Memoir, and Poetry

Write By The Sea is a dynamic boutique literary festival set in the beautiful fishing village of Kilmore Quay, County Wexford. The independent panel of judges will select the winners of each category and winners will be invited to read their work as part of the Festival.

2nd: €300 | 3rd: €200 | Publication

📅 Deadline: June 21, 2024

Climate Change Writing Competition

This month, dear writers, ahead of COP27, help us raise the voices of young people in this urgent fight. In a piece of personal narrative, tell the world’s leaders gathering in how climate change impacts you. How has this crisis changed your environment, your community, your sense of the future? Storytelling, after all, plays a critical role in helping us grasp the emergency through which we are all living, igniting empathy in readers and listeners—itself a precursor to action.

Runner-up: $50

📅 Deadline: October 18, 2022 (Expired)

Work-In-Progress (WIP) Contest

Unleash Press

Genres: Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novel, Novella, Poetry, Science Fiction, Science Writing, and Young Adult

We aim to assist writers in the completion of an important literary project and vision. The Unleash WIP Award offers writers support in the amount of $500 to supplement costs to aid in the completion of a book-length work of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. Writers will also receive editorial feedback, coaching meetings, and an excerpt/interview feature in Unleash Lit.

Coaching, interview, and editorial support

📅 Deadline: July 15, 2024

North Street Book Prize

Winning Writers

Genres: Fiction, Memoir, Non-fiction, Poetry, Children's, Fantasy, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, Thriller, and Young Adult

Submit a self-published or hybrid-published book, up to 200,000 words in length. One grand prize winner will receive $10,000, a marketing analysis and one-hour phone consultation with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, a $300 credit at BookBaby, three months of Plus service (a $207 value) and a $500 account credit from Book Award Pro, and 3 free ads in the Winning Writers newsletter (a $525 value)

$1,000 for top winner in each category | $300 for honorable mentions

📅 Deadline: May 01, 2024

The Rubery Prize

Rubery Book Awards

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novel, Novella, Science Fiction, Thriller, Young Adult, and Romance

The Rubery Prize is a prestigious international book award seeking the best books by indie writers, self published authors and books published by independent presses, judged by reputable judges. Through our reputation of finding quality and outstanding books we aim to bring recognition to the works that win and heighten an author's profile.

£200, a write-up

💰 Entry fee: $60

📅 Deadline: March 31, 2024

Askew's Word on the Lake Writing Contest

Shuswap Association of Writers

Genres: Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, Essay, Memoir, and Short Story

Whether you’re an established or emerging writer, the Askew’s Word on the Lake Writing Contest has a place for you. Part of the Word on the Lake Writers’ Festival in Salmon Arm, BC, the contest is open to submissions in short fiction (up to 2,000 words), nonfiction (up to 2,000 words), and poetry (up to three one-page poems).

💰 Entry fee: $11

Related Resources:

• What is a Memoir? An Inside Look at Life Stories  (blog post)
• 21 Memoir Examples to Inspire Your Own (blog post)
• How to Outline a Memoir in 3 Powerful Steps (blog post)
• How to Write a Memoir: Tell Your Story in 9 Steps (blog post)
• How to Market a Memoir: Top Tips from the Experts (blog post)

Join a community of over 1 million authors

Reedsy is more than just a blog. Become a member today to discover how we can help you publish a beautiful book.

Save your shortlist

Enter your email address to save your shortlist so that you don't lose it!

By continuing, you will also receive Reedsy's weekly publishing tips and access to our free webinars.

We sent over your shortlist. Thank you for using Reedsy's Writing Contest Directory, happy publishing! 🙌

Join our weekly contest

Get 5 new writing prompts every Friday. Write and submit a story for a chance to win $250.

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Enter your email or get started with a social account:

Exploring the art of prose

CRAFT Memoir Excerpt & Essay Contest 2023

2023 CRAFT Memoir Excerpt & Essay Contest

Guest judge: sarah fawn montgomery, $3,400 awarded, november 13, 2023 – january 14, 2024, this contest is now closed— thank you to all who entered, winners published in june 2024.

Calling all memoirists and essayists—we want to read your story! We’re looking for your most authentic creative nonfiction for the 2023 CRAFT Memoir Excerpt & Essay Contest. Here’s what our wonderful guest judge, Sarah Fawn Montgomery , would like to see for this contest:

I’m looking for work that does not follow predictable patterns, but instead reimagines structural and stylistic possibilities entirely, transporting the reader into a writer’s world as opposed to translating that world for the reader. I want to be immersed in the writer’s mind, experiencing their sense of self in all its tender, powerful, painful, and gorgeous uncertainty. I’m drawn to unapologetic vulnerability, a thorough questioning of subject and self, and an attempt to capture complexity that does not necessarily result in tidy conclusion. Bonus points for attention to image and language that sings.

Please carefully review the guidelines below, then send us your most polished work. Three winners will receive $1,000 each and publication. Our team will also select two “editors ’ choices” to publish alongside the three grand-prize winners. All fifteen shortlisted creative nonfiction writers will receive a $1,000 scholarship to PocketMFA. Do your words “sing” on the page? If so, don ’ t wait—submit ASAP!

GUIDELINES:

• The contest is open November 13, 2023, to January 14, 2024.
• CRAFT submissions are open to all writers, emerging and experienced.
• Submit creative nonfiction ONLY! (Please, no academic work, flash prose, short fiction, or poetry.)
• International submissions are allowed.
• Please submit work primarily written in English, but conceptually or stylistically necessary code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
• This contest is for creative nonfiction excerpts and essays between 1,001 and 6,000 words. Please do not submit flash prose.
• We review literary creative nonfiction, but are open to a variety of genres and styles including memoir excerpts, lyric essays, personal essays, narrative nonfiction, speculative nonfiction, and experimental prose—our only requirement is that you show excellence in your craft.
• For this contest, we will consider previously unpublished work only—we will not review reprints or partial reprints, including self-published work (even if only on social media). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
• We allow simultaneous submissions—writers, please notify us and withdraw your entry if your work is accepted elsewhere.
• The $20 reading fee per entry allows one longform creative nonfiction piece (either memoir excerpt or essay) from 1,001 to 6,000 words. We will not read flash nonfiction prose for this contest. Please do not submit flash prose.
• We allow multiple submissions—each entry should be accompanied by a separate reading fee.
• All entries will also be considered for publication in CRAFT .
• Please double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12.
• Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable).
• Please include appropriate content warnings (if applicable), for the sake of our dedicated, diligent staff.
• We do not require anonymous submissions, but the guest judge will review the shortlist anonymously.
• Creative nonfiction writers from historically marginalized groups are invited to submit for free until we reach the twenty-five free submissions budgeted for this particular contest. Email us with relevant inquiries.
• We do not discriminate on the basis of age, ancestry, disability, family status, gender identity or expression, national origin, race, religion, sex or sexual orientation, or for any other reason.
• Additionally, we do not tolerate discrimination in the writing we consider for publication: work we find discriminatory on any of the bases stated here will be declined/disqualified without complete review.
• AI-generated work will be automatically disqualified.
• Entries that do not adhere to these guidelines in full will be declined/disqualified without complete review.
• $1,000 each;
• publication in CRAFT , each with an introduction by Sarah Fawn Montgomery ;
• publication of an author’s note (craft essay) to accompany the piece;
• and a set of six titles of Graywolf’s The Art Of series .
• publication in CRAFT , each with an introduction by the editorial team;
• and publication of an author’s note (craft essay) to accompany the piece.

All fifteen shortlisted writers will also receive a $1,000 scholarship to PocketMFA .

OUR GUEST JUDGE:

FINE PRINT:

• Friends, family, and associates of the guest judge are not eligible for consideration for the award.
• Our collaboration with editorial professionals in the judging of our contests and the awarding of our prizes does not imply an endorsement or recognition from their agencies, houses, presses, universities, etc.
• Read (and enjoy!) our 2022 contest winners for examples of work we’ve chosen to publish in the past.
• As we only consider unpublished writing, and will publish the winning pieces in June 2024, any work under contract to publish prior to September 2024 should not be entered in this contest.

OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:

OUR CONTEST PARTNERS:

Their Mission:

PocketMFA is a twelve-week mentoring and workshopping program, designed to make more accessible the rigor, community, and guidance of a graduate-level writing program. Based on the low-residency MFA model, PocketMFA places up to ten writers with a creative nonfiction mentor of their choice, to work through our three distinct and entirely virtual phases of Direct Instruction, Mentorship & Workshopping, and Writing Life Residency. All fifteen shortlisted creative nonfiction writers will receive a $1,000 scholarship to PocketMFA.

• Short Stories
• Flash Fiction
• Longform Creative Nonfiction
• Flash Creative Nonfiction
• Critical Essays
• Books by CRAFT Contributors
• Short Fiction Prize 2024
• Novelette Print Prize 2024
• Memoir Excerpt & Essay Contest 2023
• Flash Prose Prize 2023
• Setting Sketch Challenge 2023
• First Chapters Contest 2023
• Character Sketch Challenge 2023
• Short Fiction Prize 2023
• Hybrid Writing Contest 2023
• Creative Nonfiction Award 2022
• Amelia Gray 2K Contest 2022
• First Chapters Contest 2022
• Short Fiction Prize 2022
• Hybrid Writing Contest 2022
• Creative Nonfiction Award 2021
• Flash Fiction Contest 2021
• First Chapters Contest 2021
• Short Fiction Prize 2021
• Short Fiction Prize 2020
• Flash Fiction Contest 2020
• Creative Nonfiction Award 2020
• Elements Contest 2020: Conflict
• Short Fiction Prize 2019
• Flash Fiction Contest 2019
• First Chapters Contest 2019
• Short Fiction Prize 2018
• Elements Contest 2018: Character | Dialogue Setting
• SPRING SALON
• Fast Response
• Black Lives Matter
• Resources on Racism

After Kavanaugh: Christine Blasey Ford tells the rest of her story

In her memoir, ‘one way back,’ blasey ford details the chaos that ensued after she accused brett kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her.

Reading Christine Blasey Ford’s new memoir, I kept thinking of a tweet I read back in the spring of 2018, two months before President Donald Trump nominated Brett M. Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. “Can you name all 59 women who came forward against Cosby?” a user named Feminist Next Door posted. “Cool so we agree that women don’t make rape accusations to become famous.”

Ford, of course, did become famous after accusing Kavanaugh of attempting to sexually assault her while both were in high school (Kavanaugh has always denied this happened). She came to Washington, delivered a memorable testimony — “ indelible in the hippocampus ” — and then descended into the kind of fame that, as she describes in the book, “ One Way Back ,” nobody would ever wish upon themselves. Death threats forced her family into a hotel room for months. Bodyguards accompanied her children to school. A decades-old fear of enclosed spaces (a fear that first started, she says, after Kavanaugh’s alleged attack) was now paired with a fear of open spaces as strangers wrote to her: “We know where you live. We know where you work. We know where you eat. … Your life is over.”

Before coming forward, Ford describes a charmed existence. She had long ago traded the stuffy Beltway of her teenage years for laid-back California. She was a weekday psychology professor and a weekend surfer. When she saw Kavanaugh’s name on Trump’s shortlist, she prayed for the nomination to go to anyone else so that she could go back to packing up snacks and wet suits for her family at their beach house. Why did she risk all of this to go public? In Ford’s telling, she never imagined that her story would become so polarizing or so huge, and once it did, it was too late to change her mind. It felt like a surfing metaphor: Paddling out, she writes, “is the hardest part. And you never, ever paddle back in once you’re out there. You catch the wave. You wipe out if you have to.”

Readers looking to “One Way Back” for a magic bullet to prove Kavanaugh’s guilt or innocence are out of luck. Ford doesn’t remember anything more than she’s already publicly recalled; there are no new witnesses or unearthed diary entries. What she gives instead is a thoughtful exploration of what it feels like to become a main character in a major American reckoning — a woman tossed out to sea and learning that the water is shark-infested, or at the very least blooming with red tide.

At times, she comes across as either deeply optimistic or unfortunately naive. Prehearing, Ford’s legal team suggested that she sit through a “murder board” — a mock interrogation designed to stress-test her story. She decided that her truth should be protection enough, not comprehending that she was declining a fairly standard form of preparation.

She was told she could bring a handful of guests to act as a supportive presence while she testified, and she chose friends and colleagues over relatives — she and her husband decided he should stay home with their sons so that they didn’t have to miss school; she worried that the long hearing would be physically uncomfortable for her elderly parents. But when she saw Kavanaugh flanked by his wife and daughters at his own testimony, she realized she’d misunderstood a fundamental rule in the game of optics.

“I didn’t know my integrity was on the stand as much as Brett’s,” she writes. Kavanaugh looked like a wholesome family man. She looked like a renegade. She woke up to a headline in The Washington Post that read: “Christine Blasey Ford’s family has been nearly silent amid outpouring of support.”

Of course, it turned out that things were more complicated with her family than even she had realized. After Kavanaugh was confirmed, Ford’s legal team approached her with a delicate question: Is it possible that her dad sent a letter to Kavanaugh’s father — they belonged to the same golf club — saying that he was glad Kavanaugh had been confirmed? Ford couldn’t believe this was true, and when she asked her dad, he assured her no letter was written. It’s not until a later conversation that he backtracked: He didn’t write a letter, but he did send an email. “Just gentleman to gentleman,” he explained awkwardly. “I should have just said, ‘I’m glad this is over.’ That’s what I meant.”

Oddly, Ford did know what he meant, and in the context of her father’s Washington, it makes sense: He was an old-school Republican for whom manners and decorum supersede everything — a trade-school graduate who was proud to propel his family into a country club lifestyle and who wanted to make sure they would still be welcomed in that lifestyle even after all this tricky business with his daughter. But her father’s actions were utterly devastating in the new political climate, in which every word could be weaponized and every text or email was a gotcha. The pair’s relationship hasn’t fully recovered by the end of the book, and it’s hard to imagine it ever will.

Returning to California after the confirmation hearings, Ford was catapulted into a new reality. On the one hand, she was invited to dinner at the homes of Oprah Winfrey and Laurene Powell Jobs. On the other hand, these dinners were the only times she felt safe leaving her house, figuring that Oprah must have even more security than she did. On the one hand, backstage invitations at a Metallica concert. On the other, an anxiety so deep and pervasive that she spent days on end wrapped in a gray Ugg-brand blanket. From time to time, she writes, people still asked her whether she thought she ruined Kavanaugh’s life, and she reacted with incredulity: “Despite the fact that Brett ultimately got the job. Despite the fact that he sits on the Supreme Court while I still receive death threats.”

There are inspirational moments, too: for every death threat, a dozen well-wishers; for every moment of self-doubt, another moment of reminding herself that she’s coming from a place of privilege — supportive family, steady income — and that putting herself through the wringer might make it easier on the next victim, the next time.

Did it? Will it? “One Way Back” is a blisteringly personal memoir of a singular experience. But it was most piercing to me as a memoir of the past half-decade, when long-buried wounds were tried in the court of public opinion as much as in the court of law, and when sexual assault allegations were treated as though they were about scoring political points more than settling psychic trauma.

If you believed Ford in 2018, “One Way Back” will give you a deeper appreciation for the woman behind the headlines. If you didn’t — well, I don’t know if the book will change your mind. But it might wiggle your mind a little bit. Because it’s impossible to picture why someone would lie to achieve the kind of fame that has been bestowed upon Ford. It’s hard enough to picture why someone would put themself through that nightmare to tell the truth.

One Way Back

By Christine Blasey Ford

St. Martin’s. 320 pp. $29

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

• Why is the royal family so bad at this? March 20, 2024 Why is the royal family so bad at this? March 20, 2024
• After Kavanaugh: Christine Blasey Ford tells the rest of her story March 13, 2024 After Kavanaugh: Christine Blasey Ford tells the rest of her story March 13, 2024
• A lot of moms can’t see themselves in Katie Britt’s kitchen March 8, 2024 A lot of moms can’t see themselves in Katie Britt’s kitchen March 8, 2024

10 of the Best New Nonfiction Books To Read in March 2024

Kendra Winchester

Kendra Winchester is a Contributing Editor for Book Riot where she writes about audiobooks and disability literature. She is also the Founder of Read Appalachia , which celebrates Appalachian literature and writing. Previously, Kendra co-founded and served as Executive Director for Reading Women , a podcast that gained an international following over its six-season run. In her off hours, you can find her writing on her Substack, Winchester Ave , and posting photos of her Corgis on Instagram and Twitter @kdwinchester.

View All posts by Kendra Winchester

As a mood reader, I’m always flitting from one type of story to another, never sure of where to go next. But in the spring, I’m almost always looking for personal narratives. Whether it’s a memoir of an author investigating their mysterious family history or the story of a disability rights advocate sticking it to hateful trolls, I love a person-driven narrative. This is the power of books, to give us a glimpse into someone else’s life.

In celebration of true stories, I’ve collected ten of some of the hottest nonfiction titles hitting shelves in March. You might be new to nonfiction or a true stories pro, but whatever the case, there’s sure to be something on this list that catches your eye.

All publication dates are subject to change.

Beautiful People: My Thirteen Truths About Disability by Melissa Blake (March 5)

When an ableist troll said that Melissa Blake should be banned from posting photos of herself, Blake posted three photos of herself smiling. In her new memoir, Blake writes about her life as a disability rights activist and social media influencer, calling for the nondisabled to take action and become better disability allies.

Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls (March 5)

Feeding Ghosts is a memoir that follows three generations of women, beginning with Hulls’s grandmother, Sun Yi, who flees China with her young daughter, Rose. Sun Yi experiences a mental breakdown, and when Rose moves to the U.S., she eventually brings Sun Yi to live with her.

The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir by RuPaul (March 5)

RuPaul is one of pop culture’s biggest icons. Supermodel, mogul, television producer — RuPaul has done it all. But with his new memoir, he peels back the layers of his life, revealing the experiences from his early life that made him who he is today.

Devout: A Memoir of Doubt by Anna Gazmarian (March 12)

When Anna Gazmarian is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she realizes that her conservative evangelical community will not accept it. She spends the next decade reframing what her community calls a “heart problem” to better understand mental illness and how it impacts her life.

You Get What You Pay For: Essays by Morgan Parker (March 12)

Literary powerhouse Morgan Parker is out with a new collection of essays that examine Parker’s feelings of alienation in just about every part of her life. She describes living with depression and a deep sense of loneliness. She expands from ideas of the personal, giving her readers a bigger picture of Black life in America.

Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson (March 12)

Literary icon Marilynne Robinson is blessing us with a new work of nonfiction where she examines the creation story in Genesis. Robinson walks us through the creation story, including the original King James Version in her text. Robinson emphasizes God’s never-ending love for humanity and His eternal faith in Creation.

How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone: A Memoir by Cameron Russell (March 19)

Cameron Russell shares her life as a model, a job she didn’t necessarily even want in the first place. It was an opportunity, and she took it. But it led to years of surviving a sexist, image-obsessed industry that forever warped how she saw her body and understood her sense of self. How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone begs us to examine the question, what does it mean to be seen as an object of beauty meant to be enjoyed by others?

The Observable Universe: An Investigation by Heather McCalden (March 19)

When she was a young girl, McCalden lost both her parents to AIDS. She was raised by her grandmother in Los Angeles, a city particularly ravaged by the disease. Later in life, McCalden begins researching HIV/AIDS and realizes that the internet and AIDS developed at the same time in history. The Observable Universe braids together ideas around the internet and HIV/AIDS, giving readers a unique portrait of late 20th-century America.

There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib (March 26)

Poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib grew up in Columbus, Ohio, during the 1990s. He watches basketball stars like LeBron James rise from places he could recognize. In There’s Always This Year , he discusses ideas around who we think deserves success and what society decides is exceptional.

dear elia: Letters from the Asian American Abyss by Mimi Khúc (March 26)

In this series of letters, Mimi Khúc examines ideas around mental health and wellness. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, society’s understanding of illness has changed. Khúc argues that we can no longer have Asian American studies without an intersectional understanding of Asian American wellness.

There are so many good books — I don’t know where to start! If you’re looking for even more nonfiction book recommendations, check out 10 New Nonfiction Book Releases of February and 9 New Nonfiction Releases to Read in January .

As always, you can find a full list of new releases in the magical New Release Index , carefully curated by your favorite Book Riot editors, organized by genre and release date.

You Might Also Like

Advertisement

Supported by

editors’ choice

8 New Books We Recommend This Week

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

• Share full article

Our recommended books this week include three very different memoirs. In “Grief Is for People,” Sloane Crosley pays tribute to a lost friend and mentor; in “Replay,” the video-game designer Jordan Mechner presents a graphic family memoir of three generations; and in “What Have We Here?” the actor Billy Dee Williams looks back at his life in Hollywood and beyond.

Also up this week: a history of the shipping companies that helped Jewish refugees flee Europe before World War I and a humane portrait of people who ended up more or less alone at death, their bodies unclaimed in a Los Angeles morgue. In fiction we recommend a posthumous story collection by a writer who died on the cusp of success, along with a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller and a big supernatural novel from a writer previously celebrated for her short fiction. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles

WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA? Dervla McTiernan

Despite its title, this disturbing, enthralling thriller is less concerned with what happened to 20-year-old Nina, who vanished while spending the weekend with her controlling boyfriend, than it is with how the couple’s parents — all broken, terrified and desperate in their own ways — respond to the exigencies of the moment.

“Almost painfully gripping. … The last scene will make your blood run cold.”

From Sarah Lyall’s thrillers column

Morrow | $27

THE UNCLAIMED: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans

The sociologists Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans spent some 10 years studying the phenomenon of the unclaimed dead in America — and, specifically, Los Angeles. What sounds like a grim undertaking has resulted in this moving project, in which they focus on not just the deaths but the lives of four people. The end result is sobering, certainly, but important, readable and deeply humane.

“A work of grace. … Both cleareyed and disturbing, yet pulsing with empathy.”

From Dan Barry’s review

Crown | $30

THE BOOK OF LOVE Kelly Link

Three teenagers are brought back from the dead in Link’s first novel, which is set in a coastal New England town full of secrets and supernatural entities. The magic-wielding band teacher who revived them gives the kids a series of tasks to stay alive, but powerful forces conspire to thwart them.

“It’s profoundly beautiful, provokes intense emotion, offers up what feel like rooted, incontrovertible truths.”

From Amal El-Mohtar’s review

Random House | $31

GRIEF IS FOR PEOPLE Sloane Crosley

Crosley is known for her humor, but her new memoir tackles grief. The book follows the author as she works to process the loss of her friend, mentor and former boss, Russell Perreault, who died by suicide.

“The book is less than 200 pages, but the weight of suicide as a subject, paired with Crosley’s exceptional ability to write juicy conversation, prevents it from being the kind of slim volume one flies through and forgets.”

From Ashley C. Ford’s review

MCDxFSG | $27

NEIGHBORS AND OTHER STORIES Diane Oliver

This deceptively powerful posthumous collection by a writer who died at 22 follows the everyday routines of Black families as they negotiate separate but equal Jim Crow strictures, only to discover uglier truths.

“Like finding hunks of gold bullion buried in your backyard. … Belatedly bids a full-throated hello.”

From Alexandra Jacobs’s review

Grove | $27

WHAT HAVE WE HERE? Portraits of a Life Billy Dee Williams

In this effortlessly charming memoir, the 86-year-old actor traces his path from a Harlem childhood to the “Star Wars” universe, while lamenting the roles that never came his way.

“He writes with clarity and intimacy, revealing the person behind the persona. And he doesn’t scrimp on the dirty details.”

From Maya S. Cade’s review

Knopf | $32

THE LAST SHIPS FROM HAMBURG: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia’s Jews on the Eve of World War I Steven Ujifusa

Ujifusa’s history describes the early-20th-century shipping interests that made a profit helping millions of impoverished Jews flee violence in Eastern Europe for safe harbor in America before the U.S. Congress passed laws restricting immigration.

“Thoroughly researched and beautifully written. … Truth as old as the Republic itself.”

From David Nasaw’s review

Dutton | $35

REPLAY: Memoir of an Uprooted Family Jordan Mechner

The famed video-game designer (“Prince of Persia”) pivots to personal history in this ambitious but intimate graphic novel. In it, he elegantly interweaves themes of memory and exile with family lore from three generations: a grandfather who fought in World War I; a father who fled Nazi persecution; and his own path as a globe-trotting, game-creating polymath.

“The binding theme is statelessness — imposed by chance, antisemitism and personal ambition — but memoirs are about memory, and so it is also a book about the subtleties and biases of recollection.”

From Sam Thielman’s graphics column

First Second | $29.99

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

You never know what’s going to go wrong in these graphic novels, where Circus tigers, giant spiders, shifting borders and motherhood all threaten to end life as we know it .

When the author Tommy Orange received an impassioned email from a teacher in the Bronx, he dropped everything to visit the students  who inspired it.

A few years ago, Harvard acquired the archive of Candida Royalle, a porn star turned pioneering director. Now, the collection has inspired a new book , challenging the conventional history of the sexual revolution.

Gabriel García Márquez wanted his final novel to be destroyed. Its publication this month  may stir questions about posthumous releases.

Do you want to be a better reader?   Here’s some helpful advice to show you how to get the most out of your literary endeavor .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

26 works of Canadian nonfiction coming out in spring 2024

Social sharing.

Check out these Canadian biographies, essay collections, memoirs and other works coming out in spring 2024.

Let It Go by Chelene Knight

Based on lessons from several Black community leaders and Chelene Knight's personal experiences, Let It Go  offers important tools for cultivating and finding joy — including how to let go, rethink communications with loved ones and establish boundaries with care. Knight uses reflection and conversation to guide readers to create their own path to joy. 

Let It Go is out now.

Chelene Knight reimagines Vancouver's Black neighbourhood Hogan's Alley in debut novel

Knight is a Vancouver-based writer and poet who is the author of the Braided Skin and the memoir Dear Current Occupant , which won the 2018 Vancouver Book Award. Her 2022 novel Junie was on the longlist for Canada Reads 2024 and won the 2023 Vancouver Book Award. Her work has appeared in literary magazines in Canada and the U.S. and she has been a judge for literary awards, including the B.C. Book Prizes.

Black Boys Like Me by Matthew R. Morris

Black Boys Like Me  is Matthew R. Morris' debut collection of eight essays that examines his experiences with race and identity throughout his childhood into his current work as an educator. The child of a Black immigrant father and a white mother, Morris was influenced by the prominent Black male figures he saw in sports, TV shows and music as he was growing up in Scarborough, Ont. While striving for academic success, he confronted Black stereotypes and explored hip hop culture in the 1990s.

Black Boys Like Me  is out now.

Matthew R. Morris writes about growing up Black and navigating race and identity in book Black Boys Like Me

Morris is a writer, advocate and educator based in Toronto. As a public speaker, he has travelled across North America to educate on anti-racism in the education system. Morris was recently announced as one of the readers for the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize .

My Fighting Family by Morgan Campbell

My Fighting Family is a detailed history of one family's battles across the generations and reckons with what it means being a Black Canadian with strong American roots. Sports journalist and writer Morgan Campbell traces his family's roots in the rural American south to their eventual cross-border split and the grudges and squabbles along the way. From the South Side of Chicago in the 1930s to the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War and Campbell's life dealing with the racial tensions in Canada — My Fighting Family is about journeying to find clarity in conflict.

My Fighting Family  is out now.

Morgan Campbell reflects on his family legacy in his memoir My Fighting Family – read an excerpt now 

Campbell is an Ontario-based journalist and a senior contributor at CBC Sports . He was a sports writer at the Toronto Star for over 18 years. His work highlights where sports intersect with off-the-field issues like race, culture, politics and business. His memoir My Fighting Family is his first book.

Blood by Dr. Jen Gunter

In Blood , Dr. Jen Gunter uses medical expertise and scientific facts from a feminist perspective to address the shame and misinformation about menstruation. She explores how the ovaries and uterus function, challenges patriarchal approaches and answers questions about reproductive anatomy. 

Blood  is out now.

Why we need to talk about periods, full stop

Gunter is an obstetrician, gynecologist and pain medicine physician from Winnipeg. She is an advocate for women's health and writes about the intersection of pop culture, science and sex for the New York Times. She is also the author of The Preemie Primer , The Vagina Bible and The Menopause Manifesto .

Big Mall by Kate Black

In Big Mall , Kate Black examines the history of shopping and its place in capitalist structure. As places of pleasure, memory and pain, she pays particular attention to West Edmonton Mall — North America's largest mall where she spent a lot of time growing up. 

Big Mall is out now.

Black is a Vancouver-based writer whose essays have been published in Maisonneuve, The Walrus and The Globe and Mail. She was named one of Canada's top emerging voices in nonfiction by the 2020 National Magazine Awards and RBC Taylor Prize. 

Never Better by Gonzalo Riedel

The memoir  Never Better  chronicles Riedel's life from meeting the woman who would become his wife, to her getting sick and then as a widower with two young children. It tackles difficult subjects like how to keep his wife's memory alive for his two boys when their mother died before their second son even turned one.

Never Better  is out now.

• Meet the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize readers

Gonzalo Riedel is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor.  Never Better  is his debut book. Riedel was recently announced as one of the readers for the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize .

The Heart of a Superfan by Nav Bhatia

Nav Bhatia is known as the Toronto Raptors's number one fan. In The Heart of a Superfan , he tells his story of hardship and determination as he faces challenges in India and Canada as an immigrant. The book explores how he came to connect with basketball more than with any other sport through inspiration and community, and the role it played in his life's personal success.

The Heart of a Superfan  is out now.

Raptors superfan Nav Bhatia's story is bigger than basketball – read and excerpt from his upcoming memoir now

Bhatia is a business owner and the founder of The Nav Bhatia Superfan foundation, which aims to unite people through basketball around the world. He is the first non-basketball player to receive a NBA championship ring and is honoured in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. 

Rogers v. Rogers  by Alexandra Posadzki

Rogers v. Rogers  is a detailed investigative account of the battle for control of Rogers, Canada's largest wireless carrier. Alexandra Posadzki's coverage of the telecom empire and its rules of corporate governance exposes the high-stakes disputes between the factions within the company's boardroom and the Rogers family. 

Rogers v. Rogers is out now.

• How Canada's telecom industry is being reshaped

Posadzki is a Toronto-based business reporter for the Globe and Mail. Her coverage of Roger Communications and Canada's telecommunications industry won Canada Best in Business Awards from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. 

Outspoken by Sima Samar, with Sally Armstrong

In her memoir Outspoken , Sima Samar recounts her journey from agreeing to an arranged marriage to be able to attend university to her revolutionary battle for human rights and career as a medical doctor. When her husband disappears under the country's Pro-Russian regime, she flees to the countryside with her son to treat people who had never had access to medical care. Samar's powerful stories bring attention to the corruption of religion and politics that she spent her life fighting against both at home and abroad.

Outspoken is out now.

Samar is a Hazara doctor, human rights defender and activist from Afghanistan who is dedicated to the empowerment of women and girls. She founded Shuhada Organization, a civil society collective that runs schools, hospitals and clinics to provide access to healthcare and education. She served as Minister of Women's Affairs, chaired the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and was appointed as a member of the United Nations Secretary General's High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement in 2019.

• Dr. Sima Samar on fighting for women's rights in Afghanistan

Sally Armstrong is a Canadian author, journalist, human rights activist and documentary filmmaker who covers war and conflict.

Dispersals by Jessica J. Lee

Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging  is a collection of 14 essays that use the global world of flora to examine how the lives of plants and human beings intersect and connect with each other. Blending memoir, scientific research and history, Jessica J. Lee interrogates displacement, identity and belonging to explore the movement and evolution of individuals and plant species across borders.

Dispersals  is out now.

Jessica J. Lee wrote a memoir about her search for her family roots

Lee is a British Canadian Taiwanese author and environmental historian. She won the  2020 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction , the 2021 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature and the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer Award . She is the author of Turning and Two Trees Make a Forest . 

Apocalypse Child by Carly Butler

In Apocalypse Child , Carly Butler recounts growing up in 1990s Montana and moving to the Canadian wilderness at a young age due to her mother's belief in the Evangelical Christian end of the world. Isolated in the woods, her life shifts to learning survival techniques based on religious doctrine and conspiracy theories.

The book explores Butler's resilient journey dealing with the end of the world that never came, motherhood and the development of her queer, Mexican-Indigenous identity. 

Apocalypse Child is out now.

Butler is a B.C.-based author who has written for Loose Lips Magazine. She has been a babysitter, birth doula, barista and house cleaner and identifies as a bisexual Indigenous woman with roots in Mexico.

Motherlike by Katherine Leyton

In her feminist memoir Motherlike , Katherine Leyton blends her personal experiences as a new mother with cultural commentary and historical research. From the challenges of labour and the objectification of women's bodies to the history of the birth control pill, she looks at motherhood as an essential part of human life that is often dismissed in society.

When you can read it: March 19, 2024

Leyton is a nonfiction writer, poet and screenwriter from Toronto. Her first book of poetry All the Gold Hurts My Mouth  won the  2018 ReLit Award for poetry .

52 Weeks to a Sweeter Life  by Farzana Doctor

52 Weeks to a Sweeter Life for Caregivers, Activists and Helping Professionals is a practical guide that offers weekly advice to helpers and activists struggling with exhaustion and burnout. Farzana Doctor uses her own experience as a social worker, community organizer and activist to discuss the challenges and necessity of setting boundaries and preventing overwork in a spirit of self and community care. 

When you can read it: March 23, 2024

Farzana Doctor on why it's great to be a BIPOC writer in Canada

Doctor is an Ontario-based novelist, activist and psychotherapist of Indian ancestry. She is the author of several books, including the poetry collection Seven and the novels All Inclusive and Six Metres of Pavement , which won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award and was shortlisted for a 2012 Toronto Book Award. She was the recipient of the 2011 Dayne Ogilvie Prize from the Writer's Trust of Canada for an emerging lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender writer and the 2023 Freedom to Read Award .

Nowhere, Exactly by M.G. Vassanji

Nowhere, Exactly  examines the challenges around the idea of home, belonging and identity from an immigrant perspective when home is not always one specific place — not the country of origin nor the place of resettlement. M.G. Vassanji reflects on feelings of guilt, loss and gain that come with emigration and the ways that communities and their histories shape individuals.

When you can read it: March 26, 2024

M.G. Vassanji on the sentence that changed his life

Vassanji is a Toronto-based author of Indian descent born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania. His original works include Everything There Is , A Delhi Obsession and The Book of Secrets . He was the recipient of the 1994 and 2003 Giller Prize for best work of fiction for his books The Books of Secrets and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall .

A Darker Shade of Blue by Keith Merith

In A Darker Shade of Blue: A Police Officer's Memoir , Keith Merith chronicles his journey from a teenager disrespected by a white police officer to a York Regional Police superintendent, guided by his mission to create systemic reform from within. He shares his personal experiences as a Black man facing discrimination within law enforcement, but also a strong believer in the police's duty to serve and advocate for the fair and equal treatment of all citizens. 

Merith is a retired police officer who worked for 31 years with York Regional Police. He was the fourth president of the Association of Black Law Enforcers and also worked as a child care worker and correctional officer before entering the police force. 

Medicine Wheel for the Planet by Dr. Jennifer Grenz

In Medicine Wheel for the Planet , restoration ecologist Jennifer Grenz meditates on the disconnect between her training in Western colonial science and her Indigenous worldview to explore the preservation of flora and fauna. Her decades of experience in the Pacific Northwest expose ecology's failure to reach its goal of creating a pre-human, untouched natural world. Based on the knowledge of elders, field observations and sacred stories, Grenz explores land reconciliation and advocates for a diversity of world views to fight against climate change and protect the planet. 

Grenz is a NIaka'pamux ecologist based in British Columbia. She is the founder and leader of Greener This Side, a consulting company that conducts invasive species management and environmental restoration activities for the provincial government and Indigenous communities. She is also an assistant professor in the department of Forest Resources Management at the University of British Columbia. 

The Peace by Roméo Dallaire, with Jessica Dee Humphreys

In The Peace: A Warrior's Journey , Roméo Dallaire proposes the notion of peace as a humanitarian state that rallies people together around the world and challenges the emotional distance that people who are not in danger often feel. He uses his experience as a human rights advocate and peace warrior to offer a new world that prevents violence against all. 

When you can read it: April 2, 2024

Roméo Dallaire on how he'd like to be remembered

Dallaire is a humanitarian, former Lieutenant-General and Canadian senator. He was the Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. 

Beneath the Surface of Things by Wade Davis

Beneath the Surface of Things is an essay collection that dives into the wisdom and opportunity of knowledge under the surface of everyday things. Wade Davis explores diverse topics and events — from the meaning of the sacred to the birth of modernity and the war in the Middle East — from an anthropological lens to bring a promise of hope and discovery. 

When you can read it: April 30, 2024

Saving the planet means listening to Indigenous peoples according to Wade Davis

Davis is a B.C-based professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia. He served as the explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society from 2000 to 2013. He is the author of 23 books, including Into the Silence , which won the 2012 Samuel Johnson nonfiction prize.

Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes  by Adrienne Gruber

In  Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes , Adrienne Gruber explores the theme of motherhood through a collection of essays. It celebrates bodies, maternal bonds, beauty — but also the uglier side of parenthood, the chaos and even how close we are to death at any given moment.

When you can read it:  May 1, 2024

• Books by past CBC Nonfiction Prize finalists being published in 2024

Gruber is a poet and essayist originally from Saskatoon. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently  Q & A , and five chapbooks. She placed third in Event's creative nonfiction contest in 2020 and was the runner up in SubTerrain's creative nonfiction contest in 2023.

Gruber was  longlisted for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize  for  Clocks . In 2020, she made the  CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist  for  Our Feedback Loop, Our Fractal, Our Never-Ending Pattern . Gruber was also on the  longlist for the 2016 CBC Poetry Prize  for  Better Birthing Through Chemistry . 

Small Acts of Courage by Ali Velshi

In Small Acts of Courage: A Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy , Ali Velshi details 125 years of his family's history from India to Gandhi's ashram in South Africa, Kenya, Canada and the United States.

He recounts his relatives' strong belief in equality and public service as they experience discrimination, apartheid and emigration. He stresses the power of action, no matter how small, to fight for social justice and maintain a pluralistic democracy for all. 

When you can read it: May 7, 2024

Velshi is a New York-based Canadian American journalist, anchor and business correspondent with NBC news. He is the host of Velshi  at MSNBC. He won a National Headliner Award for Business & Consumer Reporting for his coverage of the American auto industry and was nominated twice for the News and Documentary Emmy Award for his work on Chicago's red-light camera controversy and disabled workers. 

A Map of the New Normal by Jeff Rubin

In A Map of the New Normal: How Inflation, War, and Sanctions Will Change Your World Forever , Jeff Rubin analyzes the political and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on citizen life.

He explores the interconnected nature of war in Eurasia, the functioning of central banks, foreign markets and global supply chains to show how governments and corporations have an immense impact on the state of western everyday life. 

When you can read it: May 14, 2024

Rubin is a Canadian economist who specializes in trade and energy. He is the author of several books, including The Carbon Bubble and Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller , which was longlisted for the 2009 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award and won the National Business Book Award. Rubin is also the former chief strategist and economist at CIBC World Markets. 

Wînipêk by Niigaan Sinclair

Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre is the story of Winnipeg, told in a series of essays through the lens of Indigenous resilience and reconciliation.

From the Indian Act and atrocities of colonialism to the creativity and ferocity of the Indigenous peoples preserving their heritage, Sinclair illustrates the way a place — how we love, lose, and fight for it — can help pave the way for the future of an entire country.

When you can read it: May 28, 2024

Niigaanwewidam Sinclair on why you should read Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island

Niigaan Sinclair is an Anishinaabe (St. Peter's/Little Peguis) thinker and assistant professor of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba. He has written for The Exile Edition of Native Canadian Fiction and Drama , The Guardian and CBC Books and is a regular contributor on APTN, CTV and CBC News. Sinclair is also the editor of The Debwe Series and the author and co-editor of award-winning Manitowapow and Centreing Anishinaabeg Studies . 

Crooked Teeth by Danny Ramadan

While Danny Ramadan is known for his powerful fiction about queer Syrian-Canadian experiences, he's never written about it with such a personal lens — until now.

Crooked Teeth  is his latest project, a memoir, that refutes the oversimplified refugee narrative and transports readers on an epic and often fraught journey from Damascus to Cairo, Beirut and Vancouver. Told with nuance and fearless intimacy,  Crooked Teeth  revisits parts of Ramadan's past he'd rather forget. 

Danny Ramadan gets raw and real in his new memoir Crooked Teeth

Ramadan is a Vancouver-based Syrian-Canadian author and advocate. His debut novel The Clothesline Swing was longlisted for Canada Reads in 2018 and his second novel The Foghorn Echoes won a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction.

Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas by Gloria Blizzard

Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas is a collection of poetry and narrative essays on motion, memory and music. Gloria Blizzard examines the nuances of language, geography and culture from an international diasporic lens. 

When you can read it: June 4, 2024

Canada-born. Trinidad-raised. How music helped me harmonize my identities.

Blizzard is a Toronto-based nonfiction writer, poet and songwriter who explores the intersections of music, dance, spirit and culture. Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas is her first book. 

A Gentleman and a Thief by Dean Jobb

A Gentleman and a Thief : The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue looks at the criminal exploits of Arthur Barry, one of the most successful thieves in history who stole today's equivalent of $60 million in diamonds, precious gems and pearls over seven years.

Barry befriended aristocracy and stole from elite business magnates such as a Rockefeller and a General Motors executive. The book also chronicles his love for his wife Anna Blake, for whom he committed burglaries and staged a prison escape to spend time with her as her illness progressed. 

12 mystery and crime books to keep you on the edge of your seat this summer

Dean Jobb is a journalist and author who teaches nonfiction writing and journalism at University of King's College in Halifax. He writes for the Chicago Tribune, the Globe and Mail and has a monthly crime column in the Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He is also the author of   Empire of Deception that was named the Nonfiction Book of the Year by the Chicago Writers Association and The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream , which won the 2022 CrimeCon CLUE Award for true crime Book of the Year.

North of Nowhere by Marie Wilson

Part documentary and part memoir,  North of Nowhere  is an account of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada by one of the three commissioners. A mother, journalist and the spouse of a residential school survivor, Marie Wilson is a compassionate and skilled guide as she honours the voices of survivors and calls Canada to action. 

When you can read it: June 11, 2024

Wilson spent over three decades as a journalist in Canada's North, serving as CBC North's regional director and creating the first daily television news service in 1995. She served as one of the three commissioners on Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission to create a record of the abuses of the residential school systems and recommend ways to move forward. 

Corrections

• This post has been updated to reflect the correct release date for A Gentleman and a Thief by Dean Jobb. Mar 20, 2024 10:38 AM ET

Related Stories

• Canada Reads Heather O'Neill, championing The Future by Catherine Leroux, wins Canada Reads 2024
• WINTER READING LIST 30 Canadian books to read in winter 2024
• The best moments from Canada Reads 2024

Add some “good” to your morning and evening.

Sign up for our newsletter. We’ll send you book recommendations, CanLit news, the best author interviews on CBC and more.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

• LISTEN & FOLLOW
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Amazon Music

Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free feed.

Historian Charles Spencer on his memoir 'A Very Private School'

Scott Simon

NPR's Scott Simon talks with Charles Spencer, historian and Princess Diana's brother, about his memoir, "A Very Private School." It relates disturbing stories about his time in boarding school.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Charles Spencer's new memoir about his five years at a posh British boys school is often sad and shocking. Presents individual teachers, staff and the headmaster at Britain's Maidwell Hall in the 1970s, who were abusive and cruel to students in the most intimate ways. Much of this discussion may be painful to hear. His memoir "A Very Private School." And Charles Spencer, the 9th Earl Spencer, brother of Princess Diana, an author of several histories, joins us now from London. Thanks so much for being with us.

CHARLES SPENCER: It's my pleasure. Thank you.

SIMON: You were 8 you when you were taken to this prestigious school. Is it hard even to look at the photo of the - what seems to be a joyless young boy on the book's cover?

SPENCER: Well, it's 51 years on from when I went there, and I still have nightmares about that place - to be packed off to a boarding school for my first term - my first semester was 13 weeks - was a very daunting prospect indeed, and one that frankly, at 8, I just couldn't understand on any level.

SIMON: You write in this memoir that you found, quote, "a mix of quiet and secrecy." You write, many of these adults weren't there for the boys' best interest, but to meet their own darker needs. What were these so-called needs?

SPENCER: The name of the book is opposite. It's called "A Very Private School," and it was ruled by an extraordinarily frightening and powerful headmaster, Mr. Porch. And his needs - it was clear to me and clear to my contemporaries - were those of a sadist and pedophile. And he had complete control. It's an extraordinary amount of power that boarding school masters had in those days. We had no communication with the outside world apart from our weekly letter home. And this deviant headmaster was able to staff his institution according to his own needs. These were unregulated amateurs who wanted to find somewhere where no one was going to pay too much attention to what they were getting on with.

SIMON: Headmaster Porch supervised your daily prayers. I feel the need to be specific. What would he do to you, his students, at night?

SPENCER: Yes. So the headmaster, Mr. Porch, presented to the world, and particularly to the parents, as this devout Christian who - the parents could feel very confident that their boys were in safe Christian hands. But it pretty much seems to me that the school was based around a need, and that was the need for Mr. Porch to be presented with half a dozen pairs of buttocks every evening to beat. And every week, at least once a week, quite a lot of us boys - and there were only 70 to 75 of us there at any one time - would be caned with our underpants down. And he had this art of delivering five parallel strokes of the cane, and then the sixth would go across the other five for added pain. And I'm afraid to say it was very clear that he was physically aroused by dishing out these punishments.

SIMON: Ugh. And I have to ask about the third senior master, the Honorable Henry Cornwallis Maude. Ah. He was master...

SPENCER: Well, he's a chilling figure.

SIMON: Yeah. No, please tell us.

SPENCER: It was interesting when I was writing the book. I didn't put it in the end manuscript, but every single one of my contemporaries I spoke to - and there was two dozen of them - every time Mr. Maude's name was mentioned, there was still a visible shudder in them 'cause he was just so terrifying. He came from an aristocratic family, and he could be utterly charming to the parents. But as soon as they were gone, he was terrifying.

He enjoyed inspecting the boys at shower time, when, of course, we were naked. And he would grab us by the limbs and just lash out and hurt us. I remember once I was in the changing room getting changed into cricket boots, which were spiked metal boots, and I happen to be alone, and he just seized me. I hadn't done anything wrong. He seized me and beat me with my cricket boot, and obviously, the spikes went in and drew blood - so a chilling man, and I believe also - well, clearly, a sexual pervert.

SIMON: Even moments that seemed like fun could be troubled. There's an assistant matron you refer to as Please, who would sneak snacks into your room at night, but for a price, is the way I'll put it.

SPENCER: Yes. So in this very chilled landscape, it was very exciting to have this young assistant matron. She's probably around 20 when I was 11. And we slept in dormitories. And there were two dormitories up near her bedroom. So it wasn't patrolled by any of the other staff 'cause they felt she had us - she would be there to look after us. And I've always been a light sleeper. And I woke up to hear voices, and it was her dishing out cookies and grapes. And then later that night, I woke up to work out that she'd come back again. And I don't know what the right term is, but she set about seducing me, as an 11-year-old, and she was a woman. And, you know, it seemed very exciting at the time. But of course, it was perversion at its worst.

SIMON: I appreciate this is going to sound naive, but I think a lot of people listening to us. May want to ask, why didn't you tell your parents?

SPENCER: It is a question. I think the main answer - not one of my contemporaries told our parents. And I think you have to remember how very young we were - 8-, 9-, 10-, 11-, 12-year-old boys. We had no context to our lives. We didn't know how abnormal this was. We also had very limited relationships with our parents.

One of my contemporaries said the strangest thing about his first day at this boarding school was being driven there by his father - 'cause they had never actually been alone before. This is him as an 8-year-old. They'd never been alone and had a conversation before. But his father wanted to take him school to warn him that some of the older boys might find him attractive, so that was the reason for that conversation.

Essentially, it comes down to just not knowing how wrong it was at the time and just thinking also - I know this from my point of view - I assume my parents were all-seeing, all-knowing beings and that they wouldn't have sent me there if they didn't know what it was like.

SIMON: We ought to mention Headmaster Porch, whom you name, is deceased, and you make it clear in the book that you believe the school's a very different place now.

SPENCER: Yes. I think essentially, this was a regime of one man. And Mr. Porch left very suddenly a year after I graduated from the school. I assume that he was found out on some level because although he was only young for a headmaster - he was, like, 51, I think, when he departed - he never had another job in another school.

The worst part of writing this book was - you know, I have a journalistic and author background - was listening to other people's - what happened to my friends, what happened to my classmates because it was such - it was all done so privately and so cleverly. And I imagine it's a typical way that abusers operate. They're going to do it in the shadows. And I felt this despair - not about my own experiences - because I understood them - but it was listening to other people and what they had gone through.

And in a way, I know this sounds mad because I was a little boy back then, but I was quite a big presence at the school academically and sportingly and all of that sort of thing. But some of these who were picked on were very quiet, sweet kids who've had their lives ruined.

SIMON: You will turn 60 in a few weeks.

SPENCER: Yes.

SIMON: How do you think this experience still affects you?

SPENCER: There will always be a part of me that's snared by what happened at that school. But I have worked very hard over the last few decades to come to terms with that. I say it in the book, actually, but to survive, to navigate this incredibly bleak environment, a small but important part of me had to die. I'll never resurrect the full sensitivity that I would have had in a more reasonable and sensible place. I know that, but that's that's what's happened. But I am in a much better place than I was before I wrote this book.

SIMON: Charles Spencer, his memoir, "A Very Private School." Thank you so much for being with us.

SPENCER: It was a pleasure. Thank you so much.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: And in a statement to NPR, Maidwell Hall school says, quote, "almost every facet of school life has evolved significantly since the 1970s. At the heart of the changes is the safeguarding of children and the promotion of their welfare. Although we have not directly received any claims from ex-pupils, the school has made a referral to authorities and would encourage anyone with similar experiences to come forward and contact either Maidwell Hall or the police."

Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

The Cowardice of Guernica

The literary magazine Guernica ’s decision to retract an essay about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reveals much about how the war is hardening human sentiment.

Listen to this article

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

In the days after October 7, the writer and translator Joanna Chen spoke with a neighbor in Israel whose children were frightened by the constant sound of warplanes. “I tell them these are good booms,” the neighbor said to Chen with a grimace. “I understood the subtext,” Chen wrote later in an essay published in Guernica magazine on March 4, titled “From the Edges of a Broken World.” The booms were, of course, the Israeli army bombing Gaza, part of a campaign that has left at least 30,000 civilians and combatants dead so far.

The moment is just one observation in a much longer meditative piece of writing in which Chen weighs her principles—for years she has volunteered at a charity providing transportation for Palestinian children needing medical care, and works on Arabic and Hebrew translations to bridge cultural divides—against the more turbulent feelings of fear, inadequacy, and split allegiances that have cropped up for her after October 7, when 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage in Hamas’s assault on Israel. But the conversation with the neighbor is a sharp, novelistic, and telling moment. The mother, aware of the perversity of recasting bombs killing children mere miles away as “good booms,” does so anyway because she is a mother, and her children are frightened. The act, at once callous and caring, will stay with me.

Not with the readers of Guernica , though. The magazine , once a prominent publication for fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction, with a focus on global art and politics, quickly found itself imploding as its all-volunteer staff revolted over the essay. One of the magazine’s nonfiction editors posted on social media that she was leaving over Chen’s publication. “Parts of the essay felt particularly harmful and disorienting to read, such as the line where a person is quoted saying ‘I tell them these are good booms.’” Soon a poetry editor resigned as well, calling Chen’s essay a “horrific settler normalization essay”— settler here seeming to refer to all Israelis, because Chen does not live in the occupied territories. More staff members followed, including the senior nonfiction editor and one of the co-publishers (who criticized the essay as “a hand-wringing apologia for Zionism”). Amid this flurry of cascading outrage, on March 10 Guernica pulled the essay from its website, with the note: “ Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it. A more fulsome explanation will follow.” As of today, this explanation is still pending, and my request for comment from the editor in chief, Jina Moore Ngarambe, has gone unanswered.

Read: Beware the language that erases reality

Blowups at literary journals are not the most pressing news of the day, but the incident at Guernica reveals the extent to which elite American literary outlets may now be beholden to the narrowest polemical and moralistic approaches to literature. After the publication of Chen’s essay, a parade of mutual incomprehension occurred across social media, with pro-Palestine writers announcing what they declared to be the self-evident awfulness of the essay (publishing the essay made Guernica “a pillar of eugenicist white colonialism masquerading as goodness,” wrote one of the now-former editors), while reader after reader who came to it because of the controversy—an archived version can still be accessed—commented that they didn’t understand what was objectionable. One reader seemed to have mistakenly assumed that Guernica had pulled the essay in response to pressure from pro-Israel critics. “Oh buddy you can’t have your civilian population empathizing with the people you’re ethnically cleansing,” he wrote, with obvious sarcasm. When another reader pointed out that he had it backwards, he responded, “This chain of events is bizarre.”

Some people saw anti-Semitism in the decision. James Palmer, a deputy editor of Foreign Policy , noted how absurd it was to suggest that the author approved of the “good bombs” sentiment, and wrote that the outcry was “one step toward trying to exclude Jews from discourse altogether.” And it is hard not to see some anti-Semitism at play. One of the resigning editors claimed that the essay “includes random untrue fantasies about Hamas and centers the suffering of oppressors” (Chen briefly mentions the well-documented atrocities of October 7; caring for an Israeli family that lost a daughter, son-in-law, and nephew; and her worries about the fate of Palestinians she knows who have links to Israel).

Madhuri Sastry, one of the co-publishers, notes in her resignation post that she’d earlier successfully insisted on barring a previous essay of Chen’s from the magazine’s Voices on Palestine compilation. In that same compilation, Guernica chose to include an interview with Alice Walker, the author of a poem that asks “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews,” and who once recommended to readers of The New York Times a book that claims that “a small Jewish clique” helped plan the Russian Revolution, World Wars I and II, and “coldly calculated” the Holocaust. No one at Guernica publicly resigned over the magazine’s association with Walker.

However, to merely dismiss all of the critics out of hand as insane or intolerant or anti-Semitic would ironically run counter to the spirit of Chen’s essay itself. She writes of her desire to reach out to those on the other side of the conflict, people she’s worked with or known and who would be angered or horrified by some of the other experiences she relates in the essay, such as the conversation about the “good booms.” Given the realities of the conflict, she knows this attempt to connect is just a first step, and an often-frustrating one. Writing to a Palestinian she’d once worked with as a reporter, she laments her failure to come up with something meaningful to say: “I also felt stupid—this was war, and whether I liked it or not, Nuha and I were standing at opposite ends of the very bridge I hoped to cross. I had been naive … I was inadequate.” In another scene, she notes how even before October 7, when groups of Palestinians and Israelis joined together to share their stories, their goodwill failed “to straddle the chasm that divided us.”

Read: Why activism leads to so much bad writing

After the publication of Chen’s essay, one writer after another pulled their work from the magazine. One wrote, “I will not allow my work to be curated alongside settler angst,” while another, the Texas-based Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah, wrote that Chen’s essay “is humiliating to Palestinians in any time let alone during a genocide. An essay as if a dispatch from a colonial century ago. Oh how good you are to the natives.” I find it hard to read the essay that way, but it would be a mistake, as Chen herself suggests, to ignore such sentiments. For those who more naturally sympathize with the Israeli mother than the Gazan hiding from the bombs, these responses exist across that chasm Chen describes, one that empathy alone is incapable of bridging.

That doesn’t mean empathy isn’t a start, though. Which is why the retraction of the article is more than an act of cowardice and a betrayal of a writer whose work the magazine shepherded to publication. It’s a betrayal of the task of literature, which cannot end wars but can help us see why people wage them, oppose them, or become complicit in them.

Empathy here does not justify or condemn. Empathy is just a tool. The writer needs it to accurately depict their subject; the peacemaker needs it to be able to trace the possibilities for negotiation; even the soldier needs it to understand his adversary. Before we act, we must see war’s human terrain in all its complexity, no matter how disorienting and painful that might be. Which means seeing Israelis as well as Palestinians—and not simply the mother comforting her children as the bombs fall and the essayist reaching out across the divide, but far harsher and more unsettling perspectives. Peace is not made between angels and demons but between human beings, and the real hell of life, as Jean Renoir once noted, is that everybody has their reasons. If your journal can’t publish work that deals with such messy realities, then your editors might as well resign, because you’ve turned your back on literature.