I Went to a Party All About Sexual Desire and Here’s What Happened, Glamour (Selected)

A woman welcomes me to the party with a blue ball and instructions to drop it in one of the plastic boxes lining the back wall. They’re labeled: "ashamed," "disconnected," "frustrated," "anxious," "neutral," "curious," "relaxed," "excited," "confident." I’m supposed to choose the one that best represents how I feel talking about sexual desire.

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At 28, Amanda de Cadenet Was Motorbiking With Keanu Reeves, Bustle 

Amanda de Cadenet had her first identity crisis at age 22 when she decided to get sober. Fast-forward to 28, and she’d already lived several public lives: as a tabloid subject, teenage runaway, television host, actor, young mother, wife to Duran Duran bassist John Taylor, and six years later, divorcée. She was ready for another change.

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Fantasma, PANK

My first memory of Florence is twisted ankles. I’d packed just one pair of boots: light faux leather, popular at the time, but with no tread, causing me to perpetually slip into the generous gaps between cobblestones slick with gutter runoff. The rain’s gloss resembled skin stretched tight over the city’s streets.

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How Time Works, Creative Nonfiction

After my father toured what would become our neighborhood in Fairfax, California, he knocked on the nearest door and asked the man who answered if it was nice living there. That man told me this story years later as he walked me across the street to the house my father bought after their meeting.

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I Had to Practice Saying I Was Raped. Now I Have to Practice Saying I Have PTSD, Glamour (Selected)

I got a UTI two to three times a month when I was being repeatedly raped. I went to a doctor, and they asked if I was bathing enough, and then prescribed a preventative antibiotic to take before I had sex. Though my body was clearly rebelling against what was happening, no one listened to it—including me. The doctor didn’t ask if my sexually active relationship was consensual or not, and I didn’t have the language to tell them otherwise.

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What I Was Doing While You Were Reading 'Eat Pray Love', Electric Literature

I was a bookseller when I first encountered Kristin Newman’s travel memoir nestled among the morning delivery. Squinting for a moment, I recognized the red blob beneath the title — What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding — as a lipstick kiss on an airplane window.

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The Mirror of Erised: On Death, Harry Potter, and Retreating to Childhood Reads, The Millions

I’d known Monica 20 years when her sister was killed in a hit-and-run motorcycle accident. We spent our childhoods in a tiny Bay Area town that I left at 14. I only went back to visit twice.

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I Wanted to Be Sure to Reach You, The Rumpus

The wind kicks up as I wait for the 8 p.m. bus, so I wedge my gloved hands into my armpits. I’ll eat Cream of Wheat for dinner because I can’t afford meat, I tell my mother back home. I’m lying; I can’t keep solid food down anymore.

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Against Writing, Essay Daily

My editing style is of the cut-n-run variety. If a reader tells me a moment in my essay isn’t working, I double-check the sentence in question, and promptly put it out of its misery with a cruel highlight and press of “delete.” After seven years in book publishing, the act is second nature to me

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It Hurts to Go Home: Writing What Doesn't Belong Only to You, Brevity 

I don’t remember the Pences’ pink magnolia tree until I’m looking up at it, pinching a fallen blossom between my thumb and forefinger until the petal bruises a light brown. My childhood home is across the street.

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Plot Twist, Generation Women

Sometimes, life throws you a curveball. In our last show for 2022, we’ve invited our line-up to tell us stories of change. It might be a transformation they initiated, or a transition that happened to them. New paths can be invigorating and exciting, or confusing and downright scary. Regardless, the only constant in life is change, so this November, come hear a night of stories about forging your own path, wherever where that path takes you.

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Travel Writing is Bad, Public Intellectual

There are consequences to travel. From the environmental impact of international flights, to massive displacement in trendy neighborhoods for air bnb vacation rentals, to unfair distribution of tourist dollars, and so on. But travel writing has never been great at dealing with the ethical or moral questions of travel. It’s very narcissistic and internal. The point of travel, as viewed through the travel writer, is the impact the journey is having on the traveler, not the impact the traveler is having on the place. In this episode, Jessa calls writer Haley Swanson to discuss these ideas.

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