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Misc. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes! by Tom Wolfe. Masters of the Universe Go to Camp by Philip Weiss. What Is Glitter? by Caity Weaver. The best short articles, nonfiction and essays from around the net - interesting articles and essays on every subject, all free to read online.
Besides essays on Book Riot, I love looking for essays on The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Rumpus, and Electric Literature. But there are great nonfiction essays available for free all over the Internet. From contemporary to classic writers and personal essays to researched ones—here are 25 of my favorite nonfiction essays you can read today.
The Same River Twice by David Quammen. You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on. To most people it comes across as a nice resonant metaphor, a bit of philosophic poetry. To me it is that and more.
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- Memoir Essay Examples
- Short Memoirs About Growing Up
- Funny Short Memoirs
- Thought-Provoking Short Memoirs
- Classic Short Memoirs
- Multi-Media Short Memoirs
As the lit magazine Creative Nonfictionputs it, personal essays are just “True stories, well told.” And everyone has life stories worth telling. Here are a few of my favorite memoir examples that are essay length.
SCAACHI KOUL, “THERE’S NO RECIPE FOR GROWING UP”
In this delightful essay, Koul talks about trying to learn the secrets of her mother’s Kashmiri cooking after growing up a first-generation American. The story is full of vivid descriptions and anecdotal details that capture something so specific it transcends to the realm of universal. It’s smart, it’s funny, and it’ll break your heart a little as Koul describes “trying to find my mom at the bottom of a 20-quart pot.”
ASHLEY C. FORD, “THE YEAR I GREW WILDLY WHILE MEN LOOKED ON”
This memoir essay is for all the girls who went through puberty early in a world that sexualizes children’s bodies. Ford weaves together her experiences of feeling at odds with her body, of being seen as a “distraction” to adult men, of being Black and fatherless and hungry for love. She writes, “It was evident that who I was inside, who I wanted to be, didn’t match the intentions of my body. Outside, there was no little girl to be loved innocently. My body was a barrier.”
Kaveh Akbar, “How I Found Poetry in Childhood Prayer”
Akbar writes intense, searing poetry, but this personal essay contextualizes one of his sweetest poems, “Learning to Pray,” which is cradled in the middle of it. He describes how he fell in love with the movement, the language, and the ceremony of his Muslim family’s nightly prayers. Even though he didn’t (and doesn’t) speak Arabic, Akbar points to the musicality of these phonetically-learned hymns as “the bedrock upon which I’ve built my understanding of poetry as a craft and as a meditative...
PATRICIA LOCKWOOD, “INSANE AFTER CORONAVIRUS?”
Author Patricia Lockwood caught COVID-19 in early March 2020. In addition to her physical symptoms, she chronicled the bizarre delusions she experienced while society also collectively operated under the delusion that this whole thing would blow over quickly. Lockwood has a preternatural ability to inject humor into any situation, even the dire ones, by highlighting choice absurdities. This is a rare piece of pandemic writing that will make you laugh instead of cry–unless it makes you cry fro...
Harrison Scott Key, “My Dad Tried to Kill Me with an Alligator”
This personal essay is a tongue-in-cheek story about the author’s run-in with an alligator on the Pearl River in Mississippi. Looking back on the event as an adult, Key considers his father’s tendencies in light of his own, now that he himself is a dad. He explores this relationship further in his book-length memoir, The World’s Largest Man, but this humorous essay stands on its own. (I also had the pleasure of hearing him read this aloud during my school’s homecoming weekend, as Key is an al...
David Sedaris, “Me Talk Pretty One Day”
Sedaris’s humor is in a league of its own, and he’s at his best in the title essay from Me Talk Pretty One Day. In it, he manages to capture the linguistic hilarities that ensue when you combine a sarcastic, middle-aged French student with a snarky French teacher.
TOMMY ORANGE, “HOW NATIVE AMERICAN IS NATIVE AMERICAN ENOUGH?”
Many people claim some percentage of Indigenous ancestry, but how much is enough to “count”? Novelist Tommy Orange–author of There There–deconstructs this concept, discussing his relationship to his Native father, his Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, and his son, who will not be considered “Native enough” to join him as an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.“How come math isn’t taught with stakes?” he asks in this short memoir full of lingering questions that will challe...
Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, “I Had a Stroke at 33”
Lee’s story is interesting not just because she had a stroke at such a young age, but because of how she recounts an experience that was characterized by forgetting. She says that after her stroke, “For a month, every moment of the day was like the moment upon wakening before you figure out where you are, what time it is.” With this personal essay, she draws readers into that fragmented headspace, then weaves something coherent and beautiful from it.
Kyoko Mori, “A Difficult Balance: Am I a Writer or a Teacher?”
In this refreshing essay, Mori discusses balancing “the double calling” of being a writer and a teacher. She admits that teaching felt antithetical to her sense of self when she started out in a classroom of apathetic college freshmen. When she found her way into teaching an MFA program, however, she discovered that fostering a sanctuary for others’ words and ideas felt closer to a “calling.” While in some ways this makes the balance of shifting personas easier, she says it creates a differen...
JOAN DIDION, “GOODBYE TO ALL THAT”
Didion is one of the foremost literary memoirists of the twentieth century, combining journalistic precision with self-aware introspection. In “Goodbye to All That,” Didion recounts moving to New York as a naïve 20-year-old and leaving as a disillusioned 28-year-old. She captures the mystical awe with which outsiders view the Big Apple, reflecting on her youthful perspective that life was still limitless, “that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.” This essay c...
Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried”
This is the title essay from O’Brien’s collection, The Things They Carried. It’s technically labeled a work of fiction, but because the themes and anecdotes are pulled from O’Brien’s own experience in the Vietnam War, it blurs the lines between fact and fiction enough to be included here. (I’m admittedly predisposed to this classification because a college writing professor of mine included it on our creative nonfiction syllabus.) The essay paints an intimate portrait of a group of soldiers b...
George Watsky, “Ask Me What I’m Doing Tonight”
Watsky is a rapper and spoken word poet who built his following on YouTube. Before he made it big, however, he spent five years performing for groups of college students across the Midwest. “Ask Me What I’m Doing Tonight!” traces that soul-crushing monotony while telling a compelling story about trying to connect with people despite such transience. It’s the most interesting essay about boredom you’ll ever read, or in this case watch—he filmed a short film version of the essay for his YouTube...
- Emily Polson
This book is a free and open resource to composition instructors and students, full of essays that could supplement OER rhetoric and writing texts that lacked readings. All of the essays in this … 88 Open Essays - A Reader for Students of Composition & Rhetoric (Wangler and Ulrich) - Humanities LibreTexts
Popular Essay Topics. In this section, you can find free samples of some of the most popular essay topics. The papers are written by English-speaking students from a variety of backgrounds. Armed Hostilities 700. Civil War Cold War Imperialism Nationalism World War 2. Art 2724.
Jan 24, 2020 · Harrison Scott Key is the author of two memoirs: Congratulations, Who Are You Again? and The World’s Largest Man. Key details one humorous afternoon on Mississippi’s Pearl River, where he believes his brother’s “badass” antics and his father’s gruff and wild nature almost led to his death-by-alligator.
