Personal Essay

In this meditation on celebrity, power, and a simple thank-you, Mindy Kaling takes the next charmed step in her path from Conan intern to mogul: picking up the entire tab for a famous A-lister. It’s an investment, right? He’ll be blown away by her class. They’ll be best friends forever. Forty thankless seconds later, who wouldn’t spiral into self-doubt, second-guessing, over-rationalizing, and anxious obsession?

Welcome to essayist Kimberly Harrington’s poetic and funny world of motherhood, womanhood, and humanhood, not necessarily in that order. It’s a place of loud parenting, fierce loving, too much social media, and occasional inner monologues where timeless debates are resolved such as Pro/Con: Caving to PTO Bake Sale Pressure (“Pro: Skim the crappiest brownies for myself. Con: They’re really crappy.”) With accessibility and wit, she captures the emotions around parenthood in artful and earnest ways.

Over the course of four years, the traveling love rally called Together Live brought together diverse storytellers for epic evenings of laughter, music, and hard-won wisdom to huge audiences across the country. Well-known womxn (and the occasional man) from all walks of life shared their most vulnerable truths in a radical act of love, paving the way for healing in the face of adversity.

Celebrated as one of the most poignant stylists of his generation, André Aciman has written a luminous series of linked essays about time, place, identity, and art that show him at his very finest. From beautiful and moving pieces about the memory evoked by the scent of lavender; to meditations on cities like Barcelona, Rome, Paris, and New York; to his sheer ability to unearth life secrets from an ordinary street corner, Alibis reminds the listener that Aciman is a master of the personal essay.

A growing number of intrepid Arab and Middle Eastern sahafiyat - female journalists - are working tirelessly to shape nuanced narratives about their changing homelands, often risking their lives on the front lines of war. From sexual harassment on the streets of Cairo to the difficulty of traveling without a male relative in Yemen, their challenges are unique - as are their advantages, such as being able to speak candidly with other women at a Syrian medical clinic or with men on Whatsapp who will go on to become ISIS fighters, rebels, or pro-regime soldiers.

After a friend real-talks Mindy into hiring a baby nurse, she finds the help she needs--and so much more--in this soulful essay by the acclaimed writer, actress, producer, and director. Becoming a new mother after losing her own, Mindy Kaling needs help--like someone to answer the questions What is a baby, and why don’t they have kneecaps? Enter Rose. The in-demand, dedicated baby nurse alleviates Mindy’s fears, from the minor to the profound.

Even though early adulthood doesn’t look just like Sex and the City or Thirteen Going on Thirty the way Eli thought it would, with Does Anyone Else Feel This Way? Eli shows you that you’re not the only one who misses the days when they could swing by the dining hall or just wants to call their mom to make it all go away. With a look at her own misadventures and hard-won life lessons, Eli shares the journey she’s been on to find herself as an adult, and the twists and turns she’s taken while navigating her own quarter-life crisis.

The intersection of motherhood and creative life is explored in these writings on mothering that turn the spotlight from the child to the mother herself. Here, in memoirs, testimonials, diaries, essays, and fiction, mothers describe firsthand the changes brought to their lives by pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering.

Can you see God? You don't have to be a mystic to see God's presence in your life. Prayer, community, silence, and the ordinary can be opportunities to see God. This book's series of personal essays explores how we can see God in our everyday lives, from the miraculous to the mundane and even the suffering.

Insights & Distinctions takes us on a wonderful journey to the heart of the matter of our lives, to what matters most. It points out what's possible if we step outside of what we know, and recognize and embrace our capacity to bring forth an entirely new possibility for living - not because it is better, but simply because that is what human beings can do. Landmark Forum leaders Nancy Zapolski and Joe DiMaggio push boundaries and bring forth what's possible in being human in this book of essays.

Collecting the most celebrated stories from the hit podcast RISK!, along with all-new true tales about explosive secrets and off-the-wall adventures, this book paints a spellbinding portrait of the transformational moments we experience in life but rarely talk about. No topics are off-limits in RISK!, no memories too revealing to share. From accidentally harboring a teen fugitive to being poisoned while tripping on LSD in the Mayan ruins, these stories transport readers into uncharted territory and show how your life can change when you take an extraordinary leap.

We are not defined by our losses, we are defined by how we rose back up despite our losses. Each time we bounce back, each time we become tougher to kill. Turn your setbacks into legendary comebacks. In Comeback Kid, you will learn the differences between short term thinking versus long term thinking, the main trait all creative people have in common, dangers of glorifying someone, unlocking inspiration at will, and much more.

Learn how to leverage dark psychology and emotional manipulation techniques to get what you want out of people.

Swim is a celebration of swimming and the effect it has on our lives. It's an inquiry into why we swim - the lure, the hold, the timeless magic of being in the water. It's a look at how swimming has changed over the millennia, how this ancient activity is becoming more social than solitary today. It's about our relationship with the water, with our fishy forebearers, and with the costumes that we wear. You'll even find a few songs to sing when you push out those next laps.

Motherhood is the toughest - and funniest - job you'll ever love. Raising kids is hard work. The pay sucks, your boss is a tyrant, and the working conditions are pitiful - you can't even take a bathroom break without being interrupted with another outrageous demand. Hasn't every mother said it before? "I just want to pee alone!" Hear these hysterical essays.

Este libro descubre cómo nuestro orden político, cultural y religioso se basa en traducciones erróneas; cómo un oficio considerado casi doméstico está manchado por la sangre de quienes lo ejercen; cómo el prestigio de los escritores que se aventuran en este campo puede ser cuestionado; cómo, a pesar de su importante trabajo, las mujeres son también aquí invisibles. La traducción es un espejo donde el síndrome de la impostora cobra un hondo sentido existencial.

En los ensayos de Ralph Waldo Emerson, se pueden observar los orígenes de varias corrientes de pensamiento, religión y arte que singularizan el mundo contemporáneo hasta nuestros días. El trascendentalismo de R. W. Emerson, su investigación de la unidad que subyace tras toda diversidad, su comprensión íntima de la ley de la interconexión y de la causalidad que teje los lazos entre todo lo existente, es sin duda alguna una pedagogía optimista y revolucionaria que muestra al lector sus posibilidades latentes para llegar a ser aquello para lo que ha venido a este mundo.

In the Absence of the Ordinary frames our current era as a rough initiation—an upending experience of profound trauma and transformation that demands we reorient our ways of thinking, being, and relating. Through essays like “Some People Wake Up…,” “The Gift of Restraint,” and “Gratitude for All That Is,” Weller offers clarity and wisdom on how to face the sobering stakes of our time—while offering the nourishment and support we need to embody the new roles this initiation requires.

Why do we cook? Is it just to feed ourselves and others? Or is there something more revolutionary going on? In Small Fires, Rebecca May Johnson reinvents cooking—that simple act of rolling up our sleeves, wielding a knife, spattering red hot sauce on our books—as a way of experiencing ourselves and the world. Cooking is thinking: about the liberating constraint of tying apron strings; the transformative dynamics of shared meals; the meaning of appetite and bodily pleasure; the wild subversiveness of the recipe, beyond words or control.

Although Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee had been reading each other’s books for years, the two writers did not meet until February 2008. Not long after, Auster received a letter from Coetzee, suggesting they begin exchanging letters on a regular basis and, “God willing, strike sparks off each other.” Here and Now is the result of that proposal: the epistolary dialogue between two great writers who became great friends. Over three years their letters touched on nearly every subject, from sports to fatherhood, film festivals to incest, philosophy to politics....