“The finalists were all top notch, but Sinking Lessons grabbed hold of the terrible awe of living at sea and I couldn’t look away. The essay packs the emotional punch of a great sea shanty. It’s alive and evocative. It smells of salt and sea and vomit. It’s moving, layered and very strange. I loved it.—”Susannah Cahalan, judge, Narratively Memoir Prize
Longreads Editors’ Pick
Sinking Lessons was selected as one of the week’s Editors’ Picks by Longreads.
The Republic of Letters
Here I Am. I Know to Duck. was published by The Republic of Letters in August 2026.
“…writes about it all with grace, unflinching honesty, and sterling creativity.”—Sam Kahn, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, The Republic of Letters
“Wonderful piece. I think there is a memoir in this line: ‘Child sexual abuse is in the news a fair amount these days. A mother-son dynamic never comes up. I get why. But it’s a thing, and for me, that thing was knot upon knot of emotional and sexual confusion.’”—John Julius Reel, author of Rants From a Foreign Land
A Year In Ink
Emoticon was published in A Year in Ink, Vol. 18, in 2026.
“I don't think I've ever read a more powerful description … of addiction in my entire life.”—Larry Urish
“Can't remember having read something that so superbly blurs and marries the edges of poetry and prose.”—Rick Lewis, Honestly Human
Shaking the Tree
A Stranger at the Table was published in Shaking the Tree: Funny, Not Funny in 2026.
“Beautiful, devastating, not one spare word.”—Mary Becket Bissonnette
Are You Talking to Me?
“I don't think I've ever felt so wrong about laughing for such a prolonged period of time. Am I a bad person for admitting how much I enjoyed reading this? I hope not because I need more”—Zach Kirshner