Personal Essay

Everyone has a story, and helping people tell their stories has been Nancy Slonim Aronie’s life mission. Building on her acclaimed Memoir as Medicine, this new guide tackles the short personal essay. With warmth and humor, Nancy provides prompts, inspiration, and hard-won wisdom to empower you to write an unforgettable narrative. You’ll learn to begin with an irresistible hook (“kill ’em with the first line”) and employ compelling direct quotes, drama, vulnerability, universal themes, and self-reflection to get readers into your corner.

Landmark Essays, Volume 2 continues 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.

The only thing bigger than Carrie Hope Fletcher’s hair is her heart. Eternally upbeat, this twenty-two-year-old dynamo has sung her way to fame, both as Éponine in the London cast of Les Mis, and on her wildly popular YouTube channel, It’s Way Past My Bedtime. But here’s her not-so-secret...

The essential guide to crafting the winning college admissions essay that only you could write, from America’s favorite writing coach. Most high school students never have received any instruction in how to write a personal essay. Yet at a time when getting admitted to their dream college is...

Why be good? What exactly is Dharma? How does one practise it; and to what effect? Gurcharan Das’s superb exposition of the dilemmas and ambiguities inherent in the Mahabharata shows us how we can come to terms with the uncertain ethics of the world today; a world that is uncannily similar to...

In her journey to share these selected essays, Vivian A. Velasco has lived a life filled with possibilities. In these personal writings, her deepest thoughts come to the forefront to help others in trying times of need. As a cancer survivor, loss of twin boys and her sons unexpected passing during the writing of this book, Vivian hopes to help others on their paths through life by sharing her own.

In How to Write an Excellent Personal Statement, Quincy Washington, an alumnus of the London School of Economics and the Founder of PlaceCoach—a trusted leader for university applications—guides you along each step of the writing process for your college admissions essay. You will benefit from insider knowledge and tips, as well as real-life examples from students’ personal statements and college admissions essays.

Both men and women enjoy thrillers, mystery, and crime. Yet it may still feel not quite respectable, somehow a guilty (sorry!) pleasure. Do these novels so often categorized as genre offer something the literary novel does not? The market is enormous, perhaps the largest in publishing. It is a cliché which may be true that only the Bible – say - outsells Agatha Christie. And then there are films and television, either original or adapted from novels.

In Traveling without Moving, Coleman shares intimate essays from her life: her childhood in Chicago—growing up in poverty with four siblings and a single mother—and the empowering decision to leave her first marriage. She writes about being the only Black student in a prestigious and predominantly White creative writing program, about institutional racism and implicit bias in writing instruction, about the violent legacies of racism in the US housing market, about the maternal health disparities seen across the country and their implication in her own miscarriage.

La filosofía es mucho más práctica de lo que crees. Tómalo con filosofía abre el corazón y la mente tanto, que no hay mejor remedio en estos tiempos inciertos y complicados. Este libro enseñará al lector a aplicar en la vida cotidiana la filosofía de los grandes titanes de la filosofía...

David Bain offers ten essays on writing, with an eye toward helping new writers gain their footing and keeping the more seasoned scribe motivated. It also includes his essay "Basic E-Book Self-Publishing Advice for Newbies" which has already helped hundreds of beginning indie authors. A longtime college English prof and former newspaper bureau chief, Bain infuses these essays on the writing life with years of teaching, editing, and indie publishing experience, using an easygoing yet incisive style.