The Monthly Theme Essays are a collection of essays written each month on a predetermined theme. These essays are always published during the last week of the month. To submit a Monthly Theme Essay check out our upcoming themes.
Interested in sponsoring one of our monthly themes? Check out our media kit.
“Shoot your vagina up to the ceiling” one male doctor helpfully suggested as your head inched forward and back into my body again. Limp I stared into the bright white hospital light above me where I saw a vision of my own blood and guts floating on the ceiling. I learned later that this particular delivery room was famous for having a tinted convex light that reflected the labor in detail if you knew to look.
Read MoreI inherited three things from my paternal grandmother: my middle name, an engagement ring, and the desire to be a writer. I didn’t know that Gram’s ambitions to be a writer matched mine until I was sixteen, when I read an essay she wrote titled “Why I Am What I Am.” In it, she writes, “I have a very decided ambition to become an authoress. I have always loved to write…I have a vivid imagination, which was probably kindled by the necessity of my finding something within myself to amuse myself, for I had very few friends my age.” As the youngest person in both my extended family and my neighborhood by nearly a decade, I knew what she meant.
Read More
