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17 Personal Essays That Will Change Your Life

Think essays are just something boring you write for class? These masterpieces will make you totally reconsider.

BuzzFeed News Reporter

1. "Goodbye To All That" – Joan Didion

The final piece in one of her two most beloved collections, Slouching Towards Bethlehem , this essay contains everything there is to love about Didion — her sharp eye, her unbelievable concision, her expression of emotions that are real and contradictory. It follows her arrival in New York and her departure eight years later, and in so doing discusses the city and youth — and the romantic lies that both are. She writes: "... I was in love with New York. I do not mean 'love' in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again."

2. "Mr. Lytle, an Essay" – John Jeremiah Sullivan

Sullivan has become one of the most talked about magazine writers of the last few years. This piece, which you can read online at the Paris Review , and was collected in his highly recommended book, Pulphead , is one of his best. It discusses, with such grace, being mentored in his twenties by once-famous Southern Renaissance writer Andrew Lytle. It's a meditation on art and futility, the Old South, and the sheer strangeness that can be relationships between men.

3. "Once More to the Lake" – E.B. White

Recognized for his children's literature (including Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web ) and popularizing Strunk's The Elements of Style , White was also an accomplished essayist. "Once More to the Lake" follows White and his son to Maine, where they spend a week along the same lake White visited with his father as a boy. It is one of the most moving reflections upon fatherhood, summertime, America, and mortality ever crafted. You can find it in many anthologies and in The Collected Essays of E.B. White .

4. "Ticket to the Fair" – David Foster Wallace

Those who knock Wallace for his verbosity — or associate him merely with a liberal use of footnotes — haven't read one of his classic essays through to the end. This one, which you can read online at Harper's or in his collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again , follows him home to Illinois, specifically to the state fair there. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and almost ridiculous in its level of detail, it explores the author's fractured identity, the Midwest versus the East Coast, and the American experience at large.

5. "A Few Words About Breasts" – Nora Ephron

Published in Esquire in 1975, this is the best-known essay by the late, great screenwriter and essayist. While she renders the experience of being flat-chested in the '50s with incredible humor and pathos, it is the essay's ending — the shock of it — that makes this unforgettable.

6. "Self-Reliance" — Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of Emerson's most influential essays, you can read it online or in nearly every collection of his works. While his prose's formality may be a shock at first, what he says he says with great clarity and to the great empowerment of his reader. It is a declaration of the fact that true happiness, in oneself and all relationships, must spurn from self-love and honest expression: "I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should."

7. "Here Is a Lesson in Creative Writing" – Kurt Vonnegut

Though it's collected in his great and final collection of essays, Man Without a Country , you can read an adaptation online at Lapham's Quarterly . While it's a must-read for aspiring creative writers, it's about more than writing — much, much more — despite its brevity and characteristic Vonnegut wit. It opens with the best slam of the semicolon ever.

8. "Notes of a Native Son" – James Baldwin

The titular essay from this collection — which honestly you should just read — is an ambitious and candid discussion of the passing of his father during a time of great racial turmoil. It opens: "On the twenty-ninth of July, in 1943, my father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born. Over a month before this, while all our energies were concentrated in waiting for these events, there had been, in Detroit, one of the bloodiest race riots of the century. A few hours after my father's funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker's chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. In the morning of the third of August, we drove my father through the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed glass."

9. "The Invisible Made Visible" – David Rakoff

David Rakoff died a little over a year ago at the too-early age of 47. Just a few months prior, he read this essay about his cancer, his imminent death, and dancing, aloud as part of This American Life 's live show. As always with Rakoff's work, it was funny, painful, and revealed the author's intense love of the English language. Warning: When you watch this video , you will laugh audibly, several times, and you might cry.

10. "The Death of a Moth" – Virginia Woolf

The briefest — and perhaps densest — essay on this list, "The Death of the Moth," on its face, is about exactly that: Woolf notices a moth caught in her window and witnesses its death. Read it online and then read it again, and again.

11. "Total Eclipse " – Annie Dillard

This much-anthologized meditation follows Dillard and her husband as they drive to a mountaintop in Washington to witness a total eclipse — that rare event when the sun becomes entirely obscured, turning day briefly into night. Dillard's rendering of this experience showcases her enviable abilities to both observe and describe. It's collected in Teaching a Stone to Talk .

12. "Sliver of Sky" – Barry Lopez

Well-known nature writer Barry Lopez shocked many when he published this essay in January, in which he confessed being raped throughout his adolescence by his mother's sometime boyfriend. It is an affecting and horrifying portrait of what it is to be a victim of sexual abuse. Unfortunately you do have to be a Harper's subscriber to read it (for now).

13. "Shooting an Elephant" — George Orwell

Prior to penning 1984 and Animal Farm , Orwell was posted as a policeman in Burma, where he once had to shoot a rampaging elephant. The resultant essay, published in 1936, is a condemnation of imperialism — and his own selfish desire to not be implicated by it. Read it online or find it in the collection of the same title .

14. "Shipping Out" — David Foster Wallace

Yes, Wallace deserves two on this list. Also collected in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and originally published in Harper's , this is another travelogue turned existential rumination that shows unabashedly and hilariously the horrors of society (this time via a cruise ship) and really says more about the author himself.

15. "The Braindead Megaphone" – George Saunders

Saunders is more famous for his fiction (like many of the folks on this list) but that doesn't mean his essays are not fantastic. The first in the eponymous collection , "The Braindead Megaphone" takes on the current political and media climate in America that will make you shake your head in a I've-always-thought-that-but-never-really-put-it-that-way-myself way.

16. "We Do Abortions Here" — Sallie Tisdale

Tisdale was a nurse at an abortion clinic when she published this essay in 1987. She writes honestly and movingly about something she knows few want to think let alone read about. "There is a numbing sameness lurking in this job," she says, "the same questions, the same answers, even the same trembling tone in the voices. The worst is the sameness of human failure, of inadequacy in the face of each day’s dull demands." Read it for free online .

17. "The White Album" — Joan Didion

Of course Didion also gets two on this list. If you have not read this classic, do so now. It tracks our culture's — and the author's — transition out of the cataclysmic era that was the late '60s into something else much darker. It also contains an unforgettable image of Jim Morrison wearing black vinyl pants. Find it in the collection of the same name.

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Best of 2021: Personal Essays

The Gradual Extinction of Softness , Chantha Nguon and Kim Green, Hippocampus Magazine , November 8, 2021

For this category, I’m recommending a moving, lyrical personal essay from Kim Green and Chantha Nguon. Nguon is a co-founder of a women’s social enterprise in rural northeastern Cambodia. For 10 years, these two friends have been collaborating on Nguon’s life story, through interviews and cooking sessions, which will eventually culminate into Slow Noodles , a memoir on food, loss, and recovered family recipes. This excerpt from the memoir-in-progress is an evocative piece on surviving the Cambodian genocide, and remembering the flavors, the memories, and the past that the Khmer Rouge regime tried to erase. It’s also sprinkled with “recipes,” made up of ingredients that reveal details of Nguon’s life, particularly of her childhood in Battambang: “Take a well-fed nine-year-old with a big family and a fancy French-Catholic-school education. Fold in 2 revolutions, 2 civil wars, and 1 wholesale extermination. Separate her from home, country, and a reliable source of food.” I’ve read this gorgeous essay a number of times, and each time I pay attention to new details — aromas, tastes — which make me appreciate it even more. — Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Authors Chantha Nguon and Kim Green on the story they wish they’d written this year:

We both loved “ Cambodian Americans Are Ready to Share Their Cuisine, On Their Terms ” by Maryam Jillani in Condé Nast Traveler . It’s a great primer on Cambodian cuisine that acknowledges the diaspora’s collective trauma without dwelling on it. And we love how she highlights the artistry of chefs we follow and admire. We wish we had written it but are also thrilled that Jillani did it so well.

Aftermath , Briohny Doyle, Griffith Review , October 24, 2021

In her exquisite piece about the human condition in the age of COVID, climate change, and other calamities, Briohny Doyle challenges readers — and herself — to give up the ghost of renewal. “What is an ideal community, a good life,” Doyle asks, “if nothing is renewed, if we are working in and through catastrophe with only what we have now and in the face of what will be?” This question is more than essay fodder. It’s a mantra, an incantation — for us all. — Seyward Darby

Author Briohny Doyle ‘s personal essay recommendation:

I’m a long-time admirer of Vanessa Berry’s writing, which is always marked by assiduous curiosity and intimate detail. Gentle and Fierce — the title of her new collection — describes her writing as much as her animal subjects. This essay, “ Perec’s Cat ” is a wonderful example of her enviably light touch at work.

Ghosts , Vauhini Vara, The Believer , August 9, 2021

Even as artificial intelligence creeps across science and technology, bulldozing computational problems, we comfort ourselves in the face of such power by thinking there are some things a program simply can’t do. A program can’t be funny, can’t be fraught, can’t be human. And maybe it can’t. But in Vauhini Vara’s gutpunch of an essay, we begin to see the glimmer of otherwise. Unable to write about her sister’s death of a rare cancer years earlier, Vara began feeding the linguistic engine GPT-3 prompts about her sister — and over the course of nine increasingly stirring attempts, their two voices meld in a way that wipes away any preconceptions you might have brought to the piece. This isn’t a warning klaxon about robot overlords; it’s a bracing exploration of what can happen when we finally hold the mirror at the perfect angle. — Peter Rubin

Author Vanessa Angélica Villarreal on “Ghosts”:

“My own writing is largely a practice of communion with the dead—recording forgotten lives, lost records, documenting collective memory. I personally use tarot to tap into my own unconscious and excavate the buried material there, and have noted the recent trend of astrology apps and tarot on TikTok and the uncanny specificity of its algorithms to ensure the right message finds you. It is brilliant to use AI as a divination tool, and to explore what mathematical fabric algorithms might be connected to beyond our understanding.”

Contraindications , Alison Criscitiello, The Alpinist , September 17, 2017

Alison Criscitiello’s essay about her climbing partner Anna Smith has stayed with me for a long time. It starts off as a rollicking adventure story: Two best friends embarking on a climbing expedition to the Indian Himalayas. The affection and admiration the women share spills out of her words, “opposites in almost every way imaginable, end members constantly bringing one another closer to an elusive center.” It is not just an exquisitely told quest: It is also about true friendship — and the joy found in sharing beautiful experiences.

Then it becomes something else. When Criscitiello describes Anna’s death, it is raw; I felt her pain. The essay turns into a survival story: Surviving not only the physical challenge of getting Anna off the mountain, but the grief, shock, and loneliness overwhelming Criscitiello now that she “no longer had Anna tethered to me.” For three days, she stays with Anna before a team arrives to help take her body down. Even then, Criscitiello remains, “guarding her” until Anna is finally cremated “along the shores of the Beas River in the heart of Manali” and her ashes taken home. It is time spent remembering Anna, whose “strength emanated from her core” and whose spark “set my aspirations afire.” — Carolyn Wells

The Grief Artist , Traci Brimhall, Guernica Magazine , January 6, 2021

Brimhall’s essay explores the influence that art, process, and ritual have on dealing with grief and loss as she mourns her mother’s death and the end of her marriage. So many essays deal with grief, but few consider the shape of it through so many disparate lenses. As Brimhall makes art out of the unexpected, she weaves a strand of persistent, insistent hope for the reader. “I love that nothing is wasted,” she writes. “Everything is ripe for transformation.” This essay reminds me that despite the fact that humans struggle with loss and change, maybe we can learn something about ourselves if we choose to lean on process and routine. Maybe too, we can get better at being more human as we deal with things that end, be it a life, a friendship, a marriage, or even just a time in our lives. — Krista Stevens

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Personal Essays

The Fab Five and Hair That Does the Talking

By Hanif Abdurraqib

How I Proposed to My Girlfriend

By Kathryn Schulz

When Williamsburg Was on the Wrong Side of the River

By Jami Attenberg

Mayfield, Before and After

By Bobbie Ann Mason

Sunday Reading: Personal Reflections

By Erin Overbey

My Failed Attempts to Hoard Anything at All

By David Sedaris

Stalking a Rustically Hip Family on Instagram

By Emily Flake

A Dark Ride

By James Marcus

Julius: The Story of a Premature Birth

By Jon Michaud

The Nick Cave Song That Changed My Life

Nearby and Familiar: A Strategy for Picking Restaurants

By Calvin Trillin

Two Sister-Poets Gone Too Soon: Ntozake Shange and My Sister

By Hilton Als

The Sordid Necessity of Living for Others

By Justin Torres

Memories of V. S. Naipaul

By Paul Theroux

I’ve Quit Writing Personal Essays About Quitting Things: A Personal Essay

By Jake Tuck

My Father and Sandy Koufax

By David Sipress

The Personal-Essay Boom Is Over

By Jia Tolentino

One Child’s Life

Fifteen Excellent Personal Essays to Read this Week...

Welcome to Memoir Land —a newsletter edited by Sari Botton , now featuring three verticals:

Memoir Monday , a weekly curation of the best personal essays from around the web brought to you by Narratively , The Rumpus , Granta , Guernica , Oldster Magazine , Literary Hub , Orion Magazine , The Walrus , and Electric Literature . Below is this week’s curation.

First Person Singular , featuring original personal essays. Recently I published “ On Silence (or, Speak Again) ” by Elissa Bassist . A new essay is coming soon.

*Submissions are currently paused for First Person Singular. I’ll do a limited submission period this fall. Stay tuned…*

The Lit Lab , featuring interviews and essays on craft and publishing. It is primarily for paid subscribers . Recently I published the second installment of “ The Prompt-O-Matic ” series.

Memoir Monday is a reader-supported publication that pays contributors for original essays and interviews. To support this work, become a paid subscriber.

Essays from partner publications…

Maternal vertigo: on chaos, childcare, and civilizational collapse, by molly lynch.

“Sometime in the early weeks after becoming a mother, it occurred to me that by giving birth to a baby I’d also given birth to chaos. I don’t mean that my child embodied chaos. It was more like when the baby exited my body, a dark, swarming force rushed in. By wanting to protect someone, I’d invited into my life all that I could never protect him from. I’ve since thought that part of what changes you when you become a parent has to do with the way you encounter this contradiction: at the very moment that you take on the greatest act of caring, you discover how powerless you are.”

A Boat Ride to the Confluence of the Two Niles

By isma’il kushkush.

“Known as the longest kiss in history, al-Mugran is a place of natural beauty and romantic symbolism where the calm and clear waters of the White Nile from the south meet the muddier, darker and rushing waters of the Blue Nile from the east. Al-Mugran’s name comes from Arabic for ‘the junction’ or ‘the confluence’, where, after ‘kissing’, the differently colored battling currents remain visible before flowing united.”

In Defense of Sophie Turner, It’s Nearly Impossible to Be a “Good Mother

By alicia andrzejewski.

“Generations of bad mothers have taught me that, no matter what Turner may or may not have been caught doing on a Ring camera, the dictates of motherhood are painful—violent, even—to bear. Sophie Turner has privileges many mothers cannot even imagine and yet even she cannot escape these narratives, cannot measure up to what patriarchy deems a good, successful mother.”

The Forest Clearing

By yomi wrong.

“I feel pulled to a clearing. Now I’m distracted. I have an urgency to explore. When we break to go off wandering, I bolt in the direction that calls me. Rolling up a slope, my wheels struggle to grip the forest floor, and I panic, fearing I’ll get stuck. Keep going.”

Burning it Down

By joy castro.

“Since my late twenties, when my hair began to go silver, I’d colored it assiduously, like all the women in my family—like all the Latinas I knew. Dark hair was a marker of identity, of youth, of femininity, of our culture.” ( Editor’s note: This essay was featured when it first was published in 2022. Re-upping now because it received notable mention in The Best American Essays 2023, edited by Vivian Gornick. )

What It Took to Write the Personal Essay That’s Setting the Web on Fire

By jesse sposato.

“Every once in a while I start reading a story and know right away that it’s going to be the kind of piece that truly grabs me and allows the rest of the world to fall away while I read. Jenisha Watts’s new essay for The Atlantic , ‘ I Never Called Her Momma: My childhood in a crack house ,’ is one of those stories. And I wasn’t alone — the entire internet has been ablaze with words of adoration since the essay was first published earlier this month.” ( Editor’s note: This is not an essay, but an interview about one, which was featured in this newsletter two weeks ago. )

Essays from around the web…

By cristina olivetti.

“There are so many lasts we don’t remember. I don’t remember the last time Graham drove the S-80...I do know I kept the car for a while after Graham could no longer drive it. You can ask my friends—I drove Ludicrous for all of them. But it wasn’t that fun. People felt nauseous and knocked around. I get it. They weren’t falling apart like we were, so that thin disintegrating feeling wasn’t exactly hilarious for them...”

by Sydney Lea

“One event marred the celebration when I was ten. Just before lunch, I climbed a big rock and put my hand on a copperhead snake that had been warming winter out of its system at the flattened top. I remember to this day how intensely painful its bite was. After a rattling trip in Dad’s ’48 Chevy wagon to a doctor’s office in a postage stamp-sized town nearby, I was injected with anti-venin and, the poisonous bite’s only memorable effect, apart from that pain, was a stiff neck for ten hours or so. I do recall that I’d never loved my father as much as I did each time I woke up; there he’d faithfully be right through till dawn, squinting in the half-light at some magazine, his chair barely rocking.”

Just a Normal Girl, Hiding From the Building Inspector

By micaela macagnone.

“I was 15 the first time it happened…I was staring at the empty apartment and wondering what would happen if the police figured out what my dad had done…For years, my family had been living in a commercial building — illegal for residential use — above my father’s Pilates studio. He had opened it in 1998 at Scheffel Hall, a New York City landmark on Third Avenue dating to 1895.”

So Fierce Is the World: On Loneliness and Philip Seymour Hoffman

By richard deming.

“The desolation of loneliness, like the connected problems of substance abuse and depression, comes from the feeling that the experience—when one is in it —will never end. That is why, sometimes, people choose to end it for themselves. If we are to keep going, push through, or slip around it, I believe we must reinvent loneliness in order to survive it. I have been trying to do this my whole life.” (h/t The Small Bow .)

SuperBabies Don’t Cry

By heather lanier.

“Here’s the thing. If you buy into a false narrative that the body is controllable, that illness can always be prevented, then by proxy you are left with a disturbing, damaging, erroneous conclusion: the belief that a person’s disability is their fault.”

How to Prepare for A Difficult Conversation

By ethan gilsdorf.

“Conjure the person with whom you need to discuss this urgent matter—the spouse, the sibling, the in-law, the outlaw, the ex-, the coworker, the offspring, the former best friend, the dead parent. It’s simple. Watch their drooping face, age spots, shaky jaw, deliberate way of speaking, how they hide behind their sunglasses and never make eye contact, and let it all enter the crenellations of your agitated brain.”

The Power of the Cookie

By blair glaser.

“I didn’t want any more cookies. They wouldn’t be warm. They wouldn’t include Ava’s ironic presence. What I could take was the mutual hope we had given each other just by living our lives, and the incredible reflection that all that grueling personal work I did to heal had actually inspired someone else without me doing anything except eating one cookie: the cookie that would change my life.”

When Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Part

By dr. tamara mc.

“We couldn't learn how to stand up for ourselves, setting us up for a lifetime of abuse. This is what fundamentalist communities teach girls. Because our bodies belonged to our parents, church, and eventually our husbands, they never belonged to us. The title of the Duggar docuseries includes the word "secrets," but I hope by now it's no surprise that fundamentalist religious environments can be the grimiest of all. Despite the Duggars' squeaky-clean appearance and our contrasting grubby one, we both shared dark secrets.”

How We Carry the Weight of It

By will mcmillan.

“We arrive in the raspberry fields when it’s dark. It’s dark when we pile out of our secondhand pickup. My father, my mother. My brother and me. It’s dark when we start walking the rutted, sopping dirt road that cuts through the field, where we meet and melt into a vast sea of bodies, the dozens of families who’ve piled out of their secondhand pickups, their cars. All of us merging, ambling forward, a sleepy, reluctant, unremarkable herd. All of us, in the dark.”

🚨Announcements:

📢 submissions for narratively ’s second annual memoir prize are open now..

“From Tuesday, September 26, 2023, through Thursday, November 30, 2023, Narratively is accepting entries for our 2023 Memoir Prize. We’re on the hunt for revealing and emotional first-person nonfiction narratives from unique and overlooked points of view. The winning submission will receive a $3,000 prize and publication on Narratively.”

Learn more at Narratively

📢 Take my Skillshare workshop on blending the individual and the collective in your essays!

Take Sari Botton's SkillShare Workshop

📢 Attention Publications and writers interested in having published essays considered for inclusion in our weekly curation:

By Thursday of each week, please send to [email protected]:

The title of the essay and a link to it.

The name of the author, and the author’s Twitter handle.

A paragraph or a few lines from the piece that will most entice readers.

Because of data limits for many email platforms, going forward we will only include artwork from our partner publications. No need to send art.

*Please be advised, however, that we cannot accept all submissions, nor respond to the overwhelming number of emails received. Also, please note that we don’t accept author submissions from our partner publications.

You can also support Memoir Monday—and indie bookstores!—by browsing this Bookshop.org list of every book that’s been featured at the Memoir Monday reading series. It’s a great place to find some new titles to add to your TBR list!

Ready for more?

6 Steps to Writing the Perfect Personal Essay

Personal essays are easy once you know how!

Tips For Adult Students
Getting Your Ged

B.A., English, St. Olaf College

It is the first day of a new school year and your teacher has just assigned a personal essay. They have good reasons for this assignment—personal or narrative essays allow teachers to assess your grasp of language, composition, and creativity.

If you don't know where to start or feel overwhelmed by the open-ended prompt, this list is here to help you navigate the process from beginning to end. Writing about yourself is easy to do when you keep the key ingredients of a great essay in mind.

Find Inspiration and Ideas

You can't begin a personal essay without a topic. If you are stuck on what to write about, look to some of these sources of inspiration:

Consult lists of ideas to get your brain thinking about the possibilities of your essay. Remember that a personal essay is autobiographical, so do not write about anything untrue.
Try writing a stream of consciousness . To do this, start writing whatever is on your mind and don't stop or leave anything out. Even if ideas aren't connected to each other whatsoever, a stream of consciousness gets everything in your brain on paper and often contains many ideas.
Do a little research. Browsing through whatever interests you can really get the creative juices flowing and lead to small self-reflections. Grab onto any of these that you think you might want to write about.

Don't be afraid to ask your teacher what they are looking for. If you still aren't sure what to write about, go to your teacher for suggestions or a more specific prompt.

Understand the Composition of an Essay

Before you start writing, remind yourself of basic essay composition. Almost all essays are made up of three parts: an introduction, a body of information, and a conclusion. The five-paragraph essay is a common iteration of this and it contains an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. Use an outline, or general essay plan, to jot down your ideas before writing.

Introduction : Start your personal essay with a hook, or an interesting sentence that grabs your readers' attention and makes them want to read more. Select a topic that you know you can write an interesting essay about. Once you have a compelling topic, decide on the main idea you want to communicate and use it to capture your readers' interest in the first sentence.

After the hook, use the introductory paragraph to briefly outline the subject of your essay. Your readers should have a clear understanding of the direction of the rest of your piece from the introduction.

Body : The body of your essay is made up of one or more paragraphs that inform your readers about your topic, each paragraph accomplishing this in a unique way.

The structure of a paragraph resembles the structure of an essay. A paragraph contains an attention-grabbing topic sentence, several sentences elaborating on the point of the paragraph, and a conclusion sentence or two that summarizes the main idea. The conclusion sentence of a paragraph should also be used to transition into the next paragraph by smoothly introducing the next topic without going into too much detail.

Each paragraph should have its own idea that is closely related to the topic of the whole essay but elaborates on the main idea in a new way. It is important that topics flow logically from one to the next so that your essay is easy to follow. If your paragraphs are not related to each other or the main idea, your essay may be choppy and incoherent. Keeping your sentences concise also helps with clarity. Feel free to break a large paragraph up into two separate paragraphs if the topic changes or goes on for too long.

Conclusion : Close your essay with a final paragraph that summarizes the points you have made and states the takeaways. When writing personal essays, conclusion paragraphs are where you talk about the lessons you learned, ways that you changed as a result of your subject, or any other insights that were gained from your experience. In short: restate the ideas from the introduction in a new way and wrap up your essay.

Use Appropriate Voice for Essay and Verbs

In English grammar, there are many elements of writing that determine the quality of your work and voice is one of the most important. There are two types of voice: the author's voice and the voice of verbs.

Author's Voice

One of the things your teacher will be looking for when reading your personal essay is the use of voice in your essay, which is your own personal style of telling a story. They will be looking for features of your writing that make it unique, analyze the pacing of your essay, and determine how you establish your authority.

Because personal essays are works of nonfiction, your voice must be reliable. Other than that, you are free to play around with the delivery of your essay. Decide how formal or casual you want to be, how you want to keep the attention of your readers, how you would like your readers to feel when reading your essay, and how you would like your story to come across as a whole.

Voice of Verbs

Don't be confused—verbs have their own voice that is entirely separate from the author's voice. The active voice occurs when the subject of your sentence is performing the action or verb and the passive voice occurs when the subject is receiving the action.

The subject is italicized in the following examples.

Passive : An essay was assigned by Ms. Peterson.

Active : Ms. Peterson assigned a personal essay about summer vacation.

Generally, the active voice is most appropriate for personal essays as it is more effective at progressing a story forward. Using verbs in the active voice also tends to come across as more authoritative.

Be Consistent With Point of View and Tense

Personal essays are about yourself, so it is important that your point of view and tense be consistent with this. Personal essays are almost always written in first person tense, using the pronouns I, we, and us to tell what happened. Readers need to know what something was like from your perspective.

Remember that you can only speak to your own thoughts and feelings in first person tense unless you know for sure what another person was thinking or feeling and can quote them.

Personal essays are also written in the past tense because they describe something that happened to you, not something that is happening or will happen. You cannot speak confidently about experiences that have not happened or are still happening because you have not yet learned from them. Teachers will probably want you to write a personal essay to reflect on a real experience that taught you something.

Use Your Own Vocabulary

Just as you shouldn't lie when writing personal essays, you also shouldn't waver. Your choice of vocabulary can help you establish and maintain themes throughout your essay. Every word matters.

Your goal when writing a personal essay should be authenticity and you need to choose your vocabulary accordingly. Use the words that naturally come to mind when you are writing and don't try to be something that you are not. Your language should fit the topic and guide readers to interpret your writing in a certain way.

Here are some examples of how to choose the right words.

When you are making a statement of opinion or fact, use powerful words that make your ideas clear. For example, say, "I ran like my life depended on it," rather than, "I ran pretty fast."
If you are trying to communicate uncertainty that you felt during an experience, use words that convey these feelings. "I questioned whether or not it was a good idea," rather than, "I didn't know what would happen."
Use positive language. Write about what did happen or what is rather than what did not happen or what is not . "I left room for dessert after dinner," instead of, "I hated dinner and couldn't even finish it."

Always be as descriptive as possible and incorporate all of your senses into your writing. Write about how something looked, sounded, felt, smelled, or tasted to help your readers imagine the experience for themselves. Use adjectives that support what you have described but do not use them to do the work of describing for you.

Edit, Edit, Edit

English grammar is tough even for native English speakers. Brush up on grammar rules before writing and revisit your work when you are finished to ensure that you have written an essay that you can be proud of.

No matter what you write, one of the most important parts of the writing process is editing . It is good practice to give yourself some space from your essay just after finishing it before you dive into editing because this can help you analyze your writing more objectively. A second opinion is always helpful too.

When editing, ask yourself these questions:

Is the grammar/sentence structure of your essay correct?
Is your essay well-organized and easy to follow? Does it flow?
Is your writing on topic throughout the essay?
Will your readers be able to picture what you have described?
Did you make your point?
Examples of Great Introductory Paragraphs
100 Persuasive Essay Topics
How to Write a Great Process Essay
How To Write an Essay
How to Write and Format an MBA Essay
The Five Steps of Writing an Essay
How to Structure an Essay
How to Write Your Graduate School Admissions Essay
Tips for Writing an Art History Paper
Development in Composition: Building an Essay
The Ultimate Guide to the 5-Paragraph Essay
Writers on Writing: The Art of Paragraphing
Private School Application Essay Tips
Writing a Descriptive Essay
What Is Expository Writing?
How to Help Your 4th Grader Write a Biography

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How to Write a Personal Essay

Last Updated: February 2, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Jake Adams . Jake Adams is an academic tutor and the owner of Simplifi EDU, a Santa Monica, California based online tutoring business offering learning resources and online tutors for academic subjects K-College, SAT & ACT prep, and college admissions applications. With over 14 years of professional tutoring experience, Jake is dedicated to providing his clients the very best online tutoring experience and access to a network of excellent undergraduate and graduate-level tutors from top colleges all over the nation. Jake holds a BS in International Business and Marketing from Pepperdine University. There are 10 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 310,839 times.

A good personal essay can move and inspire readers. It can also leave the reader unsettled, uncertain, and full of more questions than answers. To write an effective personal essay, you will need to first understand the structure of a personal essay. You will then need to brainstorm ideas for the personal essay so you are ready when it is time to sit down and craft your essay.

Starting Your Personal Essay

For example, maybe you want to write about an experience where you learned about failure. You may think the time you failed a pop quiz in class. Though the quiz may have seemed insignificant to you at the time, you realized later that failing the pop quiz forced you to reassess your goals and motivated you to get a passing grade. Seen from a certain angle, your small failure became a gateway to perseverance and determination.

This could be a seemingly small moment that ended up having a profound influence on you later, such the first time you experienced disgust as a child or the look on your mother’s face when you told her you were gay. Try to really dig into why you were hurt or compelled to overcome a challenge in this moment in your essay.
Remember that moments charged with strong emotion will often be more engaging to readers. Having a strong reaction to a specific moment will allow you to write passionately about it and keep your reader interested in your essay.

Step 3 Discuss a specific event that triggered an emotional response.

For example, you may focus on the day you found out your father cheated on your mother, or the week you mourned the death of a loved one. Think about a heavy experience in your life that shaped who you are today.
You may also decide to write about a seemingly light topic or event, such as your first ride on a roller coaster, or the first time you went on a cruise with your partner. No matter what event you choose, make sure it is an event that triggered a strong emotional response, ranging from anger to confusion to unabashed joy.

Step 4 Think of a person in your life that you have difficulty with in some way.

For example, you may think about why you and your mother stopped speaking years ago or why you are no longer close to a childhood friend. You may also look at past romantic relationships that failed and consider why they did not succeed or a relationship with a mentor that went sour.
This could also be about someone that you're close with. For example, you could write about a moment that tested your relationship with a close friend.

Ask yourself questions about the current event. For example, how does the current event intersect with your own experiences? How can you explore a current social issue or event using your personal thoughts, experiences, and emotions?
For example, you may have an interest in writing about Syrian refugee camps in Europe. You may then focus your personal essay on your own status as a refugee in America and how your experiences a refugee have shaped the person you are now. This will allow you to explore a current event from a personal perspective, rather than simply talk about the current event from a distant, journalistic perspective.

The introductory section should include “the hook”, opening lines where you catch the reader’s attention. It should also have some sort of narrative thesis, which is often the beginning of an important event in the piece or a theme that connects your experience to a universal idea.
The body sections should include supporting evidence for your narrative thesis and/or the key themes in your piece. Often, this is in the form of your experiences and your reflections on your experiences. You should also note the passage of time in your body sections so the reader is aware of when and how certain events occurred.
The concluding section should include a conclusion to the events and experiences discussed in the essay. You should also have a moral of the story moment, where you reflect on what you learned from your experiences or how your experiences changed your life.
In the past, it was advised to have five paragraphs total, one paragraph for the introductory section, three paragraphs for the body section, and one paragraph for the concluding section. But you can have more or less than five paragraphs for your personal essay as long as you have all three sections.

Writing the Personal Essay

Step 1 Begin with an engaging opening scene.

Don't begin with a line that explains exactly what is going to be discussed in, such as, “In this essay, I will be discussing my fraught relationship with my mother." Instead, draw your reader into your piece and still provide all the information needed in your opening line.
Start instead with a specific scene that contains the key characters of the essay and allows you discuss the central question or theme. Doing this will allow you to introduce the reader to the characters and the central conflict right away.
For example, if you are writing about your fraught relationship with your mother, you may focus on a specific memory where you both disagreed or clashed. This could be the time you and your mother fought over a seemingly insignificant item, or the time you argued about a family secret.
Try to use an active voice instead of a passive voice as much as possible when you're writing your essay.

Step 2 Write from your unique voice or perspective.

This writing voice may be conversational, much like how you might speak to a good friend or a family member. Or, the writing voice may be more reflective and internal, where you question your own assumptions and thoughts about the subject of the essay.
Many personal essays are written in the first person, using “I”. You may decide to write in the present tense to make the story feel immediate, or past tense, which will allow you to reflect more on specific events or moments.
Include vivid sensory descriptions in your essay to help the reader connect with your unique perspective. Describing touch, smell, taste, sight, and sound can help the reader invest in your story and feel like they're there with you.

Step 3 Develop the characters so they are well-rounded and detailed.

You can also include lines of dialogue spoken by your characters, based on your memory of the event. However, you should limit dialogue to only a few lines a page, as too much dialogue can start to veer away from personal essay and more toward fiction.

You may use a plot outline to organize your essay. The plot points should act as supporting evidence for the central question or issue of the essay.

Step 5 Focus on uncovering a deeper truth.

It’s important to remember that though an experience may appear to have all the drama necessary to make a good personal essay, it may be a drama that is too familiar to the reader already. Be wary of experiences that are familiar and filled with pathos that a reader may have experienced before.
If you are writing about the sudden death of a loved one, for example, it may feel important and deep to you. But the reader will likely know what to expect of an essay about a dead loved one, and may not relate to your essay because they did not know the loved one like you did.
Instead, you may try to uncover a truth that is deeper than “I am sad my loved one died.” Think about what the loved one meant to you and how the loved one affected your life, in positive and negative ways. This could lead to the uncovering of a deeper truth and a stronger personal essay.

Polishing Your Essay

Step 1 Try out different literary techniques and forms.

For example, you may use metaphor to describe the experience of telling your mother you are gay. You may describe your mother’s face as “impenetrable, a sudden wall”. Or you may use a simile, such as “my mother’s reaction was silent and stunned, as if she had been struck by lightning.”

As you read it out loud, you should highlight any sentences that are confusing or unclear as well as sentences that do not appear as strong as the rest of the draft. You should also make sure your characters are well developed and your essay follows some kind of structure or sense of plot. Consider if you are hitting a deeper truth in your draft and what you can do to get there if it is not yet on the page.Revising your essay will only make it that much stronger.

When you are revising, you should consider if your content is really worth writing about, if you are writing about a topic or subject you are passionate about, and if your reader will understand your writing. You want to avoid confusing your reader, as this can turn her off from reading to the end of your essay.
You should also make sure the focus and themes of the essay are clear. Your experiences should center around a central question, issue, or theme. This will ensure your personal essay is well written and concise.
Avoid relying on spellcheck to catch all of the spelling and grammar errors in your essay.

Expert Q&A

To get a better sense of the genre, you should read highly crafted examples of personal essay. There are several known personal essays that are often taught in academia, including "Notes of a Native Son” by James Baldwin, “The Death of a Moth” by Virginia Woolf, “Shipping Out” by David Foster Wallace, “The White Album” by Joan Didion, and “We Do Abortions Here” by Sallie Tisdale. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
Ask yourself several questions as you read the examples, such as: How does the writer introduce the subject of their essay? How does the writer explore the subject for a personal perspective? What are the key themes in the essay? How does the writer connect their personal experiences to a universal theme or idea? How does the writer use humor or wit in the essay? What is the concluding moral of the essay? Does the end of the essay leave you satisfied, unsettled, curious, or all of the above? Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0

Sample Essay and Template

↑ https://owl.excelsior.edu/writing-process/thesis-sentence/thesis-sentence-angles/
↑ Jake Adams. Academic Tutor & Test Prep Specialist. Expert Interview. 20 May 2020.
↑ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/englishcomp1/chapter/writing-a-narrative-or-personal-essay/
↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/personal-essay/
↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-to-write-a-personal-essay
↑ https://stlcc.edu/student-support/academic-success-and-tutoring/writing-center/writing-resources/point-of-view-in-academic-writing.aspx
↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/story-plot/
↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/literary-devices/
↑ http://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/vandybloggers/2013/09/how-to-write-your-personal-essay/
↑ http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/revising-drafts/

About This Article

To write a personal essay, start by deciding on an experience that affected your life in some way, such as how failing a pop quiz in class made you change your goals. Next, draft an outline containing the points you want to make, and including an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. When writing, start your essay with an engaging scene that introduces the characters and main theme, then develop the characters in the body section so they're well-rounded. Conclude by summing up what you learned from the experience. For tips on how to include a plot in your essay and how to proofread your work, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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20 Places to Read Great Personal Essays

There has been a lot of discussion in writing circles recently about the fate of the personal essay. I say recently, but in fact this is a debate that has been going on for a long time. Virgina Woolf, always ahead of her time, was grumbling about personal essays as long ago as 1905 .

Anyway, back in May, Jia Tolentino wrote a piece in the New Yorker arguing that The Personal-Essay Boom is Over (and then, ironically enough, sold a collection of her personal essays to Random House). It spawned many thoughtful and interesting responses, including this feminist defence of the form by New School Professor Susan Shapiro, this wonderful piece about parenting essays by Lauren Apfel at Motherwell , and this piece by Kath Kenny in The Conversation .

If you’ve grown up online, as I have, you will likely have read hundreds, if not thousands of personal essays. It’s true that many of them – the poorly written, exploitative clickbait articles that were the focus of Laura Bennet’s excellent Slate piece back in 2015 – should never have been published.

But it’s also true that a well written personal essay can be a truly beautiful thing. I have a folder on my desktop of saved pieces that I return to again and again: astonishing, illuminating essays about what it means to find your home, to be a mother, to love and laugh and live.

With that in mind, I thought I’d put together a list of my favourite sites for reading personal essays, along with a link to one of my favourite essays on each site. I hope you enjoy exploring them: there’s no clickbait here.

1. Vela: Creative nonfiction written by women, with a focus (although not exclusively) on travel. As well as longform essays, Vela publishes a number of shorter columns on body and identity, books, motherhood and place.

Suggested Read: Mother, Writer, Monster, Maid by Rufi Thorpe

2. Motherwell: A digital publication that tells all sides of the parenting story. Motherwell was only launched in May 2016 but has already established a great reputation for publishing excellent writing on family life.

Suggested Read: What we neglect when the children are young by Lauren Apfel

3. Catapult : Catapult is a book publisher and a provider of online writing classes, but their team also produces an online daily magazine of narrative fiction and nonfiction. It’s the kind of site where you can lose hours to reading.

Suggested Read: Talking to my daughter about Charlottesville by Taylor Harris

4. New York Times : From Lives to Modern Love to Ties , the NYT has long been home to some of the very best personal essays out there. Modern Love is pretty much the holy grail for every essay writer out there – it’s the one that we all want – because as Andrea Jarrell recently wrote in a piece for Lit Hub , it can be a life changer.

Suggested Read: Visiting McDonalds With My Grandmother by Christine Ro

5. Narratively : Launched in 2012, Narratively is a storytelling studio that focuses on ordinary people with extraordinary stories.

Suggested Read: The Women in My Family Had to Be Good With Money by Dena Landon

6. The Manifest-Station : Describing it as ‘personal essays on being human’, founder Jennifer Pastiloff and editor Angela Giles Patel have created a site packed with inspiring, emotional writing.

Suggested Read: On Quiet Resistance by Vivian Wagner

7. Buzzfeed : You may know Buzzfeed best for its listicles and memes, but they also publish a surprising number of really good essays and longreads.

Suggested Read: The Weight of James Arthur Baldwin by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah

8. The Rumpus : Interviews, book reviews, comics, cultural critique… and some truly excellent essays.

Suggested Read: The (Online) Stories We Tell by Amanda Miska

9. Electric Literature : Fiction and creative nonfiction about the intersection of literature and other artforms.

Suggested Read: Trauma, Storytelling and Time Travel by Leslie Kendall Dye

10. Literary Mama : Not only does Literary Mama feature stunning writing, they also publish a comprehensive roundup of submission opportunities at other sites. A great place to spend some time whether you’re a reader, a writer, or both!

Suggested Read: The Care and Feeding of a Carnival Goldfish by Ann Klotz

11. Brain, Child : ‘the magazine for thinking mothers’ is how Brain, Child Magazine describes itself, and in the world of parenting websites their pieces are certainly some of the best.

Suggested Read: Mother as Witness by Melissa Uchiyama

12. Full Grown People : Subtitled ‘The Other Awkward Age’, Full Grown People is about romance, family, health, career, dealing with aging loved ones, and more. It’s a place for those of us who feel like we’re just stumbling along, doing the best we can. They publish a new essay twice a week.

Suggested Read: My Father’s Estate by Melissent Zumwalt

13. The Establishment : Funded and run by women, the Establishment publishes new content every day. With an intersectional feminist slant, they have featured some of the very best Trump-era writing about politics becoming personal.

Suggested Read: I Was Supposed To Have Good Hair by Ijeoma Oluo

14. Tin House : Literary magazine and book publisher Tin House publishes fiction, essays and poetry, as well as a Lost and Found section dedicated to exceptional but overlooked books, and Readable Feast, which is dedicated to food writing.

Suggested Read: The Ice Cream by Kate Vieira

15. Dame : Another site with a major focus on current affairs and politics, but also an excellent First Person section which is worth exploring.

Suggested Read: I Used to Run Toward Danger by Vanessa Hua

16. Aeon : An online magazine of ideas and culture, Aeon publishes essays, articles and videos, many with a philosophical or scientific slant.

Suggested Read: On the lonely midnight trail of Orkney’s corncrakes by Amy Liptrot

17. Refinery 29 : Fancy-pants lifestyle site Refinery 29 has a strong focus on beauty, fashion and entertainment, but dig into it a little and you’ll also find some well written personal essays on everything from politics to motherhood.

Suggested Read: Dinner for One by Donna Freydken

18. Mothers Always Write : Poetry and essays written by mothers. MAW run regular essay writing classes online and many of the pieces published on the site are the result of those efforts.

Suggested Read: The Alchemy of Motherhood by Lisa Lopez Smith

19. Overland : Australian literary journal Overland has been publishing progressive writing on culture since the 1950s. The quarterly mag is supplemented by regular content on their website, and if you’re looking for smart, engaging personal essays with an Aussie slant, this is the place to go.

Suggested Read: Kids are Gross: on feminists and agency by Caitlin McGregor

20. Purple Clover : Targeted at over 50s who are ‘young at heart’ this is a fab site, packed with essays and articles by writers who are comfortable in their own skin.

Suggested Read: Those Wet Noodles are Strands of my DNA by Leslie Kendall Dye

Do you have any sites that you love?

Let me know what I’ve missed by leaving a comment below.

Photo by Dana Marin on Unsplash

How to Write a Personal Essay: Topics, Structure, & Examples

Even though a personal essay seems like something you might need to write only for your college application, people who graduated a while ago are asked to write it. Therefore, if you are a student, you might even want to save this article for later!

A personal essay is a first-person narrative that describes a writer’s life experience and its influence . You may think that writing such an essay is easy-peasy. There is so much freedom regarding the topic, isn’t it? However, soon enough, you realize that it’s more of a curse than a blessing. Custom-writing.org experts understand it’s super confusing as you don’t know where to start. But this simple yet comprehensive guide on how to write a personal essay is here to help you out!

❔ What Is a Personal Essay?

🚦 how do you start a personal essay.

🙋 Essay Topics
📑 Personal Essay Types

🔗 References

A personal essay is just what you think it is: a piece of writing that presents some experience from your perspective . It doesn’t need to be extraordinary, but it has to show how you changed thanks to the experience you got. Such an essay also creates a feeling of intimacy.

A typical personal essay consists of a 1-paragraph introduction, a 3-paragraph body, and a 1-paragraph conclusion.

Long story short, it is a first-person narrative that describes a writer’s life experience and its influence. This type of essay allows you to use any writing style you want and usually has an informal tone. It helps the reader to gain a connection with you.

There is a wide variety of topic options: you may want your writing to be inspiring or, on the contrary, warning so that others could avoid your mistakes. However, the most important thing is sticking to the general guidelines.

The most popular personal essay outline would consist of three parts:

Start with an introduction . It should include only one paragraph
Continue with the main body . It should be at least three paragraphs long
Write a conclusion . Don’t make it too long, one paragraph is enough

Let’s also note that typically you would write a personal essay as a part of the college application process. However, it’s not rare that this type of writing can help employers understand if the candidate meets the job requirements.

👀 Personal Essay Examples

To give you some inspiration, we included a list of excellent examples ranked as the most successful personal essays by The New York Times , The New Yorker , and America’s top universities.

The first and the most important thing you need to do when you are about to write a personal essay is to determine its purpose . When you know your audience, it becomes easier to find an appropriate topic for your writing. After that, you can draft an outline, which is the foundation of your future essay!

🙋 Personal Essay Topics

By now, you might have understood the idea of the personal statement. Your goal is to show off your personality from the good side. However, there is an endless amount of options on how to do it. The most popular way is to tell the story from the past. It can be either something you achieved or an obstacle you managed to overcome. Either way, it needs to highlight the lesson you learned.

Next, you can make your writing even more inspirational by revealing your future goals, showing that you have potential and determination. But remember to focus on things that the whole community can benefit from because just getting rich is a lame objective!

Last but not least, be yourself and use creativity! Show your potential employers and college administration how much you can contribute to their development. You should convince them that it can be a mutually beneficial experience.

Here, we prepared some of the best personal essay topics for you:

How did the most significant loss of your life make you stronger?
Who would you like to switch live with, and why?
The time when you think you made the wrong choice.
How would you spend a million dollars?
Is there anything you have never shared with anyone?
A special friend that influenced your life.
One morning that has changed your life forever.
The time when you had to deliver devastating news.
A near-death experience and how it felt.
Describe the longest minute of your life.
Something you can’t resist and keep doing.
A meaningful event that is hard to explain.
Would you start a charity foundation if you could?
The most precious gift you ever received.
The wrong choice you never regret making.
A secret place that gives you peace of mind.
Something you’ve seen and wish you could forget.
A hidden talent no one knows you have.
A day when you felt like the unluckiest person in the world.
The most beautiful thing you’ve seen.
A skill you have that robots will never learn to do.
What is the one thing you want to change about yourself?
Where would you like to live?
The most important discovery you made.
What if you were a teacher?
The most fantastic movie scene that changed the world.
What would you like to change in schools?
Describe something you love about yourself and why.
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
Time with your family that you cherish the most.
The achievement you’re proud of.
Describe the time when you learned something from a child.
The words that made you hopeful again.
Write about the time when you were at the bottom.
A stranger that had an influence on you.
What would you do if you could go back in time?
Would you like to redo something in your life, would you?
The superpower you wish you had.
The person you would be grateful to at the end of your life.
The time when you avoided danger.
Family celebrations, and what do they mean to you?
Write about the time when you saw your mother crying.
Did you disappoint anyone?
Is there anyone you are not fond of?
A place that you try to keep away from.
How did you overcome your fear?
The most challenging choice you had to make.
The time you felt like an outsider.
When did you realize you’re not a child anymore?
Why does your hobby interest you?

📑 Personal Essay about Yourself: Main Types

Personal essays on hobbies.

Writing an essay on a hobby is not as easy as it seems. Take a look at any hobbies essay sample, and you will be likely to see a widespread thing: these essays can be boring, which is an easy way to get a low grade.

Below are some common problems with hobby essays (and their solutions).

No matter what, make sure the focus is on you. When you are writing about a personal hobby, you should aim to make yourself the star by essentially telling your reader about yourself through an interest of yours.

Life-changing Experience Essays

The purpose of a life-changing experience essay is obvious: simply put, you need to tell the reader about a specific event that changed your life . Note that it also works for a closely related type of essay, the personal narrative essay .

Three essential elements should be clear to readers of any life-changing experience writing:

The reader should understand the event — both what happened and how it made you feel at the time.
The reader should understand what the event changed about you. It is best to tell the reader about your condition before the event and after it. However, this depends on the essay’s length.
The reader should understand how you feel about the event now.

If you need personal experience essay ideas, focus on events that you can write about to meet the three above criteria. If your assignment is very free form, take a look at a list of prompts for personal writing.

Education Essays

As a student, you will be asked to write an education essay eventually. It is important to remember that personal writing is about setting yourself apart. Tell the reader what made your educational experience unique.

How can you make your educational essay stand out? First, go beyond generic stories of overcoming an academic weakness by avoiding essays that take the following form: “I was terrible at subject X, but through hard work, I became quite excellent at subject X!”

Instead, focus on an assignment or subject that captured your attention — the more unusual the situation, the better. Use storytelling to enhance your essay. The best education essays can be essays about life-changing education experiences; for example, many great educational stories focus on the teacher or class that changed the author’s life.

Biographies

Writing a short biography is easy. All you need to do is to use a very basic biography template. But first: remember that you need to keep the attention of your reader. Tell a good story about yourself ! Learning how to write a biography is about learning how to tell a good story .

A Biography Template

A solid biography is a solid story. For this reason, the biography template is essentially the template of a well-crafted story, which is typically divided into three specific parts:

Establish the characters. In this case, these are people that play important roles in your life. For example, if your autobiographical essay includes family members, you need to describe them briefly before anything exciting happens.
Build tension. If you write about your family, you can describe a problem that exists there.
Describe a resolution. Not that it is not the same thing as a problem being solved. For example, when a loved one dies, there is no solution to that problem. Instead, you grieve and learn to live without that person in your life.

If your biography manages to achieve all three of these elements, you will indeed have one of the class’s strongest essays.

Personal Statements

The last type of personal writing is probably the most important. When faced with their first college application, most students go to the web to find a personal statement format.

If you learn from examples, the best thing to do is check out several strong personal statement examples. As mentioned in the second section, many universities post essays from accepted students. Or perhaps you should read a breakdown of portions of a personal statement. The point is, read what others have done for inspiration.

Sometimes colleges offer personal statement templates. However, they often use freeform personal statements to identify focused, articulate students. Thus, the top tip for these is to write a clear thesis statement . A thesis statement for an essay without a prompt should be so clear that it sounds like it addresses a writing prompt. When there is no prompt, this is the time you should specifically use the standard 5-paragraph essay . Your discipline will impress your readers, which is exactly what you want.

However, an open-ended essay prompt is sometimes just too much to handle in time, but that is alright. It happens to everyone, and our writing experts can help, luckily. You can work with one of their expert writers or editors to create the perfect personal essay.

Personal Essays – Georgia Tech Admissions
The Personal Statement // Purdue Writing Lab
Application Essays – UNC Writing Center
How To: Write Your Personal Essay
Essays | Penn Admissions
Writing the Personal Statement | Berkeley Graduate Division
Personal Insight Questions – UCLA Undergraduate Admission
Essay Topics | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions
Complete Your Application: Indiana University Bloomington
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A critique paper is an academic writing genre that summarizes and gives a critical evaluation of a concept or work. Or, to put it simply, it is no more than a summary and a critical analysis of a specific issue. This type of writing aims to evaluate the impact of...

How to Write a Creative Essay: Tips, Topics, and Techniques

What is a creative essay, if not the way to express yourself? Crafting such a paper is a task that allows you to communicate your opinion and tell a story. However, even using your imagination to a great extent doesn’t free you from following academic writing rules. Don’t even get...

Compare and Contrast Essay Writing Tips and Examples

A compare and contrast essay — what is it? In this type of paper, you compare two different things or ideas, highlighting what is similar between the two, and you also contrast them, highlighting what is different. The two things might be events, people, books, points of view, lifestyles, or...

How to Write an Expository Essay: Outline, & Example

What is an expository essay? This type of writing aims to inform the reader about the subject clearly, concisely, and objectively. The keyword here is “inform”. You are not trying to persuade your reader to think a certain way or let your own opinions and emotions cloud your work. Just stick to the...

Short Story Analysis: How to Write It Step by Step [New]

Have you ever tried to write a story analysis but ended up being completely confused and lost? Well, the task might be challenging if you don’t know the essential rules for literary analysis creation. But don’t get frustrated! We know how to write a short story analysis, and we are...

How to Write a Persuasive Essay: Step-by-Step Guide + Examples

Have you ever tried to get somebody round to your way of thinking? Then you should know how daunting the task is. Still, if your persuasion is successful, the result is emotionally rewarding. A persuasive essay is a type of writing that uses facts and logic to argument and substantiate...

Common Essay Mistakes—Writing Errors to Avoid [Updated]

One of the most critical skills that students gain during their college years is assignment writing. Composing impressive essays and research papers can be quite challenging, especially for ESL students. Nonetheless, before learning the art of academic writing, you may make numerous common essay mistakes. Such involuntary errors appear in:...

Why I Want to Be a Teacher Essay: Writing Guide [2024]

Some people know which profession to choose from childhood, while others decide much later in life. However, and whenever you come to it, you may have to elaborate on it in your personal statement or cover letter. This is widely known as “Why I Want to Be a Teacher” essay.

At 82, I am assuredly a ‘mature student.’ However, I wanted to thank you for being the most helpful resource I have discovered on ‘google’ to look at how I can consider writing an autobiography to perhaps leave my children.

Best Essays to Read

AS I SIFT through the pages of my personal collection of the best essays to read, I can’t help but feel a profound sense of connection to the authors who penned these words.

Essays are often written in the first-person, in which writers use their own personal experiences to reflect on a theme or topic for the reader. Many acclaimed authors I love —like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison—combine these pieces into collections of unique social commentary.

Therefore, each essay on this list holds a special place in my heart, and I’ve curated these essays worth reading based on my own, personal taste.

These essays, handpicked from diverse corners of literature, have left a lasting impression on me. They are more than just ink on paper; they are windows into my own thoughts, emotions, and experiences. These essays worth reading come from different times and places, each with its unique voice and perspective.

Some essays to read have provoked introspection, while others have had me bursting into laughter or shedding a tear. They’ve led me through deep philosophical musings and allowed me to vicariously experience the joys and sorrows of people I’ve never met. Among many things, these essays to read are more than just stories; they are my companions on the journey of understanding, empathy, and self-discovery.

As you delve into this collection of my favorite essays to read, I invite you to embark on a personal voyage of exploration. Let these authors be your guides, just as they have been mine, as we traverse the landscapes of their thoughts and experiences together. Whether you seek solace, enlightenment, or simply a good story, I hope you’ll find it within these pages.

So, without further ado, let’s dive into this collection of my favorite essays to read and the best essays to read which I thoughtfully curated. You can be sure that any book recommended on this page is worth your time as I obviously read every single one of them. Here are some of the best essays to read.

The top and best essays to read

These are the top 5 best essays to read. Click on the buttons for more details about the book: from community ratings to book summaries, reviews, and information about the authors.

Our women on the ground by Zahra Hankir Bol.com | Amazon | Waterstones | Bookshop.org

This essay is a volume of stories describing the unique challenges and advantages of several Arab and Middle Eastern female journalists, reporting from some of the most repressive countries in the world and what it’s like.

Notes of a native son by James Baldwin The Book Depository | Bol.com | Amazon | Waterstones | Bookshop.org

A collection of 10 short essays that recollects the lived experience of a black person in the United States and Europe in the 50s.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion The Book Depository | Bol.com | Amazon | Waterstones | Bookshop.org

This beautifully written essay intimately explores the aftermath of her husband’s unexpected death and her daughter’s critical illness, capturing her emotional turmoil and the complex process of grief and healing.

Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver The Book Depository | Amazon | Bol.com | Waterstones | Bookshop.org

This collection of reflective essays by Mary Oliver explores profound insights on life, creativity, and the enduring connection between humanity and the natural world.

Best personal essays

These are my favorite personal essays to read. In this genre of writing, the writer shares their personal insights, anecdotes, and perspectives on a particular topic, theme, or event. Use the buttons to delve deeper into the details of the book.

Goodbye to All That by Joan Didion The Book Depository | Amazon | Waterstones | Bookshop.org

A personal literary essay about living in New York, United States, while feeling disconnected.

Letters to a young poet by Rainer Maria Rilke Bol.com | Amazon | Waterstones | Barnes & Noble

A collection of insightful correspondence from renowned poet Rainer Maria Rilke, offering guidance and wisdom to a young aspiring poet, exploring themes of solitude, creativity, and the pursuit of an authentic artistic voice.

Why I Write by Joan Didion Bol.com | Amazon | Waterstones | Barnes & Noble

This book explores the motivations and intricacies behind Joan’s writing journey, offering insights into the profound reasons that drove her creative expression.

By specific topic:

Best books on creativity
Best books on writing
The Best Books For Women

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The personal essay.

Photograph of blank Microsoft Word document titled "The Most Awesome College Essay Ever"

Unlike the rest of your application, which primarily consists of filling in boxes, the personal essay gives you the freedom to essentially write about whatever you want. No rules! Show who you are! Which sounds pretty cool, until you’re sitting there looking at a blank Word document.

While the personal essay is a great opportunity to infuse your voice into the application, I think some people (cough, me, cough) can get overwhelmed by it to the point where they don’t know how to begin. What do I write about? What makes me stand out? How can I explain all of this in only a few hundred words?

Well, as someone who eventually managed to get some words down on that blank document and turn out a decent college essay, here are a few words of advice.

1. Start by writing something.

I know, that sounds really obvious. But sometimes the hardest part of writing is just getting started – if you spend too much time criticizing your ideas before you write anything down, you won’t get anywhere. Write a few sentences, jot down some random ideas, note a couple anecdotes that might be interesting… just get something on paper that you can look back to. Maybe one of those ideas will catch, and BOOM you have an essay – or maybe you’ll look back to this list after a few weeks and think of something else that you would rather write about. That’s fine! The beginning of the creative process involves coming up with ideas, judging them comes later. Trust me, I took a class on this (really: it was a psych class called “Creativity: Madmen, Geniuses, and Harvard Students.”)

2. Think about something that has some significance to you.

Many students feel like they have to write about some huge, life-changing, important event in their lives. If you have something like this that you want to write about, that’s great! However, you can also write an awesome essay about something other than The Most Important Thing Ever. It can be the littlest things, if you explain their significance well, that actually stand out. In my case, somewhere in my essay I mentioned that I got up at 5:37am (rather than 5:30 or 5:45) because I liked prime numbers – and the first thing my admissions officer said when I walked into the room for my interview was, “So, prime numbers, huh?” That being said, remember that this is a college essay, so keep this audience and goal in mind as you write. When they finish reading, what do you want the admissions officers to know about you? Does this essay demonstrate something about who you are and what you care about? If not, you might want to go back to the drawing board.

3. Don’t be afraid to start over.

After finishing my first draft, I was glad to have something, but I wasn’t completely happy with it either. A week or two later, as I was reading over my essay again, I had an idea for a totally different topic - so I opened another document and completely started over. The second attempt was so much better, and I felt happy with how it turned out. It can be hard to scrap an initial attempt after spending so much time on it, but think of that time as just part of the process of getting to what you really want to write about.

4. Get an outside perspective.

One of the most useful things I did while working on my college essay was asking a couple people to read it over. At the time, I had two drafts that I was choosing between, and I wasn’t sure which one captured “me” better. When I asked my parents and teacher what they thought, they unanimously picked one option over the other. In the end, it’s important to have an essay that you are happy with – but sometimes having a fresh set of eyes can help you see what that is.

This is an important step! Both you, and perhaps someone who knows you well, should read over your essay and make sure it is in tip-top shape before you turn it in. There should be no grammatical or spelling mistakes – that gives the impression that you did not take your time on it. I know you’ve spent a long time on it by this point, but those last edits are super important!

The personal essay is a snippet of who you are and where you’re coming from – a snapshot for the admissions officers to look at as they read your application. It will never be able to capture everything about you, but you want to make sure that you’re giving them your best angle. So sit down, smile, and get to writing!

Halie Class of Alumni

Student Voices

Dear homesick international student at harvard college.

David Class of '25

A photo of a man in sunglasses looking at blue ocean waters.

My Harvard Monomyth

Denzel Class of '24

Applying to Engineering Fellowships?

Denzel Ekes and Astronaut Benjamin Alvin Drew pictured together smiling at the camera.

7 publications that pay well for personal narrative essays

Despite The New Yorker declaring that the personal essay boom was over in 2017, I’ve seen the opposite. Whenever I look on Twitter, I see callouts from editors for candid, revealing and thought-provoking first person pieces. For freelance writers, the advantage of writing a personal narrative essay is that you are drawing on your own experience, so there is very little need for external research or case studies. Many writers also say that writing down their own experience and sharing it with others feels validating, affirming and therapeutic.

Before I became a full time freelancer , I wrote quite a few personal narrative essays.

Why? Because personal narrative essays are one of the fastest and easiest ways to get published.

When I was writing my first-person pieces, I found numerous articles about how to sell personal essays in the age of over-sharing and how to write compelling first person pieces for major publications.

I quickly learnt that if you are willing to open up and share your own experience, you can be compensated well for it.

And if you’re interested to learn more about how to write a personal essay (and how to get paid for it!) I’ve created the ultimate guide to step you through the process.

It takes you through:

Choosing the perfect topic for a personal essay
How to start a personal essay (including what to do and not to do and examples of banging beginnings)
Common mistakes people make when writing first-person narratives
How to write a compelling personal essay that keeps people reading right to the end
Examples of great personal narrative essays
How to pitching your story to an editor
And lots more!

The guide also includes 15+ paying markets for personal narrative essays, but I know that it can be tricky to find publications that accept freelance submissions.

The good news is that there are plenty of online and print publications looking for personal essays.

So if you have a personal story you want to share, where can you pitch it?

If you’re a writer who has had a book published, it’s definitely worth pitching to Allure (a magazine predominantly for women about beauty) as they pay up to $3,000 for personal essays up to 2000 words.

For those mere mortals among us who haven’t written a book, the rate for personal essays seems to be more like $250 – $500.

Glamour is another women’s magazine that heavily focuses on beauty, fashion and entertainment stories. Personal essays published by Glamour are reported to fetch around $2/word.

3. The Guardian

You have to love an editor who puts what she wants from writers out there and Jessica Reed from The Guardian certainly delivers. For beautifully written personal essays, The Guardian reportedly pays 60c/word.

4. Marie Claire

If you’ve got something compelling, insightful, intimate, funny, relatable or awkward to say about your love or sex life, then a personal essay directed to Marie Claire might be just the ticket. Writers report that Marie Claire pays $2/word.

Are you spotting a theme here? Women’s magazines love personal essays. If you want to write first hand experience about fitness, food, health or culture, it’s worth pitching to SELF magazine, who pay up to $700 for 2000 words.

A dynamic site covering world affairs, pop culture, science, business, politics and more, Vox pay around $500 for personal narrative essays. What’s even better is their clear pitching guidelines for their First Person section .

7. News.com.au

If you feel like a sharing a real life story like this one , you can pitch to the lifestyle vertical on the Australian website news.com.au. Writers are reportedly paid around $500 for a post.

Great examples of personal essays

You could spend years reading all the personal narrative essays that get published, but here are my picks for some of the best:

My washing line is heavy with the weight of our ash-ridden tent hung out to air. I wonder if the smell of smoke will ever be gone. I have no recollection of the tent being packed away – I was focused on the children, keeping them calm. All I know is that we’d never packed up a campsite so damn quickly. But then, we’d never fled a bushfire. You can read the rest of the article here.

“I love you so much.” Those whispered words make everything better – and when my soul mate and husband died, five years ago, I truly believed I would never hear them again. You can read the rest of the article here.

My epiphany came, like many of them do, while I was taking a dump. Specifically, it came while I was trying to take a dump in the woods after three years of struggling with gastrointestinal issues. It went something like this: you don’t need to be gluten-free anymore. You just need to relax. You can read the rest of the article here.

The rules for pitching a personal essay are much the same as when you query an editor for any other kind of writing assignment.

You just need a strong hook and engaging writing style.

The writers I know who create personal narrative essays love it.

They feel free and are absolutely thrilled when readers respond to their articles with “me too!”

After all, isn’t the point of writing to reach and connect with others? Personal essays tend to do that in a very special way.

Do you write personal narrative essays? Have you found other well-paying markets?

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The Best Books of the Year (So Far)

The nonfiction and novels we can’t stop thinking about.

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By The New York Times Books Staff

May 24, 2024

Fiction | Nonfiction

We’re almost halfway through 2024 and we at The Book Review have already written about hundreds of books. Some of those titles are good. Some are very good. And then there are the following.

We suspect that some (though certainly not all) will be top of mind when we publish our end-of-year, best-of lists. For more thoughts on what to read next, head to our book recommendation page .

The cover of “James” is black. The title is in yellow, and the author’s name is in white.

James , by Percival Everett

In this reworking of the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River, is the narrator, and he recounts the classic tale in a language that is his own, with surprising details that reveal a far more resourceful, cunning and powerful character than we knew.

Local bookstores | Barnes and Noble | Amazon

Good Material , by Dolly Alderton

Alderton’s novel, about a 35-year-old struggling to make sense of a breakup, delivers the most delightful aspects of romantic comedy — snappy dialogue, realistic relationship dynamics, funny meet-cutes and misunderstandings — and leaves behind clichéd gender roles and the traditional marriage plot.

Martyr! , by Kaveh Akbar

A young Iranian American aspiring poet and recovering addict grieves his parents’ deaths while fantasizing about his own in Akbar’s remarkable first novel, which, haunted by death, also teems with life — in the inventive beauty of its sentences, the vividness of its characters and the surprising twists of its plot.

The Hunter , by Tana French

For Tana French fans, every one of the thriller writer’s twisty, ingenious books is an event. This one, a sequel to “The Searcher,” once again sees the retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper, a perennial outsider in the Irish west-country hamlet of Ardnakelty, caught up in the crimes — seen and unseen — that eat at the seemingly picturesque village.

Wandering Stars , by Tommy Orange

This follow-up to Orange’s debut, “There There,” is part prequel and part sequel; it trails the young survivor of a 19th-century massacre of Native Americans, chronicling not just his harsh fate but those of his descendants. In its second half, the novel enters 21st-century Oakland, following the family in the aftermath of a shooting.

Headshot , by Rita Bullwinkel

Set at a women’s boxing tournament in Reno, Nev., this novel centers on eight contestants, and the fights — physical and emotional — they bring to the ring. As our critic wrote: This story’s impact “lasts a long time, like a sharp fist to your shoulder.”

Beautyland , by Marie-Helene Bertino

In 1970s Philadelphia, an alien girl sent to Earth before she’s born communicates with her fellow life-forms via fax as she helps gather intel about whether our planet is habitable. This funny-sad novel follows the girl and her single mother as they find the means to persevere.

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder , by Salman Rushdie

In his candid, plain-spoken and gripping new memoir, Rushdie recalls the attempted assassination he survived in 2022 during a presentation about keeping the world’s writers safe from harm. His attacker had piranhic energy. He also had a knife. Rushdie lost an eye, but he has slowly recovered thanks to the attentive care of doctors and the wife he celebrates here.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis , by Jonathan Blitzer

This urgent and propulsive account of Latin American politics and immigration makes a persuasive case for a direct line from U.S. foreign policy in Central America to the current migrant crisis.

The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook , by Hampton Sides

By the time he made his third Pacific voyage, the British explorer James Cook had maybe begun to lose it a little. The scientific aims of his first two trips had shifted into something darker. According to our reviewer, the historian Hampton Sides “isn’t just interested in retelling an adventure tale. He also wants to present it from a 21st-century point of view. ‘The Wide Wide Sea’ fits neatly into a growing genre that includes David Grann’s ‘ The Wager ’ and Candice Millard’s ‘ River of the Gods ,’ in which famous expeditions, once told as swashbuckling stories of adventure, are recast within the tragic history of colonialism .”

The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon , by Adam Shatz

This absorbing biography of the Black psychiatrist, writer and revolutionary Frantz Fanon highlights a side of him that’s often eclipsed by his image as a zealous partisan — that of the caring doctor, who ran a secret clinic for Algerian rebels.

Fi: A Memoir , by Alexandra Fuller

In her fifth memoir, Fuller describes the sudden death of her 21-year-old son. Devastating as this elegant and honest account may be — it’s certainly not for the faint of heart — it also leaves the reader with a sense of having known a lovely and lively young man.

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

John S. Jacobs was a fugitive, an abolitionist — and the brother of the canonical author Harriet Jacobs. Now, his own fierce autobiography has re-emerged .

Don DeLillo’s fascination with terrorism, cults and mass culture’s weirder turns has given his work a prophetic air. Here are his essential books .

Jenny Erpenbeck’s “ Kairos ,” a novel about a torrid love affair in the final years of East Germany, won the International Booker Prize , the renowned award for fiction translated into English.

Kevin Kwan, the author of “Crazy Rich Asians,” left Singapore’s opulent, status-obsessed, upper crust when he was 11. He’s still writing about it .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

Personal Finance

Best low interest credit cards for may 2024.

Our evaluations and opinions are not influenced by our advertising relationships, but we may earn a commission from our partners’ links. This content is created independently from TIME’s editorial staff. Learn more about it.

Every month, you open your credit card statement with a sense of unease. Most months, you can pay your card off in full, but there are some months when money is tight. Maybe you’ve had to pay the minimum due and incur interest charges for a month or two…or perhaps you have several hundred dollars—or more—of credit card debt that you’re trying to pay off.

If this sounds familiar, a low-interest credit card is an option that can give you some breathing room in the months when you need a bit of flexibility.

In this article, we’ll cover low-interest credit cards from several issuers to help you find a card that fits into your financial life.

Best Low Interest Rate Credit Cards: Summary

Best for good credit: card_name, best for cash back on everyday purchases: card_name, best for building credit: card_name, best for small business owners: card_name, best credit union card: wings financial visa platinum credit card, why we recommend these low interest credit cards, citi® diamond preferred® card.

Welcome offer : bonus_miles_full

Card details : Here are the details of the card_name :

Why we recommend it : If your credit isn’t excellent, it may be difficult to find a card with a compelling 0% interest rate . But Citi offers an option for you with the card_name . Like the card_name , the card_name offers a balance_transfer_intro_apr,balance_transfer_intro_duration .

The downsides of the card_name are its higher balance transfer fee ( balance_transfer_fees ) and the fact that the card doesn’t earn rewards. You can keep the card open after you finish paying off your balance to help improve your credit score , but there is little reason to continue using the card after the balance transfer promotional period ends.

Read our full review to learn more.

Blue Cash Everyday® Card from American Express

Perhaps groceries and gas make up a large portion of your budget and you’d prefer a 0% APR on a card that offers more rewards where you spend the most. That’s where the card_name can provide a little additional utility to your wallet.

Welcome offer: bonus_miles_full

Card details : Here are the details on the balance transfer offer and rewards of the Blue Cash Everyday Card:

intro_apr_rate,intro_apr_duration ( Rates & Fees ).

balance_transfer_intro_apr,balance_transfer_intro_duration ( Rates & Fees ).

balance_transfer_fees balance transfer fee ( Rates & Fees ).

3% cash back at U.S. supermarkets (up to $6,000 per year; then 1%).

3% cash back on U.S . online retailers (up to $6,000 per year; then 1%).

3% cash back at U.S. gas stations (up to $6,000 per year; then 1%).

Terms & Restrictions Apply.
annual_fees annual fee ( Rates & Fees ).

Why we recommend it : This Amex card offers 3% cash back on your first $6,000 of spending in each of its bonus categories: U.S. supermarkets, U.S. online retailers, and U.S. gas stations. Since the 0% APR applies to both purchases and balance transfers, you can earn rewards while paying down your transferred balance.

Chase Slate Edge

Card details : Here are the details of the balance transfer offer and interest rate reductions available with the Chase Slate Edge:

intro_apr_rate,intro_apr_duration .
balance_transfer_intro_apr,balance_transfer_intro_duration .
Automatic regular APR reductions when you pay on time and spend $1,000 on the card.
Automatic one-time review for a higher credit limit when you spend $500 in the first six months and pay on time.
balance_transfer_fees for balance transfers made within 60 days.
annual_fees annual fee.

Why we recommend it : If you need a card that can help you manage your balance transfers and build credit, the card_name can help you do both. In addition to an balance_transfer_intro_apr,balance_transfer_intro_duration , the card_name offers an automatic one-time review for a higher credit limit when you pay your card on time and spend $500 in your first six months.

The card also offers automatic interest rate reductions. Every year you spend at least $1,000 on the card and pay on time, Chase will decrease your ongoing interest rate until it reaches the prime rate, plus 9.74%.

The Plum CardR from American Express

Card details : Here are the details of the American Express Plum Card:

No interest on purchases for 60 days after your statement closing date when you pay the minimum payment by your payment due date.
1.5% early pay discount when you pay within 10 days of your statement closing date ( Rates & Fees ).
1.5% (minimum $39) fee for late payments. This fee increases to 2.99% (minimum $39) if you make a late payment two months in a row ( Rates & Fees ).

Why we recommend it : If your objective as a small business owner is to use a card to get a little extra time to pay for your purchases, the card_name might be the tool you need. As long as you pay your minimum payment by your due date, you can get 60 days from your statement closing date to pay for your purchases, interest free.

Unlike traditional credit cards, the card_name is a pay-as-you-go card and it does not charge a traditional interest rate. If you go beyond 60 days to pay or miss a minimum payment, you’ll pay a 1.5% (minimum $39) penalty fee each month. If you do not pay for two billing periods in a row, this fee increases to 2.99% (minimum $39).

Wings Financial Visa Platinum Credit Card

Welcome offer : None.

Card details : Here are the details of the Wings Financial Visa Platinum Credit Card

0% introductory APR for 12 months on purchases and balance transfers.
No balance transfer fees.
12.90% to 18.00% ongoing variable APR.
No annual fee.

Why we recommend it : The best ongoing interest rates on credit cards will usually be found at credit unions. Unlike most banks, credit unions are member-owned co-ops that traditionally offer lower interest rates on loan products to their members. Wings Financial offers its Visa Platinum Credit Card with a 12.90% to 18.00% ongoing variable APR, a range unmatched by the large national banks.

To bank at a credit union, you must become a member and not every credit union offers membership to everyone. Credit unions usually require you to live within the bank’s footprint, have an industry affiliation, or make a contribution to a foundation to become a member. Wings Financial Membership is available if you work or live nearby its branch locations, if you work in the aviation industry, or if you make a $5 contribution to the Wings Financial Foundation. This means that Wings Financial is an option for anyone, nationwide.

Best low interest credit cards comparison chart

Our methodology.

To pick the best low-interest credit card, we considered the priorities of someone looking to use a promotional balance transfer offer to consolidate credit card debt. If that’s you, you probably want the longest balance transfer period possible and want to pay as little in fees as possible. It would be nice to have a credit card that you can use for ongoing purchases, but rewards are probably a secondary consideration.

TIME Stamp: look for the best combination of features

The card_name offers both a intro_apr_rate,intro_apr_duration and a path for all cardmembers to a reg_apr,reg_apr_type interest rate, an interest rate normally reserved for those with the highest credit scores—this combination makes it an attractive option if you’ve got a little bit of credit card debt to pay off and want a card that you can occasionally use to float a balance.

For rates and fees of the card_name , please visit this URL .

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Are low interest credit cards worth it (pros and cons).

If you are carrying credit card debt, low interest credit cards are a smart choice. Seeking a lower interest rate will almost always work to your advantage when compared with going after greater credit card rewards.

Can I negotiate my interest rate on a credit card?

You can try to negotiate the interest rate on your credit card by calling your card issuer. While there are no guarantees, a bank is more likely to give you a break on interest or offer you a promotional rate if you have a history of on-time payments and a strong credit score.

What causes interest rates on credit cards to change?

Credit card interest rates vary based on the prime rate, a publicly published interest rate that banks use to set various interest rates. The prime rate reflects market interest rates and the cost of lending money.

The information presented here is created independently from the TIME editorial staff. To learn more, see our About page.

The best 11 free handwriting fonts in 2024

Your font choices are the voice of your designs; they communicate a message and tone to your audience.

With good typography (arrangement of text), you can cement your brand personality and boost audience engagement.

Handwritten fonts are one great way to achieve these goals.

Creating a sense of connection way before the Internet even existed, handwritten text can help you show brand authenticity and attract your audience’s attention.

In this article, we look at the power of handwriting fonts in more depth. We also look at 11 free handwriting fonts that you can access today!

Table of Contents

What are handwriting fonts?

Handwriting fonts are, as the name suggests, fonts that are made to mimic the natural flow and variation of handwriting. This means that, unlike traditional fonts, they might be slightly irregular between letters and vary in line thickness.

There are different types of fonts that look like handwriting . Some look like they have been written in marker, for example, while others look like they’re written in pencil.

The benefits of using handwriting fonts include the ability to:

Boost engagement. By sparking emotions in your audience, you can create a closer connection with them. For example, some handwriting fonts evoke a feeling of nostalgia with their child-like feel.
Make content feel more authentic and personalized. Even just adding a handwritten signature to the bottom of a letter can make people feel like the content was written just for them.
Break up designs. Handwritten fonts can catch the eye in contrast to other types of text. For example, in a formal piece, they add a touch of informality and fun.

11 free handwriting fonts

Ready to start experimenting with some free styled fonts ? Discover the 11 best handwriting fonts in 2024 below!

The first three are examples of fonts that can be found directly in Picsart’s font generator . We’ll show you a step-by-step guide on how to include them as well as how to upload other fonts later in the article.

1. Script Bold Italic

If you’re looking for a fancy handwriting style that can add a touch of sophistication to your design, you can’t go wrong with Script Bold Italic. Intricate, but highly readable, it’s the perfect font for brand materials or elegant signage.

Stand out from the crowd with this fun, angled handwriting font. The all-caps makes it great for creating eye-catching headlines or adding energy to a banner.

Curvy is a rounded, almost child-like font with an “S” that slants to the left. It’s great for adding personality and conveying warmth and approachability.

4. Bristol Regular

Bristol Regular is one of the most famous handwriting fonts. With thick letters in a marker pen style, it’s got a highly distinctive look that’s perfect for creating a memorable brand.

5. Honeyscript

Honeyscript has a slightly retro style which makes it great for creating designs with a nostalgic feel. Add this to event flyers, social media graphics, and more to entice your audience by creating a stronger emotional connection.

6. Scriptina Regular

A sprawling font with cute flourishes on some of the letters, Scriptina Regular adds a sense of drama and personality to any design. Use it to embellish product labels, email newsletters, and more.

7. Philtradesign Handwritten Font

Philtradesign is a more stripped-back, simple handwritten font that appears very personalized. It’s ideal for creating unique business cards and letters.

With the appearance of crayon strokes, Eraser is a great font for showing creativity in a design. Use it to make your marketing assets stand out by being more fun and playful.

9. Homemade Apple

Homemade Apple is a polished, but approachable handwriting style that exudes warmth and personality. Use it to elevate brochures, flyers, and more.

10. Drm Handwritten

A narrow, elongated font with a totally unique vibe, Drm Handwritten is a great choice for logos, website headers, and anywhere else you want to create a strong first impression.

11. Seascape

With a whimsical daydreamy feel, Seascape is the ideal font for businesses that want to evoke feelings of adventure and imagination. Use it in packaging, website design, or email newsletters.

Making use of handwritten fonts inside the Picsart Font Generator

If you want to start creating more of a human connection with your audience, handwriting fonts are perfect.

Head to https://tools.picsart.com/text/font-generator/
Look through the categories on the left to find the types of fonts you want. The handwriting fonts we’ve recommended can be found in the “Fancy” and “Cursive” tabs.
Type in the text box at the top to test them out or experiment with other cool fonts!

You can also add your own fonts inside Picsart’s website and mobile editors. Here’s how to do it on the website:

Head to the Picsart editor
Click “Uploads” in the left-hand tab.
Select the “Fonts” tab on the right.
Hit “Upload” at the bottom and search for your font.
Now, use the Text button to add a text box, select it, and change the font in the bar at the top.

And here’s how you can do it on mobile:

Locate the font file in your downloads.
Click “Export” and click the Picsart logo.
Open the Picsart app and click on the purple plus sign (+) at the bottom of the screen to start a new project.
Add text to your project.
Tap on the “Font” icon in the “Editor” toolbar, and then click on the teal arrow in the left-hand corner under your image to pull up our library of searchable fonts.
Head to “My Fonts” where you’ll see the font you just added.

Discover some of the best handwritten fonts in our font generator or upload your own font styles in seconds for ultimate freedom and creativity.

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Best Scholarship Websites of 2023
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Best Scholarship Websites of 2024

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Even the best student loans and other financial aid items don't always provide enough to cover all the costs of college. Scholarships are a great way to bridge the gap, with no obligation to repay the money. Finding scholarships you qualify for can be difficult. But there are several great scholarship websites that can help you do it.

Keep in mind, however, that many colleges deduct private scholarships from the amount of gift aid they provide, reducing how much "free money" you can get from the school. That would effectively negate the work you did in seeking out and applying for private scholarships. Therefore, you should consider looking at schools that offer merit-based scholarships or provide generous packages to students with financial need.

Scholarships.com

Collegeboard, scholarshipowl, compare the best scholarship websites.

We've rounded up the best scholarship websites for students looking to save on the cost of college, with an emphasis on those that provide a wide breadth of opportunities. Most of the sites are free to use. Some offer basic features at no cost, with an option to pay for additional functionality.

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Our experts for the best scholarship websites.

We consulted scholarship and financial experts to give their insights into finding the best scholarship websites — and when to avoid them altogether.

Christopher Rim, founder and CEO at Command Education
Jennifer Ledwith, owner at Scholar Ready
Neeta Vallab, founder at MeritMore
Ryan Wangman, former loans reporter at Personal Finance Insider

Best Scholarship Websites FAQs

There isn't a singular website that's the best to apply for scholarships. Instead, consider scholarships.com, Fastweb, Bold.org, Peterson's, College Board, Scholly, GoingMerry, Scholarship Owl, and ProFellow.

Do your due diligence when looking to apply for scholarships you find on aggregation websites. Confirm that the scholarship's sponsor is legitimate by looking at reviews of the company, and check its Better Business Bureau grade, if available.

Most private scholarships won't completely cover the cost of your education. You're better off looking for merit scholarships from individual colleges that cover your costs completely or filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to see if you're eligible for a need-based full ride.

Generally speaking, you shouldn't pay someone to search for scholarships for you, though there are exceptions to every rule. Many scholarship websites are free to use. They only "cost" the time you spend searching on them.

The timing on when you should start filling out applications for scholarships varies depending on the specific scholarship you're applying for. Some scholarships are even available to high school students, so it's never too early to start your search.

The GPA requirement varies from scholarship to scholarship, but the lowest GPA is usually around 2.0. In general, you'll have a better chance of success with a higher GPA.

Some of the most common scholarship types include academic scholarships, athletic scholarships, identity-based scholarships, and first-generation student scholarships.

Our Experts' Advice for Choosing the Best Scholarship Websites

What are the advantages of private scholarships versus scholarships or grants from schools.

Neeta Vallab:

"Honestly, there are very limited advantages to using private scholarships over grants directly from schools. Unlike private scholarships, most grants from schools do not require a separate application and are renewable for four years. Additionally, many colleges will deduct the value of a private scholarship from any award they give you. This is called 'displacement.' And because this practice is so prevalent, it often leaves students with no net financial benefit, despite the effort they invested in submitting an application."

Jennifer Ledwith:

"Unlike scholarships from schools, private scholarships can be used at multiple universities. Furthermore, unlike grants from schools, private scholarships don't have to follow federal or institutional financial aid methodology. Consequently, students can receive private scholarships without regard to other financial aid awards. Furthermore, some private scholarships send the money directly to the student, allowing greater flexibility in using the funds."

Should you always consider scholarships before loans? Are there any scenarios you should pick a loan?

Christopher Rim:

"No, you should never pick a loan over a scholarship! You always have to pay back loans. Students should bear in mind that they may have their scholarship rescinded if they don't meet the terms and conditions. They should be absolutely sure to read the terms of their scholarship thoroughly to understand the possible consequences if they fail to meet the set conditions."

Ryan Wangman:

"You'll need to repay the money you borrow from any lender, so it's never a good idea to choose a loan over a scholarship, which is money you don't have to pay back. There aren't any scenarios I can think of where it is better to pick a loan than a scholarship.

How do you know what scholarships you're qualified for?

Rim :

"Many websites will allow students to filter through their databases to find scholarships they are eligible for. Others ask students to create a profile and then match them based on demographic information. Once students find the scholarships on databases, they should be sure to cross check eligibility requirements on the sponsoring organization's website."

Vallab :

"Private scholarships will usually have a qualifications section in their description. Some colleges may publish a scholarship grid showing the GPA and test scores required for certain levels of eligibility. Not all merit scholarship information is published however."

What's the best way to track what scholarships you've applied for and are waiting to hear back from?

"Students should keep a spreadsheet to track their scholarship application status."

"Like Jennifer mentioned, a spreadsheet is usually the best way to track application status. Make sure you note how far along you are in each process, as well as any awards you have received — both private and from the schools you've been accepted to.

Editorial Note: Any opinions, analyses, reviews, or recommendations expressed in this article are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any card issuer. Read our editorial standards .

Please note: While the offers mentioned above are accurate at the time of publication, they're subject to change at any time and may have changed, or may no longer be available.

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Scammers love impersonating these 5 major brands to steal your money

Elvis impersonators shake, rattle and roll at nightclubs and other entertainment spots all across the country. But who are the most-impersonated, big name brand retailers, tech-support outfits, and businesses when it comes to the scammers? The ones who leave consumers all shook up?

The Federal Trade Commission drilled down on the data and reported that Best Buy’s Geek Squad, Amazon, and PayPal are at the top of the list for the most-impersonated, iconic companies based on complaints received in 2023.

Yet the dollars lost were the highest when the scammers pretended to be from Microsoft and Publishers Clearing House, according to the FTC's latest report.

Overall, consumers reported losing $60 million in Microsoft-related impersonation scams last year and $49 million in scams where crooks impersonated Publishers Clearing House, according to the FTC data. The data is based on reports to the Consumer Sentinel Network. The network received 7,000 complaints about scammers impersonating Microsoft and 7,000 complaints about scammers who claimed to be from Publishers Clearing House.

By contrast, the network received 52,000 consumer reports about impersonation scams that pretended to be from Best Buy or Best Buy's Geek Squad. Consumers who lost money reported $15 million in total losses.

The Best Buy Geek's Squad scam often involves emails that remind you to pay several hundred dollars to renew a service that you never had in the first place.

The Consumer Sentinel Network is managed by the FTC but compiles consumer complaints from many sources, including the AARP Fraud Watch Network, United Parcel Service, the Better Business Bureau, the Michigan Attorney General and other AGs across the country, Publishers Clearing House, the Microsoft Corp. Cyber Crime Center, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

More: How to know a job offer isn't a scam: Did a professor really post it? And why the check?

More: Fraud and scams cost consumers a record $10 billion in 2023, according to FTC

Microsoft impersonation reports are generally classified as tech support scams, according to the FTC, and Publishers Clearing House impersonation scams are generally fall into the category for scams involving prizes, sweepstakes, and lotteries.

Calls from those who are impersonating employees at Publishers Clearing House often indicate that you'll need to pay fees or taxes upfront before you can get delivery of a brand new sports car or big sweepstakes check.

In April 2023, the Better Business Bureau Serving Eastern Michigan warned consumers about a scam where crooks offered to "escort" a Wayne County consumer to the bank so she could withdraw money and pay $399 up front to be able to claim her winnings, a $1 million prize and a 2023 Porsche. Fortunately, the consumer did not play along and did not end up losing any money.

Unfortunately, though, some consumers are losing thousands of dollars to tech support scams, as well as sweepstakes scams.

No, it's not tech support

One Troy woman reported losing nearly $700,000 in savings in a Publishers Clearing House impersonation scam that dragged on several months. The woman reported the scam to Troy police March 17. The scammer pretended to be an attorney who said she had to pay various fees, including storage fees for a vehicle that she had won.

In a tech support scam, another Troy woman, an 83-year-old, told local police in May that a pop-up message appeared on her computer. She was told to call the provided phone number for that was supposedly from Microsoft Security to unlock her computer.

The Microsoft impersonation scams start with a fake security pop-up warning on your computer with a number to call for “help." Of course, you're calling the scammers.

"If you get this kind of pop-up window on your computer, don’t call the number," the FTC warns. "Real security warnings and messages will never ask you to call a phone number."

When the Troy woman called the number, according to a Troy police report, she spoke with someone who told her that her computer had been hacked and her bank account already had been compromised.

Often, scammers convince stressed-out consumers that they can fix some problem, such as a compromised bank account, by sending or transferring money quickly.

In the Microsoft case, the scammers ultimately found a way to drive the 83-year-old Troy woman to withdraw $24,900 from her credit union account. She sent the scammers some money via a bitcoin transaction initially. Then, she was told to go to Nordstrom to buy $10,000 in gift cards. She read the numbers on the gift cards to the suspect, as directed, according to her report made to police on May 15.

After all that, the victim realized she was dealing with a scam. She notified her credit union, according to the police report, but was told by credit union officials that it was too late to recover her money.

Nordstrom is a rather unusual gift card request by scammers. Nearly 7 out of 10 people who reported paying a scammer with gift card said they were instructed to buy other well-known brands: Apple gift cards, Target gift cards, eBay gift cards, Walmart gift cards and Amazon gift cards.

Nearly 9 out of 10 people who reported paying a scammer with an app or service, according to the FTC, said they were instructed to use PayPal, Cash App, Zelle, Venmo, and Apple Pay.

Often, scammers will tell you that there's only one way to pay to resolve a situation. But that's often a big red flag that you're dealing with a scammer. Never wire money or pay by gift card or use a payment app when someone calls out of the blue. Don't trust the Caller ID information because scammers know how to spoof real numbers.

More: It’s hard to reverse scams on peer-to-peer payment apps like Venmo, PayPal, Zelle

More: Grosse Pointe Woods woman: Michigan First Credit Union says concert tickets not fraud

What's important for consumers to realize is that most scams involve trying to catch you off guard, frighten you into thinking that you must act quickly to prevent something even worse from happening, or they might trick you into fearing missing out on something good, such as some big prize. Some scammers say you only have 24 hours to collect that prize.

People really tend to panic when they believe that they're hearing from a bank's fraud department about a situation where someone already is stealing cash from their bank account. Often, scammers are impersonating big name banks, as well as other financial institutions too.

Earlier this year, I wrote a column about how cyber-crooks made off with money from Hollywood celebrity Andy Cohen's bank accounts by using three wire transfers. The executive producer of the "Real Housewives" franchise did not say how much money was lost but indicated it was significant. Scammers engineered the scheme by initially impersonating someone from his bank's fraud department.

The FTC offers a list of ways to avoid getting caught by an impersonation scam. One key tip: Never move your money to "protect it" when someone says they've supposedly spotted fraud or criminal activity on one of your accounts. In these scams, you might sometimes be asked to share verification codes. Don't share it.

Last year, the FTC consumer network received 4,000 consumer complaints involving those impersonating the Bank of America with $8 million in losses reported. The network received 3,000 complaints about scams where con artists impersonated Well Fargo with $11 million in reported losses.

Contact personal finance columnist Susan Tompor: [email protected] . Follow her on X (Twitter) @ tompor .

Take Advantage Of The Best Memorial Day Laptop Sales Still Live

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Memorial Day has officially come and, but you can still find lingering discounts on a number of computers, both laptops and desktops. We’ve been keeping track of the best Memorial Day laptop sales available across retailers all weekend, and luckily a number of deals are still live. You can find markdowns on everything from basic Chromebooks to more advanced gaming laptops , so you’re bound to discover a model that fits your needs and budget.

The best Memorial Day laptop deals are still lingering on. Save up to 50% on top-rated picks from ... [+] Apple, HP and More.

Some of the most popular online retailers, including Amazon and Best Buy, along with laptop manufacturers like Dell, HP and Lenovo are offering more than half off new gear. If you’re looking for a powerful Windows laptop to upgrade your work-from-home setup, the HP Pavilion Laptop is an impressive 45% off. Ahead, we’ve rounded up more of the best Memorial Day laptop sales that have been extended past the holiday.

The Best Rowing Machines Of 2024, Chosen By Fitness Experts

Nordstrom’s half-yearly sale ends sunday—here are the best deals, best memorial day laptop sales, at a glance.

Apple MacBook Air (M2 Chip, 13-Inch, 512GB SSD) : Now $1,049, Was $1,199 (13% Off)
Razer Blade 17 Gaming Laptop (17-Inch, 12th Gen Intel 14-Core i9, 1TB SSD) : Now $1,900, Was $3,800 (50% Off)
HP Pavilion Laptop (15-Inch, Intel Core i7, 256GB SSD) : Now $550, Was $1,000 (45% Off)
Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro (16-Inch, 13th Gen Intel Core i7, 1TB HDD) : Now $1,323, Was $2,050 (35% Off)

Best Memorial Day Laptop Sales: MacBooks

Apple macbook air (m2 chip, 13-inch, 512gb ssd).

Apple MacBook Air (M3 Chip, 13-Inch, 512GB SSD) : Now $1,349, Was $1,499 (10% Off)
Apple MacBook Pro (M3 Pro Chip, 14-Inch, 512GB SSD) : Now $1,799, Was $1,999 (10% Off)
Apple MacBook Pro (M2 Chip, 13-Inch, 1TB SSD) : Now $1,599, Was $2,099 (24% Off)
Apple MacBook Air (M3 Chip, 13-Inch, 256GB SSD) : Now $999, Was $1099 (9% Off)

Best Memorial Day Laptop Sales: Gaming Laptops

Razer blade 17 gaming laptop (17-inch, 12th gen intel 14-core i9, 1tb ssd).

Lenovo Legion Pro 5 Gen 8 AMD (16-Inch, AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX Processor, 1TB SSD) : Now $1,140, Was $1,600 (28% Off)
Asus Rog Zephyrus G16 Gaming Laptop (16-Inch, Intel 13th Gen Core i7, 512GB SSD) : Now $1,050, Was $1,450 (28% Off)

Best Memorial Day Laptop Sales: Windows Laptops

Hp pavilion laptop.

HP Envy Laptop (17-Inch, Intel Core Ultra 7, 512GB SSD) : Now $900, Was $1,300 (30% Off)
Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro (16-Inch, 13th Gen Intel Core i7, 1TB HDD) : Now $1,323, Was $2,050 (35% Off)
Microsoft Surface Pro 9 (13-Inch Touch-Screen, Intel Core i5, 256GB SSD) : Now $1,100, Was $1,540 (29% Off)
HP Stream (14-Inch HD BrightView, Intel Celeron N4120, 288GB) : Now $309, Was $399 (23% Off)
Dell Inspiron (15-Inch, Intel Core i5, 512 GB SSD) : Now $330, Was $450 (27% Off)

Best Memorial Day Laptop Sales: Chromebooks

Hp 15.6-inch chromebook intel processor n200 64gb.

HP Chromebook (15.6 Inches, Intel Processor N200, 64GB) : Now $300, Was $400 (25% Off)
Lenovo Slim 3 (14-Inch, MediaTek Kompanio, 64GB) : Now $189, Was $319 (41% Off)
Acer Chromebook Plus 515 (15-Inch, Intel Core i3, 128GB) : Now $279, Was $399 (30% Off)
Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 (13-Inch, Qualcomm Snapdragon 7cG2, 128GB) : Now $369, Was $499 (26% Off)
Asus 2-In-1 Touchscreen Chromebook (16-Inch, Intel Core i3, 128GB) : Now $529, Was $599 (13% Off)

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Compact cameras usually don't have interchangeable lenses, but the best ones, like our premium pick, the Leica Q3, do feature high-quality lenses that can deliver a level of depth that ...
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Ahead, we've rounded up more of the best Memorial Day laptop sales that have been extended past the holiday. MORE FROM FORBES VETTED. The Best Rowing Machines Of 2024, Chosen By Fitness Experts By.