Category: Personal Essay

Linguini to Spare

By Megan Greenwood     Or download the audio file here: Linguini to Spare   I am really good in a crisis. Seriously. Really good. I’m actually kind of famous for it. Cancer diagnosis? I’m your gal. Divorce? I’ve got you. Lost your job? I’m here to help. Years ago, my mom and I were …

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Still Finding Pieces

By Lia Hadley Lia Hadley lives with her husband in the Pacific Northwest where she writes and teaches, always finding new ways to recycle the past.     The other day, I was at the grocery store here in the Pacific Northwest with my husband. As we came out of the soup and pasta aisle, …

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Death of an Old Dog

By Patricia Karamesines PATRICIA KARAMESINES is the author of The Pictograph Murders (Signature Books 2004). Her poetry appears in both Harvest (Signature Books 1989) and Fire in the Pasture (Peculiar Pages 2011) and has also been published in Dialogue and Irreantum. She is an adjunct instructor at Utah State University–Eastern Blanding.     On Thanksgiving …

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Call Me by My Name

By Stephen Carter     Or click here to download the audio file: Call Me by My Name     When I was in first grade, I decided to change my name. Well, not change it, exactly, but switch it. My parents had called me by my middle name since I was born—mainly, I think, …

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Circles of Light

By Susan Meredith Hinckley Susan Meredith Hinckley is an artist/writer living in Arizona who loves desert living, running, unanswerable questions, wind in her hair, and a bit of green chili in everything.     Or download the audio here: “Circles of Light”       “You’re a good person,” my psychiatrist once told me. “You’re …

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Tyrants of the Spirit

By Dorothy Allred Solomon Dorothy Allred Solomon is the author of In My Father’s House and Daughter of the Saints. She has appeared on The Today Show and Oprah.     Or right-click here to download the audio.     Seven years after law enforcement had come down on polygamists, my poor father was collecting …

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Confessions of a Shopping Mall Santa

By Rory Swensen     Or right-click here to download the audio.     Christmas Season, 1989. I was a freshman at the University of Utah, my first year away from home. As a poor student I was looking for extra holiday cash, and the Help Wanted ad for a shopping mall Santa seemed like just …

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Confessions of an Aging, Hypocritical Ex-missionary

By Wayne C. Booth   Can it be good—even spiritually essential—to be a hypocrite? This professor of rhetoric thinks so. Wayne Booth shares the fruits of his life-long interior discussion between his boyhood Mormon religion fundamentalism and his adult “faith.” All of it, the direct result of his two years as a conflicted, intellectual LDS …

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2018 Eugene England Personal Essay Contest Winners

Sunstone is pleased to announce the winners of the 2018 Eugene England Memorial Personal Essay Contest. The competition has been drawing together the best work from new and experienced writers for more than 15 years, revealing new experiences and creating new perspectives. Sunstone subscribers can look forward to reading these essays in future issues. 1st …

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