Jake Maynard

Jul 1, 2024 | hopkinsreview.com | Dora Malech |Jake Maynard

I was fourteen with fresh cherry-red hair and my father was freestyling a lecture on the merits of natural beauty on the drive home from my mother’s apartment. It was early winter, our neighborhood’s corners hammered round with new snow, window lights glowing piss yellow and few try-hard Christmas lights twinkling in the cold. He was saying something about my sad need for attention when we pulled up to his house and stopped short of the driveway.

Jun 17, 2024 | beltmag.com | Jake Maynard

By Jake Maynard In third grade, my friend Brett and I launched a startup called J&B Raking. We charged five dollars an hour, which we split, and offered discounts for “family” and “the elderly.” We made a few business cards from construction paper the color of a road cone but I’m left-handed, so my palm smudged our contact info, and Brett had an undiagnosed case of dyslexia, so his looked like we only charge three bucks.

May 28, 2024 | hopkinsreview.com | Dora Malech |Jake Maynard

The engine shaking, and I’m up. We’re anchored in a cove. It’s low tide and the passage to the open water is narrow. There are bugs in the cabin, a swarm of little black flies, and under the smell of breakfast there’s that briny low-tide seaweed stink. Clem’s drinking coffee and Beaver’s standing at the bow, growling at some deer on the beach. Fingers of fog comb the pine trees on the mountains. These are the pictures he painted for me, the ones I saved somewhere so deep they can’t be deleted.

May 20, 2024 | memoirland.substack.com | Jonny Diamond |Jake Maynard |Rosanna Mclaughlin |Anne O'Hagen

Welcome to Memoir Land—a newsletter edited by , now featuring four 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 “The Modern Prometheus” by .

May 16, 2024 | electricliterature.com | Jake Maynard

Skip to content essays We thought those slurred, drunken nights would last forever My bro Brian used to tell me he loved me. Throughout our twenties he’d say it every year or two, unprovoked, unexpected, and always at night—just like a leopard attack. Brian still lives in our hometown, so for years when I’d visit my family, we’d get drunk together. We met at the only bar in town, The American Legion, or at his house, which had once been a funeral home and still looks like one. We’d drink and...