How to Actually Publish a Personal Essay in 2025

Turning a lit-mag essay into a mainstream magazine piece about domestic violence and CPS.

Thursday, my friend Moa Short’s gorgeous, gutting essay came out at The Cut.

Ever since I met her at Sewanee Writers Conference, I’ve been a stan for Moa’s work — on domestic violence, CPS, and the agonizing choices in protecting those we love.

Moa just graduated from American University’s MFA program, where she studied with Rachel Louise Snyder. And, for the last 18 months, I’ve been THAT FRIEND telling Moa “You have to pitch this!” sending her relevant news stories, and pestering her with what editors to email. (Why can’t I be this friend to my own damn self?!)

After pitching a different story to The Cut in April (that should run! it’s so good), this finally dropped yesterday. Moa’s already had a few agents ask for the manuscript!

Since it’s SO hard to publish personal essays these days — especially ones that generate agent interest — we chatted about how she did it and dive into the incredible edits she did.

Spoiler alert: Read the story before you scroll!

The Interview

Emi: How did the story come to be? What did you initially send the editor?

Moa: I initially sent her a pitch for a very straightforward op-ed with a news peg. And it was about CPS interventions and the intersection between that and domestic violence, which was not going to be personal. There was personal experience, but it was much more news-pegged. And she wrote back very fast, generously, and was like, "Do you want to get on a call about that?"

We did, and I was not prepared to pitch anything else. And then she was sort of saying that the shape wasn't going to work, but that she was very compelled by the content. She asked me what else I had and I emailed her a few other things.

This essay actually is one of the earliest things I ever wrote about my experience. It was before I was in an MFA, and I was just writing essays on my own about these different components of my story, not thinking of it as a full, continuous narrative. And so I had this material from, like, four years ago.

Emi: Had you ever sent out this essay before?

Moa: Yes. It helped me get into grad school. It helped me get into writing workshops. And then I had sent it to literary mags, like high profile ones, but not mainstream magazines. Because that's how I had written it. Very much, like, workshop vibe, creative writing vibe.

Emi: What was the takeaway of this story before?

Moa: It was structured really differently. The narrator was sitting in her custody hearing, but watching all these other cases come before the judge, and the judge interrogating other women: "You had a restraining order against this man. Why did you let him back in your house?" "Well, if you were scared, why did you not call the police?" And the narrator is thinking back about her own stories.

It was a very traditional braid. The point was, "Why do we stay with these people? Why do we bring them back into our homes? And why do we not report?"

In that original shape, it ended with the narrator interacting with the sheriff's deputy in the driveway and not making a report. So the drumbeat question in the original essay was, "Why don't you report?" And then you landed with the explanation for why she didn't report, which was fear of CPS.

Emi: Wow. I think you should do something with that and place it in a literary magazine!

It's so funny because once a story is actually out. “It's like, oh, of course. It always was supposed to be this way. Of course!”

Since you pitched the CPS op-ed, I wonder if that planted the seed for the editor to think about the roles CPS played throughout the essay?

Moa: I had written those scenes of CPS for my thesis manuscript, and what ended up happening in this editing process is I pulled in a lot of them in. Like I’d already written the final scene with my child reporting back to me.

By the time I got to the end of writing my manuscript draft last month and had to write an abstract for it in order to graduate, I had really pulled out that a major theme in the work was care taking, and how that obscures danger for a lot of people. I had arrived at this theme in the bigger work, then the editor asked me — six months after accepting the essay — “We’re going to run this series on complex caretaking and I think your piece would fit.”

So we reshaped it in that way.

Emi: A lot of personal essay rejections are on the basis of “this is an experience that a lot of people have been through, so they're not necessarily unique.” It’s amazing that you found a new angle.

It's still exploring the experience of domestic abuse, but it's exploring a more specific facet of it, which is this desire to protect and take care of your partner, sometimes at the tremendous cost to you and to your kids.

Emi: How did the editor suggest restructuring it? It has that magical sense that really good personal essays have, where you're like, “Okay, it flows, and makes sense but it's not entirely chronological.” Tell me about that process.

Moa: I think chronology and groundedness in time and date was always the weakest part of the essay. Earlier, it was very disorienting to the reader.

I think the fact that it was braided did not help.

It’s always started at the same place — which is the narrator preparing for the custody hearing and thinking through all the things she wants to tell the judge.

But now, after that first section, I just take the reader through time chronologically.

Emi: It's so funny because once a story is actually out. “It's like, oh, of course. It always was supposed to be this way. Of course!”

Where do you think that impulse comes from? To make essays braided?

Moa: Because that's more how I experience understanding. It was through watching the judge interact with and really interrogate these other women that I arrived at some clarity about my own experience.

Moving through time is how we make meaning as humans, but that's not always how it’s best clarified for the reader.

Emi: I'm really glad I asked you that because I would just assume it's from the workshop world where chronological narratives are sometimes looked down on and as “not literary.”

Emi: I remember talking to you when you were like, editing it and you were like, “This doesn't feel like me.” You were writing in more straightforward way than you were used to.

It really resonated with me as, like, having gone from writing literary stuff to doing op-eds and reporting. How do you feel about it now?

Moa: When I read the final piece, I did feel like it sounds like me. Like I arrived back at my own voice.

The value in writing about these crappy things is how we can understand each other better. I trusted my editor wanted that, and I wanted that, too.

The essay got a lot shorter and more direct. I have 200 pages I wrote about this. It’s all the same story. But once I knew it was about caretaking, I cut out anything that wasn’t about that.

Emi: You got your essay in a dream pub — but how did you feel in the days before it came out?

Moa: It was really nerve-wracking. I didn’t sleep. I have real fears about retaliation — we share custody. Also -

With good nonfiction, you — the character — are a human. Your make mistakes. There were admissions I made in this piece that feel very fraught to me. You know, my decision to stay in front of that judge and wield my whiteness.

Emi: To protect your kids.

Moa: It’s a complicated decision that is still unsettled for me, you know?

A lot of the edits were thinking through readers who have no reason to give me the benefit of the doubt: How will this be read and what questions will arise in their mind? And thinking about that really deeply.

Emi: I’m so glad you published in a place that had the bandwidth to help you think through that and how to protect yourself, both legally and from Bad Internet People.

I had SO MUCH FUN doing this Q&A. Read this piece, re-read it, share it, tell your favorite agent/editor/book publisher.

What did you think of this format? Was it useful? Please let me know in the comments! I also thought of doing it as audio - if I did that next time, would you listen? xx Emi