Meet the Winner of Last Year’s Narratively Memoir Prize

Laura Green-Russell on the strength it takes to write a deeply personal piece—and the shock she felt when she won.

With submissions rolling in for our second annual Narratively Memoir Prize, we’d like to take a minute to introduce you to the winner of our inaugural prize. Out of hundreds of submissions, we couldn’t have been more delighted that last year’s Grand Prize Winner was a first-time writer. Well, almost. Laura Green-Russell had actually been published once before — a piece about her family’s horse, which she sent in to a magazine when she was 12 years old. Today, Laura prints out her favorite paragraphs from her own work and hangs them on her office wall to remind her that she can do it — pursue writing and follow her dreams. 

If you’re thinking about submitting to the 2023 Narratively Memoir Prize and you’re wondering what type of stories we’re looking for, be sure to check out Laura’s winning piece, “Murder to Middle School.”

And keep reading below for our interview with Laura, who chats about how her story came together and how she approached writing about extremely sensitive family histories.

In your story, you cover a lot of extremely hard things that you went through. Can you talk about what the process of writing that was like?