Collage by Yunuen BonaparteSince we started running the now-annual Memoir Prize contest in 2022, it’s been such a thrill to read all the essays everyone submits. Getting to immerse ourselves in great writing is absolutely one of the highlights of our jobs. To get to languish in so much of it feels like the cherry on top. This year, we had over 800 submissions, which made choosing the winning essay harder than it’s ever been before. If you submitted this year, thank you! Know that it’s always an honor to read your words, and we appreciate you trusting us with them. On that note, we would like to congratulate Andrew Printer on winning the grand prize! Andrew is a British artist and writer currently based in Southern California. His visual work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Laguna Art Museum and the San Diego Museum of Art, and his photographs are held in private collections. His stories appear in two 2026 anthologies: Shaking the Tree, Volume 7 (Funny, Not Funny), and A Year in Ink, Volume 19. He writes on Substack at Good For Something.Here’s what our esteemed judge, Susannah Cahalan, had to say about Andrew’s story: “The finalists were all top notch, but [‘My Absolutely Chaotic Adventures at Sea During the Summer of 1984’] grabbed hold of the terrible awe of living at the sea and I couldn’t look away. The essay packs the emotional punch of a great sea shanty. It’s alive and evocative. It smells of salt and sea and vomit. It’s moving, layered and very strange. I loved it.”You can read Andrew’s grand prize–winning essay here. We would also like to congratulate the two round-four finalists, Heather K.M. Lewis and James McSherry, for their tender, moving pieces. These were all such a joy to read. Again, you can read Andrew’s piece here, and look out for the rest of the winning essays in the next few months. If you missed our virtual awards party and live reading — which was such a blast! — you can check that out here, too.