Creative Nonfiction Prompt
Imagined Existence
By Julie Marie Wade
One of my favorite creative nonfiction prompts is the final line of Anne Panning’s extraordinary memoir-essay, “Remembering, I Was Not There.” Don’t you love that title—the paradox of it, and then, on closer inspection, the not-so-paradoxical after all? I find myself thinking: How much do I remember that I didn’t experience directly? (A lot, it turns out.) How much do I remember that I didn’t witness at all? (Ditto.) Family lore, the stories told and retold in our presence, the initiation to story from those who remember us before we remember ourselves, pulses with invitations and permissions for me and, so I hope, for my students as well.