Genre: Creative Nonfiction

Patience Pays

8.24.17

“First you live through the experience. Then you find out what it meant. Then you write.” Joyce Maynard’s essay “Patience and Memoir: The Time It Takes to Tell Your Story” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine emphasizes the importance of the passage of time and reflection as a vital part of the process of memoir writing. Write a memoiristic essay about an event or situation from your distant past. Was this a subtle experience that became more significant with time or an experience that instantly changed your life? What had to happen before you could gain enough distance for insights to be revealed? How might the meaning of this experience potentially continue to evolve in the future?

Do the Robot

8.17.17

In a new program that debuted earlier this month, the majority of employees at a technology company in Wisconsin agreed to have microchips implanted into their hands, which allow them to swipe into the office building and purchase food at the cafeteria. Many of the employees see the program as an opportunity to participate in cutting-edge technology that they believe will be standard protocol in the near future. Given the choice, would you opt in or opt out? Write a personal essay about your perspective on this issue, perhaps exploring how your opinion about the incorporation of technology into everyday life may have changed over the years, and your feelings about the prospect of integrating technology into your body. 

Megan Stielstra

Caption: 

Megan Stielstra shares her journey as a writer and reads from her essay “Channel B,” which was included in Best American Essays and in her collection Once I Was Cool (Curbside Splendor, 2013). Her second essay collection, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life (Harper Perennial, 2017), is featured in Page One in the September/October 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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