Memoir and Imagination: Where Truth and Creativity Collide

Grace Loh Prasad, Sylvia Brownrigg, Leta McCollough Seletzky, Tarek El-Ariss, moderated by Piper Kerman

Moderated by Piper Kerman (Orange Is the New Black), four panelists share their process and experience of memoir as the telling of a true story, but also as a work of imagination. Our esteemed panelists, Grace Prasad (The Translator’s Daughter), Sylvia Brownrigg (The Whole Staggering Mystery), Leta McCollough Seletzky (The Kneeling Man), and Tarek El-Ariss (Water on Fire), have recently released memoirs that touch upon the authors’relationship to their parents—how they mourn them, imagine them, reconcile with them, and in the process, come to terms with themselves. Writing memoir is a process of self-understanding that also invites the reader into a context and a world that is by definition subjective. Our stories and personal agency can also be circumscribed by institutions and systemic pressures, which may in turn shape memory and imagination. Join this deep conversation about memory, lived experience, and how writers choose the stories they do in a journey of self-understanding, reinvention, and empathy.