1. Write from the absence in a photograph. (use real photographs) What is not pictured? Who is watching but not seen?

2. Find an ordinary object and give it a lost history. (real objects) What story was never recorded about it?

3. Imagine a letter that was never sent. Who was it meant for? What truths did it carry?

4. What would it mean to mother yourself in an impossible world? Begin: “I held her hand even though she wasn’t there…”

5. Take a fragment of official language (a law, a rule, a record) and rewrite it as a lullaby. What does this transformation reveal?

Use these prompts to work with erasure, gaps, grief, resistance, and care through imaginative recovery.

1. Write a love letter to a non-human being who has shaped you. (A whale, a river, a tree, a moon.)

2. What does it feel like to breathe underwater? Let this be a metaphor for survival.

3. Channel a message from a future ancestor. Begin: “Dear you who has already lived through this…”

4. If you could shapeshift into any creature for one day, what would you learn?

5. Use the voice of the ocean. What does it want to tell us about time, grief, or kinship?

These prompts are great for speculative writing, poetic research, and relational world-building.

1. Choose a plant you love. Ask it three questions and write its answers.

2. What have you been given without asking? Write a gratitude list in the form of a poem or prayer.

3. Write about a time when the land knew more than you did. What did you learn?

4. What would it mean to make your research a gift to the world? Begin: “To offer this work, I must first…”

5. Describe a moment when a non-human being recognized you. How did that change how you see yourself?

These prompts are great for connecting research and writing to land, ethics, care, and relationality.

2. You have the ability to shift consciousness in your dreams, what would you change?

3. Create a ritual you have to perform when you wake up, so you could remember the dream you had a night before.

4. You woke up, the feeling of what you dreamt still lingers, but you vaguely remember the details, you only remember the person in it, who is it? What do you think the dream was about?

PICK A FAIRYTALE THAT YOU KNOW AND WRITE A OPERA STYLE PARAGRAPH DESCRIBING ITS ORIGIN

LAURA:

Choose a fairytale character, if you were to walk in their shoes how would the story go?