Just One Thing with Aliceanna Stopher

The only picture Aliceanna has with her brother

Aliceanna Stopher’s August issue memoir “Creation Myths” ties family, memory and the solar system together—all eternal, enormous, difficult to grapple with. Here she shares just one thing about the piece:

“This essay lived as a single paragraph for a long time—a description of a picture I wasn't sure existed, and wasn't sure why I remembered even if it did. Every so often I'd open the file, tinker a little, try to create an essay around that first paragraph, but nothing ever stuck. I wasn't sure what else the essay wanted (or whether the paragraph was even an essay) until I took a Philosophy of Science Fiction class some time later. We spent the bulk of the semester on time—on Einstein and Bergson, in the furthest reaches of space, watching A LOT of time dilation videos on YouTube, asking ourselves whether our experience of the world had any basis in reality, whether it actually mattered if it didn't. My brother's birthday was coming up. So I started Frankensteining things I was puzzling through in that class into an essay, stitched in conversations I was having then with my mom, half-memories, and lyrics to this Bright Eyes song I had on repeat those months. The lyrics are gone in the final draft. I'll be asking the questions for the rest of my life.”