A Series by Dennis Lowery
Key Takeaways
- Dennis Lowery’s series, WHAT REMAINS, features literary nonfiction vignettes based on real events.
- Each story captures the lingering emotions and aftermath of events without embellishment or fiction.
- Written in the first person, the pieces invite readers to experience the emotional impact alongside the author. Two guiding quotes emphasize the incomplete and exploratory nature of these stories.
Headlines report what happened. But some events are too strange—or too unresolved—for them to carry the weight.
In WHAT REMAINS, Dennis Lowery creates a series of literary nonfiction vignettes—snapshots drawn from real events. They are not retold point by point, but paused in their aftershocks, listening for what still lingers.
There is no embellishment. No fiction. Only what remains in the quiet—or disquiet—between fact and the meaning we give it.
A storyteller by vocation, Lowery has long believed in the power of story not just to entertain, but to reveal what lies beneath the surface. Each vignette begins in fact, reconstructed through research, records, and reporting. Written in the first person—not because he was there, but so the reader can be—the pieces trace the emotional shape of what happened: what unsettles, what endures when the noise fades… what remains.
Two quotes guide the work:
“When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want a meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.”
—Robert McKee
“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”
—Rudyard Kipling
This is how he tries to write them—not in full, not final—only stories he’s found, shaped by moments and questions that will not loosen their hold.
You can read them here, at Dennis Lowery’s writer site.
