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Greetings from Long Island: Using Postcards as Creative Writing Prompts

Posted on by Kristen Nyitray

On October 23, students in Melanie Neilson’s creative writing course explored how images can spark a story. Working in teams, students analyzed postcards of Long Island scenes from coastlines and weathered houses to busy main streets. The postcards are part of the Hawkins Tuttle Postcard Collection, comprising more than 1,000 cards collected and curated by Emory Payson Tuttle (1925-1995) and donated by Mark Tuttle in 2025.

The exercise invited students to look closely at visual details: the color of the sky, the angle of a roofline, the way light touched the water. From there, they imagined what might exist beyond the frame – who lived in that house, what stories unfolded in that harbor town, what it might feel like to walk down that particular street. Working from postcards helped students think about setting not just as backdrop, but as a living part of a story. It also prompted conversations about how images of Long Island shape the way we imagine place and time, and the past and the present. Visit these web sites to learn more about Special Collections and the Hawkins Tuttle Postcard Collection.

Postcards of Stony Brook, New York from the Tuttle Hawkins Postcard Collection, Special Collections, SBU Libraries.
Postcards of Stony Brook, New York from the Tuttle Hawkins Postcard Collection, Special Collections, SBU Libraries.


Postcard with image of "St. James Harbor," New York from the Tuttle Hawkins Postcard Collection, Special Collections, SBU Libraries.
Postcard with image of “St. James Harbor,” New York from the Tuttle Hawkins Postcard Collection, Special Collections, SBU Libraries.
Address side of the postcard "St. James Harbor," New York from the Tuttle Hawkins Postcard Collection, Special Collections, SBU Libraries.
Address side of the postcard “St. James Harbor,” New York from the Tuttle Hawkins Postcard Collection, Special Collections, SBU Libraries.
Kristen Nyitray

Kristen Nyitray

Associate Librarian; Director, Special Collections and University Archives; and University Archivist at Stony Brook University Libraries
Contact her for research assistance with rare books, manuscript collections, historical maps, and SBU history. E-mail: kristen.nyitray@stonybrook.edu.
Kristen Nyitray

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