Illinois Authors

The Illinois Center for the Book banner

Megan Stielstra

Born: 1975 in Alma, Michigan
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Stielstra teaches creative nonfiction at Northwestern University.

Biography: Megan Stielstra is the author of Everyone Remain Calm, a Chicago Tribune Favorite of 2011, and the Literary Director of Chicago’s 2nd Story storytelling series. She’s told stories for The Goodman, The Steppenwolf, The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Chicago Poetry Center, Story Week Festival of Writers, Wordstock Literary Festival, The Neo-Futurarium, Victory Gardens, Chicago Public Radio, and regularly for 2nd Story and The Paper Machete, along with all sorts of conferences and theaters and bars. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Other Voices, The Nervous Breakdown, Fresh Yarn, Pindeldyboz, Swink, Shareable, Monkeybicycle, Hypertext, Cellstories, Perigee, Annalemma, and Punk Planet, among others, and have been performed by Theatre Seven of Chicago and Bohemian Archeology in NYC. Additionally, she's worked with students of all ages at The Goodman Theatre, Lake Forest College, CCA's Center for Art and Public Life, Columbia's Center for Teaching Excellence, and 2nd Story, and has discussed her work as a storyteller and teaching artist at Associated Writing Programs, Theatre Communications Group, Young Chicago Authors, Creative Nonfiction Week, Printer's Row, Imagining America, and the National Association of Writing in Education in The United Kingdom.


Awards:
  • '''''Everyone Remain Calm'''''
  • -- Chicago Tribune Favorite, 2011 '''''The Wrong Way to Save Your Life'''''
  • -- Starred Review, Kirkus, 2017
  • -- Starred Review, Booklist, 2017

Primary Literary Genre(s): Fiction; Non-Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Email: meganstielstra@gmail.com
Website: http://www.meganstielstra.com
Megan Stielstra on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=megan++stielstra


Selected Titles

  Everyone remain calm
ISBN: 9781770900233 OCLC: 764569943

Joyland/ECW Press, Toronto : 2011.

These days, reality can be hard to swallow. How do we get to the end of day, let alone the end of the week? Some people drink, others get therapy, but all of us-hidden in the secret places in the backs of our minds-have fantasies. These are what we wish for, fight for, live for. Maybe yours is a pretty girl. Maybe it's a better job. Maybe it's the love that'll swoop down makes everything seem okay. It's the fantasies that'll save us, but still-they're a dangerous thing. That pretty girl may not be so pretty tomorrow; that perfect job may not really exist; and what happens to love when you're so lost in a fantasy you can't see what's right in front of your face? The stories in Everyone Remain Calm explore the lines between fantasy and reality -- how we move between the two in a crazy attempt to make our lives better. It's a hard journey -- we get anxious, panicked, fearful, lost -- our pulse quickens, shoulders tighten. We forget to breathe. These stories are a reminder.--Publisher description.

  Everyone remain calm /
ISBN: 1459650190 OCLC: 1015968572

"These days, reality can be hard to swallow. How do we get to the end of day, let alone the end of the week? Some people drink, others get therapy, but all of us-hidden in the secret places in the backs of our minds-have fantasies. These are what we wish for, fight for, live for. Maybe yours is a pretty girl. Maybe it's a better job. Maybe it's the love that'll swoop down makes everything seem okay. It's the fantasies that'll save us, but still-they're a dangerous thing. That pretty girl may not be so pretty tomorrow; that perfect job may not really exist; and what happens to love when you're so lost in a fantasy you can't see what's right in front of your face? The stories in Everyone Remain Calm explore the lines between fantasy and reality -- how we move between the two in a crazy attempt to make our lives better. It's a hard journey -- we get anxious, panicked, fearful, lost -- our pulse quickens, shoulders tighten. We forget to breathe. These stories are a reminder"--Publisher description.

  Once I was cool :
ISBN: 9781940430102 OCLC: 879610165

Insightful, compassionate, gutsy, and heartbreaking personal essays exploring the messy, maddening beauty of adulthood with wit, intelligence, and biting humor.

  Once I was cool :
ISBN: 194043002X OCLC: 859046643

"With storytelling chops honed over a decade of performances with Chicago's 2nd Story storytelling series, Stielstra explores the messy, maddening beauty of adulthood with wit, intelligence, and biting humor. The personal essays in Once I was cool tackle topics ranging from beating postpartum depression by stalking her neighbor, to a surprise run-in with an old lover while on ecstasy, to blowing her mortgage on a condo she bought because of Jane's Addiction" --p.[4] of cover.

The wrong way to save your life :
ISBN: 0062429205 OCLC: 972206571

"From an important new American writer comes this powerful collection of personal essays on fear, creativity, art, faith, academia, the Internet, and justice. In this poignant and inciting collection of literary essays, Megan Stielstra tells stories to ward off fears both personal and universal as she grapples toward a better way to live. In her titular piece "The Wrong Way To Save Your Life," she answers the question of what has value in our lives-- a question no longer rhetorical when the apartment above her family's goes up in flames. "Here is My Heart" sheds light on Megan's close relationship with her father, whose continued insistence on climbing mountains despite a series of heart attacks leads the author to dissect deer hearts in a poetic attempt to interrogate her own feelings about mortality. Whether she's imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra's work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. The result is something beautiful -- this story, her courage, and, potentially, our own. ntellectually fierce and viscerally intimate, Megan Stielstra's voice is witty, wise, warm, and above all, achingly human."--Amazon.com.

 

 

Accessibility