“Her specific brand of performance—pairing quirky, Sedaris-style musings with unexpected theatrical trimmings like on-site musicians (she once used an entire New Orleans brass band)—is a text-based variation on the 'story theater' style used by many Chicago theatre artists. 'I never think of it as performance,' Stielstra says. 'I just want to tell good stories.'” —Timeout Chicago

“'Incredible' is the title and the best description of the story by Megan Stielstra. A woman is rejected by many lovers, but not by the 'Incredible Hulk' underneath her bed—is she nuts?” —Newpages.com

Megan Stielstra is a writer, storyteller and Director of Story Development for 2nd Story, Chicago’s urban storytelling series held in wine bars where she regularly tells stories to drunk people. She’s performed for The Chicago Poetry Center’s No Love For Love show featuring Ira Glass, Neo-Solo at the Neo-Futurarium, Story Week Festival of Writers, Looptopia at the Goodman Theatre, Literary Gangs of Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Undershorts Film Festival, The Dollar Store, WBEZ’s Writer’s Block Party and 2nd Story, among others. Her fiction and creative nonfiction has appeared in recent issues of Other Voices, Fresh Yarn, Pindeldyboz, Swink, Venus, Perigree, The 2nd Hand, inthefray, Punk Planet and was a 2007 nominee for Dzanc's Best of Web Writing print anthology.

Currently, Megan teaches in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College and is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Chicago. She's also a storytelling judge for Chicago Public Radio's annual Third Coast International Audio Festival, and has presented papers for Associated Writing Programs, The National Association of Writing in Education in London and the Center for Art in Public Life in San Francisco. She spent 2004 in Prague, Czech Republic, teaching the works of Franz Kafka and working on a novel.

She lives in Uptown with her husband, their newborn son and Mojo the dog.