Megan Stielstra's Blog

I didn’t discover Other Voices Magazine until 2003, when I picked up the winter issue for my favorite Joe Meno story, Happiness Will Be Yours, and it was this total moment of HAVE I BEEN LIVING IN A BARN ALL THIS TIME? Why haven’t I KNOWN about this? Like when you discover something that you think is brand new and then, later, discover that everyone else has known how great it is for like ever and you’re actually just late to the party. Not unlike how I recently chastised Jeff for not telling me about Alias back in the day when he was all into it and I didn’t have a TV, so now I have to walk around going SYDNEY BRISTOW IS GOD NO DON’T TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS I’M ONLY ON SEASON ONE!!! and then I end up watching nine episodes in one sitting (Dear Nick: thank you for loaning me box sets of Seasons One, Two and Three thereby rendering me absolutely useless for the next month) and ANYHOW, it was the same thing with Other Voices. I read that first issue (first for me. It was actually #39 for OV) and then had to go through all the back issues back-to-back, and I’m telling you, WHAT A GOLD MINE! Not just the stories, but also the interviews (FYI: I’m really into the writers’ process. I like to steal their tricks). Some examples: Toni Morrison, Aimee Bender, Richard Ford, Junot Diaz (who wrote Nilda, one of my favorite short stories EVER), Stuart Dybeck (who wrote We Didn’t, one of my OTHER favorite short stories ever) and Molly Giles (who wrote Pie Dance, my like OTHER favorite short story ever) (my OTHER Other Favorite Short Stories Ever would include Checkov’s Misery, Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard To Find, Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues, Garcia Marquez’s Handsomest Drown Man in the World, Atwood’s Rape Fantasies, Meera Nair’s Video, Ann Petry’s Like a Winding Sheet and Kafka’s Penal Colony [FYI: I write short stories. Also I teach short story classes. I love short stories I love short stories I love short stories I hate the publishing industry for not thinking they’re marketable and I love Other Voices for giving them a chance (and I’m still trying to figure out what I think of Steven King’s recent article about how the form is alive but not well, but, frankly, that’s another post entirely because THIS one is about how super-cool Other Voices is)]).

And also how their upcoming issue is their last.

Which could be a ginormous kick in the teeth, but—BUT—the OV editors have decided to let go of the magazine in order to focus on OV BOOKS, a publishing house for (drumroll) SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS! Which is all sorts of badass, I think, and I’m comfortable letting go of my love for the magazine to support the cause of getting some real quality books out there, A-men.

That said, the magazine’s final issue will be released this Friday, and they plan on going out in style (they even say so on the flier).

I’m super-excited for this All Chicago edition—there’s a story of mine in there, and I’m thrilled to be a part of such a stellar tradition as well as side-by-side with some truly powerhouse Chicago writers. Friday should be a good time, if you’re free, and if not I hope you get your hands on a copy of the issue.

Outside from the release party at FLATFILE, Other Voices is being featured at December’s Reading Under the Influence, Chicago’s monthly drinking and writing series that goes down the first Wednesday of every month in the backroom at Sheffield’s with all sorts of debauchery and trivia and shots and yelling. I’ll be reading along with OV’s Lisa Stolley and Michael Newirth, as well as Erika Mikkalo and RUI regulars Rob Duffer and Jesse Jordan. It promises to be an excellent time, especially seeing as I’m now seven months pregnant and will have to auction off my free shots.

And I’ll be reading from my story in Other Voices. The one about my sexual relationship with The Incredible Hulk.

Posted by Megan at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

CHRISTOPHER: (with heavy Texan accent) You done know your girl is pregnant when you can set your beer on her stomach and it don’t fall off!

Posted by Megan at 9:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In class, I tell my students about Jeanette Sliwinski.

How in July 2005 she attempted suicide by driving her Mustang eighty-seven miles an hour down Dempster and slamming full-force into the back of a stopped car. I tell them there were three guys in that car, all on their lunch break and waiting for a red light. “They were musicians in Chicago,” I say. “I went to their shows. Exo and The Dials, The Returnables and Silkworm.” I tell them I was lucky enough to know Exo’s Doug Meis through my friends Scott and Julie, to have talked with him at parties, to have laughed with him a few times. He laughed a lot, that guy.

“Jeanette Sliwinski,” I say to my class, “walked away with a broken ankle. The guys—Doug, and Michael Dalquist and John Glick—are all dead.” They had wives or girlfriends. Friends and family. Hundreds and hundreds of fans. They were stopped at a red light on their lunchbreak and in a single second they were slammed from behind at eighty-seven—EIGHTY-SEVEN—miles an hour.

They are missed. And mourned.

“The reason why I’m telling you this,” I say to my class, “is because I found out Jeanette Sliwinski had been a student here.” She was also a model, and maybe a stripper, she was twenty-three-years old and suicidal and certified bi-polar and since she killed Doug I’ve asked myself, What if she’d been in my class? Not her exactly, but someone like her? Someone who maybe, had I said the right thing at the right time, I could’ve effected in some small way so maybe she’d seek help, call a hotline, talk seriously to a friend or let me walk her over to student services, something so this horrible loss could’ve been avoided.

“All I’m saying is,” I tell my class, “if you’ve got something going on up here—” I gesture to my head, and my heart— “and you need someone to talk to, let me know and we’ll get some coffee. We can just shoot the shit, if you want, or maybe, if you need someone smarter than me, we can walk over to student services, or I can get you some phone numbers. Just please please please be aware of how your actions effect so many other people besides just yourself.”

What I DON’T say to my class is how, for nearly two-and-a-half years since this happened, as Doug and Michael and John’s wives and family and friends and fans have been awaiting Sliwinski’s trial (can you IMAGINE!? Your husband dead from someone else’s botched suicide and you have to wait for TWO AND A HALF years for closure?) I’ve been hoping they lock this girl up for life. Forget sunshine. Fuck keys.

I don’t say how Yeah, sure, mental illness, temporary insanity, untreated bi-polar, these are all terrible diseases and the victim can’t control herself and psychological help and leniency and blah blah she MURDERED THREE PEOPLE.

I don’t say how this horrible senseless f'ing stupid crime has called into question all sorts of things I thought I knew about myself, like what I think about the death penalty and the prison system and forgiveness and redemption and, yesterday: justice.

Yesterday, Jeanette Sliwinski was—finally—sentenced.

She got eight years.

Eight.

Of which she’ll serve half.

Which means, since she’s already been in Cook County for two and a half years awaiting trial, she’ll probably only serve one and a half to two.

Three innocent lives equals two years.

In my opinion, that’s an unspeakable math.

Thinking about it is just. fucking. infuriating.

Instead, I’ll think about this: in January 06, I attended a concert at the Metro for Doug and Michael and John, one part benefit (all the cash went to charities the guys supported), two parts healing and three parts rock. The room was packed, hundreds of people there to hear the guys’ music, celebrate their lives and dance their asses off. Also, the annual party that Scott and Julie now throw, a night to celebrate friendship and spend time together and remember what’s really important in this whole stinking life. Also, John Glick’s wife Rebecca, whom I’ve never met but who spoke yesterday at Sliwinski’s sentencing with more dignity, eloquence and power than I could ever hope to achieve were I in her situation and mostly, I think how when Christopher walks through that door after getting home from work, I’m going to hold him really tight and remember how lucky I am for every tiny moment.

Posted by Megan at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Christopher has this thing he does where he saves the corks from wine bottles, and on every one he writes the date and where we drank it. He then drops the corks into a big decorative bowl and forgets about them.

In case you're new to this blog, we like the wine here at our house, so as you might imagine, it's a pretty big bowl. Most of the corks says 2nd Story, but if you dig through them you'll find many dated 2004 that say Prague or Florence or London or Paris. On some, he lists the occasion: anniversary, celebrating our new home, our wedding, his new job, different publications, birthdays, holidays. In case you're sitting though thinking, in your best girlie internal-thought-voice, Awwwwwwwww! Your husband is so SWEET! please know that A. he is and B. he was doing this cork thing looong before I came along. There are corks in that bowl dated all the way back to high school (and I'm sure some from bottles he drank with other girls, though he'd never admit that, 'cause OF COURSE he wasn't with anyone before me).

(Except for Jessica Biel. He was totally with her. Especially when she was in that movie with the talking jet, they were totally together then).

So what happened yesterday is that Mojo got into the bowl. Which, were we to wildly overthink this, could be looked upon as the dog eating Christopher's past which is all sorts of symbolic, but the fact is we didn't really care because we were too busy laughing. Because one of those corks was stuck on his teeth and he couldn't get it off. So he ran all over the house with cork stuck in his mouth, not unlike a mini-cigar, bucking like a rodeo-bull trying to free up his face. We aren't sure how LONG he was in this predicament. Christopher and I had both left the house around one and didn't return til seven, so it could've been up to six hours.

Posted by Megan at 8:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)