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.