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Megan Stielstra's 'Once I Was Cool' Is Pretty Cool

By Staff in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 20, 2014 7:00PM

2014_06_Once-I-Was-Cool-front-panel-copy.jpg After hearing Megan Stielstra perform at Story Club earlier this month, we knew we’d found a new favorite author. Her recently released collection of personal essays, "Once I Was Cool", is a look not only into the life and mind of Stielstra herself, but into the world of every Chicagoan, writer, student, teacher, probably mother, and woman on this planet. I found myself time and again scrawling “Yes!” in the margins of the text, as if the author could hear my silent exclamations of agreement through the roughage of the page.

Touching on heavy topics such as abortion and suicide, Stielstra has a uniquely rare ability to make even the densest subject matter, not light per se, but accessible and undramatic. Despite and in light of this, she still manages to retain the depth of emotion and sensitivity bound up in these topics.

Similarly, as I was reading, stories would sometimes start going in the direction of “once I lost weight I could start yoga”—the point where I would usually put the book down in feminist fueled disgust—but with this text I was enthralled by the profundity with which Stielstra handles the topic of insecurity. There isn’t a laugh it off mentality or a plea for pity, but rather an honest proclamation of a truth that is being accepted. Characteristics that I would normally write off as pure vanity became heartfelt and tangible to me in a way I’ve never before experienced.

That is Stielstra’s talent: her ability to create experiences. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen her perform her work live before, but every narrative seemed to pick itself up off the page and turn itself into a performance before my eyes. The numerous asides, amendments, and annotations, force the reader to see and hear her work, not just read it. Ekphrasis (visual description) at its best, there is no contemporary author more vivid in description that Megan Stielstra.

Published by Curbside Splendor, "Once I Was Cool" is available at most local Chicago bookstores as well as Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Stielstra, though, highly encourages shopping locally for your literary produce.

By: Jaclyn Bauer