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| photo: Emily Olson | |
Stephanie Kuehnert got her start as an author writing bad poetry about unrequited love and razor blades in eighth grade. In high school, she discovered punk rock and produced several DIY feminist zines. Her first two YA novels, I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone and Ballads of Suburbia, were published by MTV Books. She was a contributing writer for Rookie magazine for all seven glorious years of its existence. Her YA memoir, Pieces of a Girl, is available now from Dutton Young Readers.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
Pieces of a Girl is a zine-style memoir about growing up hard, fast, and messy, but surviving thanks to the power of storytelling and community.
On your nightstand now:
I'm always reading at least two books, one fiction and one nonfiction. Right now, it's Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (Oh my god, do I love the Locked Tombseries. Lesbian necromancers in outer space? Yes, please!) and Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children by Bettina L. Love. (Strong public education is key for a healthy multi-racial democracy, but our schools have failed our students of color, particularly Black children. Dr. Love's work provides necessary guidance for change.) Then I have a middle-grade novel on deck for after I finish Nona. When I was recording my audiobook, my book director told me about it: The First Rule of Punk by Celia C. Pérez. I was sold by the title alone, but when she mentioned it was set in Chicago and involves making zines.... It sounds like exactly the book I needed in junior high, so I can't wait to read it.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. As I write in my memoir, it's problematic. It's settler-colonialist. It's racist. My parents pointed these things out to me when they read it and it got me thinking about those issues at a very early age, but I still really loved Laura. That said, I won't read those books with my kid. We'll be reading Louise Erdrich's Birchbark books instead.
Your top five authors:
Octavia E. Butler: I only discovered her 10 years ago (sinful considering my love for sci-fi and fantasy), but she's been my favorite author ever since. Her work is a survival manual for these times.
Louise Erdrich: I read Love Medicine in college and was hooked. My dad and I both love her, so whenever a new Erdrich book drops, we know what we're getting each other for the holidays.
Francesca Lia Block: when I was a teenager, there wasn't much in the way of YA that I related to. FLB wrote weirdo girls like me and didn't shy away from real issues that teens face. Her books are magic.
Jesmyn Ward: her novels are crushingly beautiful--that prose! That storytelling!--and Men We Reaped is one of the best memoirs I've ever read.
adrienne maree brown: she can do it all. I found her through her nonfiction. Emergent Strategy is basically my framework for life, but her poetry speaks to my witchy soul, and her fiction is a gorgeous meditation on grief and survival.
Book you've faked reading:
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It was a book that dudes especially seemed to love when I was in college in the early 2000s. Like how could I be a creative writing major if I hadn't read it? I had it on my shelf until I moved across the country, but yeah, no, literary dudes from my 20s, I did not read it. I was 100% prioritizing the Harry Potter books at the time.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Currently it's There Goes the Neighborhood by Jade Adia. This is the type of contemporary YA that I just devour: real characters facing real stakes that you think about long after you finish it. As someone who lives in a gentrifying neighborhood with a lot of incredible activist youth, it hit me hard.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera--the hardcover with the title shaved into the back of the girl's head? Immediately I thought this is going to be the absolute coolest book, and it was. It's another book I wish I had as a teenager both because of how unapologetically queer it is and how it explores the intersections of identity. I needed that as a white girl.
Book you hid from your parents:
I grew up in a house where we could read whatever we wanted so I never hid books from my parents. In fact, I was always taking their books, even when I was probably too young for them. I stole my mom's copy of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou; it's still on my shelf along with my dad's copy of Stephen King's The Shining.
Book that changed your life:
Girl Power by Hillary Carlip is the book that led me to Riot Grrrl and gave me a voice when I needed it most.
Favorite line from a book:
"All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change." --from Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. These lines have become a mantra and a way of being for me.
Five books you'll never part with:
The aforementioned copy of Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths by Edgar Parin d'Aulaire and Ingri Parin d'Aulaire. I got it when I was eight and it was formative in so many ways... my child and my two cats all have mythological names.
Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary. A couple years ago my mom sent me my copies of the Ramona books so I could read them with my child. This one was always my favorite.
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. My signed copy. I cried when I met her. If I'd had that book when I was a teenager... even reading it as an adult was so healing.
And here is where I'm going to cheat: all four Rookie Yearbooks. Writing for Rookie was a transformational experience for me. The writers, artists, and editors there taught me so much. I love these gorgeous, physical copies of the best of the online magazine.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. What a world, what a coming-of-age story, and what a gut punch in that first novella. I want to suck in my breath the way I did the first time I read it.
Book you can't wait to share with your kid:
We've read some of my favorites--he loves Charlotte's Web by E.B. White as much as I did--but I can't wait to share Star Child by Ibi Zoboi in a few years as a gateway to Octavia E. Butler!