Chicago Lit: A punk-rock 'crossover novel'
CHICAGO LIT | Stephanie Kuehnert aims to please adults and teens
Stephanie Kuehnert was about two-thirds done with the first draft of her debut novel, I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, when she unexpectedly found herself staring at her worst nightmare -- writer's block. To top it off, Kuehnert, then a graduate student at Columbia College Chicago, had found an agent who felt the book had great possibilities.
"I was totally struggling with it," Kuehnert recalled, laughing. "And my agent wanted it fast. I talked her into six months. Then I mapped out a schedule and managed to stick to it."
(Courtesy)
By Stephanie Kuehnert
MTV Books, 340 pages, $13
The end result, an honest, dark and engrossing story about a teenager, the mother who abandoned her and the music that echoes through their lives, was eventually bought by MTV Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. Her determined agent had spent a year shopping it to major publishers with no success when she suggested changing the approach and selling it as a young adult novel.
Kuehnert was at first alarmed; she wasn't even sure what "young adult" meant. Would a novel filled with sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll be suitable for that market? She has since learned the young adult market is "very sophisticated" and now refers to her book as a "crossover novel" that she hopes will be of interest to adults as well as teens.
"I try to write books that I want to read as an adult and books that I wanted to read when I was 16," Kuehnert said. "This is a book for teens of a certain maturity level. Older-acting, rebellious kids, like I was."
The central character in the book is Emily Black, the lead singer of a Wisconsin-based punk band on the road to fame and maybe fortune. The story jumps back and forth between her story and that of her troubled mother, Louisa, who abandoned Emily to "follow the music." As the story unfolds, Louisa's journey has a much darker explanation and Emily, who sets out to find her mother, battles her own demons. Throughout, Kuehnert makes a case for the life-enhancing power of music.
At first readers may think portions of I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, came right out of Kuehnert's life. They would be wrong.
"I've known girls like Emily," Kuehnert, 28, said. "And I always wanted to be like them. But I was always the shy girl standing off to the side watching the cool rock girls."
Kuehnert, who has been writing since she was a child, admits to having been a "rebel teen" who just wanted to get away from her Oak Park home. She attended progressive Antioch College for a year before dropping out and moving to Madison, Wis., where she "lived, worked and partied" for a couple of years. At 21, she finally took writing seriously and enrolled at Columbia where Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting) was a mentor and where teacher Joe Meno's Hairstyles of the Damned was an influence.
"I love writers who push the boundaries," she said. "That's the kind of writer I want to be."
A diehard punk fan, who spent some time as a "little goth girl," Kuehnert uses music as the recurring vibe throughout I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, which takes its title from a fine Sleater-Kinney song. It is the chord that binds Emily, Louisa and Emily's lifelong friend Regan.
Music and writing are what got Kuehnert through some emotionally tough times. As a teenager, she listened to bands like Nirvana, Hole and Rancid and wrote raw, personal essays for fanzines.
"I expressed myself and my pain through these things and crawled out of it," Kuehnert recalled. "Today, I imagine what would have happened had I hung onto those demons. Louisa is the person I could have become. I relate to her in that way."
Kuehnert's depiction of small-town Wisconsin and the people who live and leave there is spot on. She wandered and observed southern Wisconsin while living in Madison but there are Chicago influences as well.
Outside the fictional town, Carlisle, there's an old warehouse called the River's Edge, where kids of all ages gather to listen to bands. It was inspired by the Fireside Bowl, where Kuehnert spent many teenage nights discovering new bands.
"I just thought about what would happen if you put a place like Fireside Bowl in the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin," Kuehnert said. "The River's Edge is sort of my perfect fantasy music venue."
Kuehnert, who is an assistant to the dean of the UIC College of Nursing, dreams about the day when she will be able to write full time. But even though writing time is now limited, Kuehnert is no slacker; she recently sold her second novel, Ballads of Suburbia, to MTV Books.
"Having a novel published is something I've fantasized about since I was in third grade," Kuehnert said. "But it's frustrating that I have two new ideas fighting for my attention and I can't get to them yet. I couldn't be happier."
Mary Houlihan writes frequently about music for the Sun-Times.
* 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark.
* 8 p.m. Thursday at Beacon Pub, 101 Circle Ave., Forest Park.
* 2 p.m July 26 at Borders, 1144 W. Lake St., Oak Park.
* 2 p.m. Aug. 9 at Glenview Public Library, 1930 Glenview Rd., Glenview.
* 7 p.m. Aug. 16 at Tamale Hut Cafe, 8300 W. Cermak, North Riverside.
* 7 p.m. Aug. 19 at Quimby's, 1854 W. North.
* 7 p.m. Sept. 16 at Thomas Ford Memorial Library, 800 Chestnut, Western Springs.
* 7 p.m. Sept. 18 at Oak Park Public Library, 834 Lake St., Oak Park.