Megan Stielstra’s essays are ostensibly about herself: she’s always the main character and narrator. But Stielstra’s work is just as much about the people she loves and admires; you can tell just as much about her through what she says about others as she does about herself.
Stielstra and Irby called in from Kalamazoo to let us eavesdrop on their conversation about publishing and writing and how they’re not at all the same, about where life and storytelling overlap.
But you have a dude.
It’s shocking, I know. I bought, like, the variety of hot dogs, but I don’t give a shit about what a rutabaga is, and she grilled them, and we made him a plate. He was very gracious about taking the plate but I was like, “Is he really gonna eat that?” We’ll never know. But I would love to know what he secretly says to people about us. Because to us he’s a superhero, right? And we feed him our weird food and giggle while we watch him working in the yard, and I wonder if he goes home and he’s like, “Uhhh, I had to go those lesbians’ house today.” I don’t think so, because he’s awesome, but I would just like to know what he secretly tells people. “They gave me some more of their food.” We’ll never know.
I feel like we’re gonna transcribe this interview and it’s just gonna be the first page of a piece in the next book.
Well, this is the conundrum currently, being one of the last few people on earth with a fucking blog. It’s like, what goes on the stupid thing I write for free and make no money off of, versus what do I save to potentially go in a book? My agent wanted two months ago for me to start thinking about doing another book. And I’m like, “Damn, already?” And he’s like, “Well, listen, you took too long with the second one.”
