Stephanie Kuehnert got her start writing bad poetry about unrequited love and razor blades in eighth grade. In high school, she discovered punk rock and produced several D.I.Y. feminist 'zines. She received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago. Her first YA novel, I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE was published by MTV Books in July 2008, and her second, BALLADS OF SUBURBIA was published in July 2009. She lives in Forest Park, Illinois with her husband and three cats. In addition to writing novels, she is a bartender, teacher, staff writer for ROOKIE, an online magazine for teenage girls, and an award-winning columnist for her local paper, the Forest Park Review.
Stephanie was born St. Louis, Missouri in the fine year of 1979. She moved to the Chicago area with her parents and younger brother, Daniel in the late eighties. Stephanie got her start like most authors by writing bad poetry about unrequited love and razor blades back in eighth grade. That was also around the time she discovered punk rock. Along with literature by geniuses such as Shakespeare, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Steinbeck, Sylvia Plath, Francesca Lia Block, John McNally, Irvine Welsh, and Louise Erdrich, noisy guitars and lyrics by Kurt Cobain, Johnny Cash, Mike Ness, Courtney Love, Robert Smith, Mark Lanegan, and Brody Dalle are Stephanie's primary influences.
During a dark and angsty period in high school, Stephanie was exposed to Riot Grrrl via punk rock and radical politics long fostered by activist parents and an early interest in animal rights. She wrote several feminist zines including Kill Supermodels, Goddess Defiled, Hospital Gown, and Do Not Go Quietly Unto Yr Grave. Hospital Gown was featured in the book ZINE SCENE by Francesca Lia Block and Hillary Carlip complete with a picture of bleached-blonde seventeen year-old Stephanie. Hillary Carlip was one of Stephanie's earliest writing mentors and they remain friends to this day.
By her first year of college at the extremely liberal Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Stephanie was jaded and goth (though you'll be happy to know that she remained vegan, rediscovered punk rock, her faith in politics, and stopped wearing that white face makeup after a couple years). After one wild year in Ohio, she dropped out of college to "be a writer," but really she just moved to Madison, Wisconsin, drank a lot of boxed wine and went out clubbing for two years. Well, at least it was better than her brief, drunken plan to move to New Orleans and become a stripper. The landscape of Wisconsin also ultimately inspired the setting of her first novel I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE.
Stephanie finally moved back to her hometown of Oak Park, Illinois at the ripe, old age of twenty-one and got her Bachelors in Fiction Writing at Columbia College Chicago. She liked the program and the people she met there so much that she decided to stay for her Masters, which she finished in June of 2006. At Columbia, she was taught by literary luminaries such as Irvine Welsh (TRAINSPOTTING), Joe Meno (HAIRSTYLES OF THE DAMNED), Dorothy Allison (BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA), and Sam Weller (THE BRADBURY CHRONICLES).
Stephanie met her first agent at Columbia's Story Week in March of 2005 and that, along with Fiction Writing Department Chair, Randy Albers, kicked her ass into finishing her first book I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE by February 2006. In the fall of 2005, Stephanie had the experience of taking classes on the CBS Studio Lot in Studio City, CA through Columbia's Semester in LA program. She learned all about adapting books into screenplays. Though she loved drinking at the Viper Room, dancing on tables at Rokbar, celebrity-watching at Chateau Marmont, the beaches of Venice, Santa Monica, and Malibu, and behind-the-scenes Hollywood, Stephanie ultimately decided that LA wasn't her thing. But she does know all about the system now, so don't try to rip her off when you turn her books into movies. ;)
Stephanie's first book, I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, sold to MTV Books in spring of 2007 and was published in July of 2009. Her second novel, BALLADS OF SUBURBIA came out in the summer of 2009, also published by MTV Books. BALLADS is inspired by the near-western suburbs of Chicago, but is in no way autobiographical.
Currently, Stephanie is working on her first adult book, another mother/daughter story like I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, but this time though music plays a role (the daughter is a vegan punk like Stephanie was in high school and the mom is goth girl like Stephanie was in her late teens/early twenties), it is inspired by Stephanie's experiences working in a neighborhood dive bar as well as her love for THE GILMORE GIRLS. Stephanie is also working on a new YA project, but it is top secret so she is not ready to talk about it, though she may give hints on her tumblr. You'll regularly find essays about her angsty teenagers and gushing reviews about stuff she loves at ROOKIE, an online magazine for teenage girls, where she is lucky enough to be a staff writer. She also writes a regular column for her local newspaper, the Forest Park Review
Prior to having her books published, Stephanie had short stories published in 10,000 Tons of Black Ink, f Magazine, Hair Trigger, Black Oak Presents, and on inkstains.org. "Fairytale," an excerpt from her novel I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE that appeared in Hair Trigger 27 was awarded Third Place in Traditional Fiction by the Columbia University Scholastic Press Association. Stephanie's interviews and essays have appeared in No Touching Magazine, Glimmer Train's Writer's Ask, on Virginia Quarterly Review's website, and on freshyarn.com.
Stephanie's heart lies in the Pacific Northwest, particularly Seattle, Washington, where she hopes to move soon, and in the meantime, visits at least once a year (and you can read about why in her freshyarn.com essay). But for now Stephanie lives in a townhouse decorated with music posters in Forest Park, Illinois. She shares the house with her husband, Scott, and three cats, Sidney (whom Stephanie named for Sid Vicious at sixteen), Kaspar, and Lars (named for Lars Fredriksen of Rancid). She recently quit her respectable office job at the UIC College of Nursing so she has more time to write. She bartends at the Beacon Pub (101 Circle in Forest Park) to pay the bills and encourages you to drop by on the nights she works (Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday) to say hello and get your book signed and whatnot. Check out photos from before Stephanie became a published author in the "Before They Were Rock Stars" section of the Photo Gallery.
You can send Stephanie fan mail at stephanie at stephaniekuehnert dot com (the at and dot are spelled out to avoid spammers, you know what to do...) or via snail mail to P.O. Box 721; Forest Park, IL 60130. She likes to hear from readers.
