Kuehnert, Stephanie

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 DIY feminist ‘zines. Stephanie received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago and was named to Newcity’s Lit 50 in 2008. Her debut young adult novel, I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, a raw, edgy emotional tale about growing up punk and living to tell, is titled after a Sleater-Kinney song and was published by MTV Books in July 2008. Stephanie’s second book, Ballads of Suburbia, published by MTV Books in July 2009, is set in her hometown of Oak Park, Illinois, and has been called “an intensely real and painfully honest novel of high-school anxiety” by Booklist. Stephanie is also an award-winning columnist for the Forest Park Review. She currently lives, works, and writes in Forest Park, IL and you can find her online at www.stephaniekuehnert.com.