The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays
Written by Megan Stielstra
Narrated by Megan Stielstra and Meredith Mitchell
4/5
()
About this audiobook
“Stielstra is a masterful essayist.” —Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist and Hunger
From an important new writer comes this powerful collection of personal essays on fear, creativity, art, faith, academia, the Internet, and justice.
In this poignant and inciting collection of literary essays, Megan Stielstra tells stories to ward off fears both personal and universal as she grapples toward a better way to live. In her titular piece “The Wrong Way To Save Your Life,” she answers the question of what has value in our lives—a question no longer rhetorical when the apartment above her family’s goes up in flames. “Here is My Heart” sheds light on Megan’s close relationship with her father, whose continued insistence on climbing mountains despite a series of heart attacks leads the author to dissect deer hearts in a poetic attempt to interrogate her own feelings about mortality.
Whether she's imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra's work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. The result is something beautiful—this story, her courage, and, potentially, our own.
Intellectually fierce and viscerally intimate, Megan Stielstra's voice is witty, wise, warm, and above all, achingly human.
Megan Stielstra
Megan Stielstra is the author of Once I Was Cool and Everyone Remain Calm. Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Guernica, BuzzFeed, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She teaches creative nonfiction at Northwestern University.
Related to The Wrong Way to Save Your Life
Related audiobooks
Problems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5True Love: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Every Kind of Wanting Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Reckonings: Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All Grown Up Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Crying Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sunshine State: Essays Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Vanishing Twins: A Marriage Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Actual One: How I Tried, and Failed, to Avoid Adulthood Forever Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The New Old Me: My Late-Life Reinvention Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'll Tell You In Person Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Misfit's Manifesto Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5No One Tells You This: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Live a Life Like Yours: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This One Wild and Precious Life: The Path Back to Connection in a Fractured World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Devotion: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hi, Anxiety: Life With a Bad Case of Nerves Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Land of Enchantment Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Barn 8 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In the Land of Men: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Glory Was I Had Such Friends: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Falconer: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Me Back Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5All This Could Be Yours Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Not to Drown Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Social Science For You
The Song of Achilles: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hunger Games Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Perfection Trap: Embracing the Power of Good Enough Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Road Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Behold a Pale Horse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Parable of the Sower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You're Cute When You're Mad: Simple Steps for Confronting Sexism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Name of the Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Radiolab: Journey Through The Human Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Razorblade Tears: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Small Mercies: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Radiolab: Mixtape: How The Cassette Changed The World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Left Hand of Darkness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Myths of Meritocracy: A Revisionist History Anthology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Wrong Way to Save Your Life
17 ratings0 reviews