After graduating a semester early, Keuhnert couldn’t wait to get out of the suburbs of Chicago. She and her best friend took off for Madison, where they spent their underage nights driving the lonesome county highways of Wisconsin and exploring rural communities. “You would just drive out into these little towns. They would all have a Main Street with a bar and a grocery store. I just was really fascinated by that and decided to write about it.” And so the setting for IWBYJR was born.

Kuehnert moved back to the Chicago area to attend the fiction program at Columbia College after a tumultuous one-year attempt at college in Ohio — most of which she spent “scheming” with a close girlfriend. “We took this crazy road trip down to New Orleans and walked past this strip club that was like blasting Metallica and Nine Inch Nails and we were like ‘Oh my god, we should be angry strippers, that would be great.’ But we also had plenty of other [ideas], like ‘Let’s move to New Mexico and live off the grid,’ that kind of stuff. We were bored in small-town Ohio.”

In addition to her mish-mash of experiences, Kuehnert says she was also inspired by the music. “I’ve always wanted to write this book to pay tribute to the female musicians that I’ve loved,” she explains. And the author has certainly succeeded in that: Her story is simultaneously a painful memory revisited and a life-long dream come true, and it will make you laugh and cry as if you were flipping through unfortunate teenage photo albums with Hole screaming through the stereo.

Though she has found herself torn “between what happens when you follow and fight for your dreams versus when you run from your nightmares,” Kuehnert will not relent. In her next novel, due out next year, she will face down another feisty demon from her past — the suburbs. 

Stephanie's Top Five Rocknroll Reads

Beige, Cecil Castellucci

“The truest story about a teen girl discovering her own identity I’ve ever read, set against the backdrop of punk rock L.A., this book is currently my biggest inspiration.”

Wicked Game, Jeri Smith-Ready

“Perfect entertainment for music buffs: Rocknroll DJ vampires whose tastes span musical eras from blues to grunge, and a kick-ass heroine to boot!”

Shout Down the Moon, Lisa Tucker

“A beautiful book about a young mother trying to prove herself as a blues singer and escape her abusive ex; it reads like a blues song!”

Girl, Blake Nelson

“This was one of the only books that I read while growing up that I actually identified with as a punk girl, trying to find her place and not get her heart broken by guys in bands.”

Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain, Charles R. Cross

“This is the most thorough and detailed biography on Kurt Cobain out there, and the best thing about it is that it is so well-written it reads like a novel.”