Another world


The desire to be a writer has a way of seeping into your soul and never leaving. It dances around and pokes and prods and makes you miserable until you give in and pursue it seriously. This is the experience of Melissa Fraterrigo who, at age 33, is collecting praise for her first short story collection, The Longest Pregnancy.

A journal writer since age 10, Fraterrigo only began writing fiction after graduating from the University of Iowa with an English education degree. It wasn't long before a realization set in that she didn't enjoy teaching in what she calls that "bound-out-of-bed-each-morning way."

It was her grandmother's death that made Fraterrigo rethink her vocation. "I realized I had to decide what I really wanted to do with this life of mine," she said. "That's when I started to write fiction and everything began to fall in place."

Fraterrigo's riveting stories feature mostly female protagonists who exist in another reality that is unnerving while at the same time familiar. Collectively, this is a world floating in an aura of casual, magical realism filled with very real human complexities and hope.

Slightly skewed relationships and the conflicts within are what drive Fraterrigo's offbeat characters. A couple find their new neighbors are a giant and his wife; a woman endures a six-year pregnancy; a family makes a living at a water show, swimming with sharks; newlyweds discover they have become literally attached at the hip; a woman with superhuman strength looks for love; a man becomes infatuated with a woman who never grows old.

The freedom to take fantastical liberties with a story is something that has always interested Fraterrigo. Initially, she wrote in a realistic vein, using Lorrie Moore and Alice Munro as inspiration. But it was the discovery of writers like Elizabeth McCracken, Karen Heuler and Joanna Scott, each of whom give their writing an off-kilter touch of surrealism, that helped guide Fraterrigo down her own unique path.

"Those writers reminded me that I can go my own way, that I can break the rules," Fraterrigo said with quiet emphasis. "I was allowed to write something that might seem absurd to one reader while somebody else might be attracted to it. I still feel these are realistic stories with a little bit of a slant to them."

Fraterrigo, with her short brown hair, welcoming smile and precise way of talking, looks more the proper high school teacher than a writer of mildly creepy fiction that sticks to you like a bad dream. Days after finishing the book, one realizes jettisoning these stories from your psyche is not an option. Fraterrigo smiles and admits there is a darkness lurking in her imagination.

"Yes, there's a little creepiness to them," she said, laughing. "I think it's easy to make surface level judgments about people. But we all have secrets and in these stories I'm trying to unearth some of those desires and secrets within the characters."

Fraterrigo grew up in south suburban Lansing, a blue-collar community, where you would not necessarily be encouraged to look to your imagination and write stories. Her father, a pharmacist, and her mother, a nurse, expected their daughter to also become a nurse. Now she says they are happily getting to "know the work I do in my solitary state as a writer."

Today, Fraterrigo lives in Evergreen Park with her husband Pete Seymour, a resident in orthopedic surgery, and one unruly 90-pound puppy, Cooper. Most days she begins writing at 5:30 a.m. before leaving for her day job at Saint Xavier University, where she is publications editor. She never goes anywhere without a notepad to jot down things that strike her imagination.

"For instance, driving down Stony Island I saw this sign in a window that read 'Soul food for all souls," said Fraterrigo. "I have no idea if that will turn into anything but it sure is a wonderful phrase that could find an interesting place in a story."

Fraterrigo says the tradition of Chicago's great writers (Stuart Dybek is a favorite) who chronicled the blue-collar working experience, the neighborhoods and people going about their lives and trying to connect with one another has had an influence on her own work, which is filled with her own brand of blue-collar misfits. Currently, Fraterrigo is at work on a novel that continues her love of the fantastical but on a broader palette.

"I think my work will always have that aspect of something being a little bit off," Fraterrigo said. "I'm interested in the unusual but also in family and identity and familial and societal expectations and norms. My characters have some abnormalities in their lives but they're still devoted to life's responsibilities and goals, like the rest of us."


Mary Houlihan is a features reporter at the Sun-Times





NOTE: Melissa Fraterrigo reads from The Longest Pregnancy at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Barbara's, 1100 Lake Street, Oak Park (708-848-9140); 7 p.m. July 19 at The Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln (773- 293-2665), and 7:30 p.m. Aug. 17 at Quimby's, 1854 W. North (773-342-0910).