Dealing with 'what if' scenarios

Everyday people inhabit stories written by Melissa Fraterrigo


Among the characters inhabiting Melissa Fraterrigo's new collection of short stories are:
A family that runs a "swimming with sharks" tourist attraction;

A newlywed couple who wake up to find they are — literally — attached to each other.

A woman who has been expecting a baby for six years and is being courted by a recovering alcoholic. The story's name, "The Longest Pregnancy," is the same as the book's .

"If you boil down the stories, metaphorically at least, many of them are about birth. I seem to be drawn to that state of being," said Fraterrigo, who lives in Evergreen Park.

In these times, where we know lots of surface aspects of people's lives but few intimate details, many of her characters "want to be truly understood," Fraterrigo said. "But is that possible or not?"

The unusual stories are rooted in a day-to-day matter-of-factness. Built on "what if" scenarios — what if all the women left town, what if you had giants who were swingers as neighbors — the tales examine how everyday people would handle such situations.

Fraterrigo's stories have been called "blue-collar magic realism" — a description she likes.

Then again, a woman recently told her, "I can see all these stories as being on 'The Twilight Zone,'" she said.

The collection was published by the University of West Alabama, which presented Fraterrigo with its first 2005 Tartt Fiction Award. She bested about 150 other authors, she said.

She spent two years trying to find a publisher before landing the award last year. The book was published in April.

Fraterrigo hails from Lansing and attended St. Ann Grade School and Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights. Her mother was a nurse, her father a pharmacist; they urged her to go into a practical profession.

"By writing something more fantastic, I am separating myself from those expectations," she said.

She completed courses at the University of Iowa's famed writing program before getting her master's degree at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and doing postgraduate work at Penn State and Southern Utah universities.

"All of the stories were written away from this area and, in a sense, come from a longing for home and where you feel the most comfortable," she said.

After a stint in 2004 as academic services coordinator at Kent State University in Ohio, Fraterrigo and her significant other, a medical resident, returned to the Chicago area. She currently works as publications editor at Saint Xavier University in Chicago.

The short commute gives her time for writing. She's at the keyboard about 5:30 a.m. most weekdays, and then heads into the office. She's been working on a novel for about three years.

"I'm ready to come up for air," she said.

The Courier News of Elgin