Brutalities: An Evening with Margo Steines by Erica Peterson

How do we write about the hard things? This question fittingly kicked off the discussion portion of a Cinder Skies reading I did alongside Margo Steines in early November. I shared an excerpt from my thesis. I’m a second-year MFA student at Northern Arizona University and my thesis is themed around my coming of age as a gay Mormon. Margo Steines read from Brutalities: A Love Story, which she published a month before. Margo holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she currently lives and works.

Her debut memoir contains beautiful—and brutal—depictions of love, violence, and tenderness, all told with unflinching honesty. Brutalities explores Margo’s fascination with pain, inflicted on her body by both others and herself, both willingly and unwillingly. She takes the reader on a journey from age 17 working as a professional dominatrix in New York City; her twenties working as a welder, exploring masculinity and pain in multiple forms; her MFA program and her body systems breaking down after years of abuse; and most recently, present day in the book, when she experienced parenthood with a kind partner in a global pandemic. Her writing has a sense of urgency and of searching. In Brutalities, Margo seeks to understand or, perhaps more accurately, observe her obsession with violence. Against the odds, Margo is here to tell her story and, in doing so, treats her past and present selves with compassion.

It was an honor to read alongside Margo and learn from her experience and her writing. After the reading, Cinder Skies host and fellow MFA student Colin Katchmar facilitated a brief Q&A. The following is a lightly edited summary of our conversation.

The first question had to do with writing about hard things and how to handle writing such difficult and sometimes graphic materials. Margo’s answer elicited a big laugh.

“Go to therapy.” She then expanded on this, saying, “It’s good to have a space that’s not the page to process, because I don’t believe that writing functions as therapy. I will say, I have some mental disorder where I am totally unbothered by writing that kind of stuff. I can just eat a sandwich right afterwards, it’s fine. Actually, writing the more tender material about my partner and my child, that shit fucks me up.”

Next, an audience member noted that Margo walks a thin line between BDSM and self-harm. They asked if this was intentional.

In response, Margo agreed that her book “definitely touches on this sort of Venn diagram of consensual power-based sexual practices, abuse, which is a sloppy term, and non-consensual interpersonal violence, self-harm, and probably some ancillary things also. A lot of what I was interested in unpacking are the messy areas in between those things that, culturally, are hard to talk about, because they’re poor talking points for any of those communities. Having been a practitioner of all three, I think the truth is a lot messier than the way it’s often spoken about.”

Next, Lawrence Lenhart, associate chair and associate professor of English at NAU, asked about writing about other people.

“I always feel like that’s not as sacrosanct as we think it is.” Speaking to both writers, he said, “Suddenly, with this reading, I do wonder. I wonder about how you approached writing about somebody who you shared this space with. Where are they right now in this release of your work into the world?”

Margo deferred to me to answer first. I admitted that this is something I struggle with in my writing.

“When I’m writing a first draft that involves any other person, I have to pretend that they don’t exist. I sometimes imagine them as a little tiny person, and I lock them in a jar and they can’t come out until I’m done.”

I also explained that, in revision, I try to portray others as honestly, empathetically, and compassionately as I can, while still telling the truest version of my own story.

When I handed the mic to Margo, she said, “I love the image of the family members in little jars. Hold onto that one.”

She also asserted that she has the right to speak the truth of her own experience and that her work specifically attempts to push back against the privacy, silence, and decorum that is often expected from stories and writers like her. The main question she seeks to answer in writing is, “Am I writing this at someone?” For her, the answer is no. She concluded by saying she gets to take up space: “I get to be here.”

The next question was a softball: What is Margo’s Zodiac sign? The audience had been having a debate during the intermission. Margo is a Libra. I’m a Virgo.

Another MFA student asked the final question of the night: “Which writers inspire your work, or who do you turn to when you’re dealing with these topics?”

I said Melissa Febos, my favorite author.

“I don’t write about very similar topics as her, but it almost feels the same when I read her writing. It feels like it’s about me, somehow.”

Margo shared my answer, as I expected, as she and Melissa have many overlapping subjects in their writing. Margo also listed Leslie Jamison, Lacy M. Johnson, and Ted Conover.

“They’re all writers who give me a sense of permission, of being able to do what I want to do and to be able to really follow a fundamental curiosity or obsession and not have to justify it in any specific way beyond that.”

After the Q&A concluded, Margo stuck around to sign books. In my copy, she wrote, “May all your pain be useful to you.”

Margo also belongs on my list of authors who inspire and inform my work, especially after this evening. Like the authors she listed, she also gives other writers a sense of permission. I highly recommend this book to all readers of memoir and essay, or anyone who loves a good (and brutal) love story.

The Cinder Skies reading was held at Brightside Bookshop and hosted by the Northern Arizona Book Festival and Northern Arizona University. The next event will be December 7, featuring Dede Cummings and NAU MFA candidate Lindsey Gallagher. It will be held on NAU campus, Liberal Arts Lecture Hall 136 and over Zoom.

Erica Peterson is an MFA student at NAU where she serves as managing editor for Thin Air Magazine. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in music composition from Brigham Young University. Her work can be found in The Restored Gospel and Applied Christianity and is forthcoming in Permafrost Magazine.