Stephanie Soileau

Stephanie Soileau is a lecturer at Stanford University, where she was also a Truman Capote Fellow in the Wallace Stegner Fellowship Program. Her short stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, Ecotone, Tin House, Gulf Coast, StoryQuarterly, Nimrod International Journal, three volumes of New Stories from the South, and Best of the South, Volume II: From 10 Years of New Stories from the South. She is working on a collection of stories and a novel, Terre Bonne, about fishermen, oil, and erosion in her home state of Louisiana. She grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, but has spent the last dozen or so years in Chicago and San Francisco, where she now lives with her dog, cat, and husband, Jonah.

Ten Things I Can’t Do Without

1. Family and friends
2. A feeling of community
3. Trips home to Louisiana
4. Occasional solo excursions to remote places
5. Critters underfoot
6. The means and drive to write
7. Great stuff to read
8. A good pair of boots
9. Conversations with jovial strangers
10. Boiled crabs