| biographical information. |
[Jul. 8th, 2020|12:46 am] |
Evelyn Christine Vastakis was born February 13th, 1983 to George and Linda Vastakis in Hershey, PA. Her parents were employed as a janitor and a secretary, respectively, neither one having an education that went past high school. They had met when George was stationed at the Carlisle Barracks as a private in the US Army. Linda's father was a master sergeant there, and she was a senior in high school. They married upon her graduation and she moved from her father's house into one with George. After his eight years were up, he opted not to go career because the pair wanted to start a family and military life offered little stability, geographically. Evelyn was the youngest of four girls; Chantal in '74, Tiffany in '78, and Michelle in '81.
As toddler, Evelyn (Evie, to her family) was extremely quiet. She wasn't at all fussy, and was normally the most well behaved child in the room at playgroups and in preschool. Even at that age, she was somewhat anti-social; staying at home and playing by herself was far preferable to playing with others. When she did make friends, she was usually the one in charge, demanding activity from her playmates - jump rope, bike riding, hopscotch. She had never been one to find contentment in board games or Barbies - although she did enjoy dress up, and precociously invented wild, detailed characters to go along with the costumes which seemed to be a foreshadowing of her future as an aspiring writer.
Life in the Vastakis house wasn't always pleasant for Evelyn. While her parents were affectionate and doting on all of their children, she seemed to need more than that. George and Linda weren't big on tough love and as she grew up, their youngest child watched her sisters slowly destroy their lives. Each of the three girls got pregnant in high school and out of wedlock. Only one of them - Tiffany - got married, and when she did it lasted under a year before she and the baby were back home. After the first one, Evelyn figured more adept parents would put their foot down and introduce stricter rules and some common sense about birth control but the Vastakis' didn't see it that way. None of her sisters ended up going to college, either, and Evelyn began to see emotional attachment as the problem - her parents were too attached to put their foot down, her sisters were too attached to say no to sex, and then later too attached to give their children up for adoption (and in the same vein offer a decent, financially stable upbringing).
In junior high, Evelyn began her faux-goth phase: dressing in all black, wearing thick eyeliner, listening to Marilyn Manson and stowing herself in the school library to read as opposed to spending time with other kids. As a result, some quick witted future jock began shortening her name to 'Evel' (a homonym of evil). As these things often do, the name stuck and contrary to their intentions, the girl liked the name so much she began responding to nothing else. It was around the same time that Evel found a book amongst the stacks called A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. The main character, Ignatius J. Reilly, was someone Evel could relate to; the idea came to her that maybe she, who had always been complimented by teachers on her ability to turn a phrase, could someday create a character that someone like her would relate to. While she wasn't particularly emotional, the idea of giving another person that sense of comfort and likeness appealed to her ego. Ever since, she's aspired to become a writer.
Upon entering high school, her goth phase came to a close. Evel kept writing, though, submitting short stories to the lit mag and working on the school newspaper. She managed to make and maintain one or two close friends, although her complete and total inability to mince words made her fairly unpopular with the popular crowd - if she thought you were a bubble headed skank who wasn't going anywhere in life, she'd tell you. But she didn't always mean to offend people and found sometimes it happened completely on accident. In the rare event that Evel felt bad about such hurt feelings, her attempts to smooth things over worsened the problem more often than not. Despite her absence on the Prom Court, she made a lasting impression nonetheless and was voted both 'Prettiest Eyes' and 'Most Sarcastic' in her senior year book. Evel graduated near the top of her class, and won a $2,000 scholarship from the Hershey Writer's Roundtable for her short story Bittersweets, a dark comedy about a jilted girl who sends laxative spiked chocolates to the homewrecker who stole her boyfriend, inadvertently causing his untimely (and disgusting) demise when her beloved eats them instead - causing a rather 'explosive' allergic reaction that leaves him without a small intestine. The money went towards her first year's tuition at Elizabethtown College where she chose to major in English and minor in Professional Writing.
In college, she excelled all the more. Her writing continued to blossom and improve, and she's won a handful of other awards and accolades. She was editor in chief of the Elizabethtown lit mag and is working on her first novel. Scholastically, collegiate study has come naturally. Financially, it's been far more of a struggle and while her parents have helped out a bit, scholarships, student loans and grants are what have paid Evel's way through college thus far. To pay for her studio apartment and car, she took a job at Chocolate World as a freshman, giving tours. While her work ethic is strong and she's a model employee on paper tourism wasn't exactly the ideal occupation for someone with her personality type. She's been reprimanded too many times to count for her monotone dictation and complete lack of a 'Hershey Smile'. The pink slips for these infractions wallpaper the bathroom in her apartment to this day.
After graduating from Elizabethtown, she moved to Chicago to attend graduate school. Currently, she's working on a Masters in English from U of C, and she works at the Sun-Times as a part-time mail clerk. Once she has her master's, she intends to teach at the junior college level. The idea of being able to openly critique the writing of others greatly appeals to her domineering nature. Her first book, a selection of short stories, was published in 2008, and while the profits weren't huge, she did make enough to pay off her student loans and afford her grad school. She's at work on her first novel, but it's slow in coming. |
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