Jessica Stephenson opened her independent bookstore Lit. on Fire in 2015. She had already spent a few years in the bookselling business, working at Peoria-area used bookstores.
But she wanted to operate her own store. Turns out, that entrepreneurial spark was in her genes.
“I was adopted. And when I found my biological, maternal side of the family I actually found out that my great grandfather had owned multiple bookstores throughout Peoria and then Chicago and finally when he retired in California,” Stephenson recounts, sitting in Lit. on Fire on a weekday afternoon. “So I like to say it’s literally in my blood. Bookselling is in my blood.”
The storefront on Main Street is adorned with flyers for local events, murals and words of affirmation for the LGBTQ+ community. Inside, the decorations are similar and the atmosphere is cozy. A few couches give you an opportunity to peruse a book before you settle on buying it.
Stephenson says Lit. on Fire started in a 256 square foot studio space, but she knew Main Street was the goal.
“I kind of grew up here, this was my stomping grounds,” she said. “I went to a lot of punk shows in the area. A lot of my punk friends had punk houses, you know, I just kind of grew up in this area. So, I kind of wanted to give back to this neighborhood.”
In the nearly ten years Lit. on Fire has been open, Stephenson has built a bookstore and a community. The space hosts regular open mic nights that can attract people from as far as out of state.
“You feel the mood, you get up and you take the stage and do your thing,” Stephenson said. “And everyone’s really supportive and says nice things to you.”
Last July, the same weekend Stephenson celebrated her 40th birthday, she received a diagnosis. Stephenson says she wasn’t feeling well her birthday weekend and visited the doctor to check for a flareup of a different chronic condition, but a CT scan found something unexpected.
“‘You have blood clots everywhere, like we're calling the oncologist like we don't know what to do here,’” Stephenson recalled the doctors saying. “It was terrifying. And it was a whirlwind because they did a bone marrow biopsy pretty early on to confirm that it was leukemia.”
Stephenson says the form she has, Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia, does have a high survival rate and treatment is “down to a science.”
“It was a shock to the system,” Stephenson said. “But I gotta say, it was so relieving because once I got through that I really had so much support from the community and from friends.”
Stephenson’s friends started a GoFundMe campaign, supporters sent care packages and stuffed animals, visitors masked up to see her and Jennifer Flaig, founder of the nonprofit My Writing Shed in the space adjacent to Lit on Fire, “adopted” her.
“I love Jess, I mean, I absolutely adore her as a person,” Flaig said. “And I love Lit. on Fire. And since I was pretty much the main volunteer, and we’re friends anyway, it was like, we’re just going to jump in and I pulled my kids in. And we just started figuring out what we were going to do to keep it open.”
Flaig says she and her family helped out with whatever they could to make things easier for Stephenson. Stephenson has a son, and Flaig began brainstorming ways to help out the family. She also put together a plan to keep the store open, on limited hours, but still operating and providing the place of community and acceptance that Stephenson had spent so much time and effort cultivating.
“There were so many people who wanted to help,” Flaig said. “So that tells you how important it is in the community. So it’s just something that was just a natural thing to do.”
Some of those volunteers were Lit on Fire regulars like Alex Thixton. Thixton first visited Lit on Fire while visiting from out of state and became a frequent visitor after moving to the Peoria area.
“I always really appreciated that they have books stocked on things that a lot of the time you’d have to order somewhere online,” Thixton said. “And I really loved being able to give my money to a local bookstore, run by somebody that I know is so kind and passionate.”
Thixton put in a few hours a week volunteering in the store, working the cashier and meeting more of the customers that love the business and its owner.
“There were so many people that knew Jessica and wanted to wish her well and also a lot of people that were like me,” he said. “That originally stopped by while traveling and were like ‘what is this place? This is like magic, you know?’”
For Jessica, the last eight months have meant treatment, a lot of treatment. She says she’s had hundreds of infusion sessions and taken rounds of oral medications. But, as of Friday, Mar. 15, she’s finished with infusions.
“On Monday, I start two weeks of oral meds and that last pill, I will take the evening of March 31,” she said. “So April 1. It’s so funny that April Fool’s Day will be my first day of being done with leukemia treatment. It’s almost like there’s a joke there waiting to be made.”
Stephenson says she’s excited to start easing back into regular work at the store. She’ll rely on some remaining support from volunteers initially.
“I’m grateful that I will have some folks here to support me and help me manage things,” Stephenson said. “Since I’m a little out of practice. It’s been a good long while since I was here, doing everything on my own, handling it all.”
At the same time, Stephenson has some reminders to keep with her that she’s not on her own. During her treatment, Flaig kept hosting open mics when she could. At one of them, attendees put together a booklet full of notes and pictures. One booklet couldn’t contain all the love and support, it overflowed into two.
“I still look at those very frequently,” Stephenson said. “They’ve carried me through a lot of tough times, it’s hard to kind of disappear from something you’ve built. And the isolation that you need to kind of heal and get through the difficult part of this, especially emotionally. But you feel so disconnected. So they’re a great reminder of how much my community is here for me.”
