Q&A: Local author Ashley Honeysett on her award winning novella
Writer Ashley Honeysett is on a roll. An author who lives in Evanston, she won a prestigious prize from Miami University in Ohio that resulted in her novella, Fictions, being published.
That publication was followed by the 2024 Award for Fiction Book of the Year from the Chicago Writers Association for the same work. And now she’s a 2024 Foreword INDIES finalist in literary adult fiction.
The RoundTable spoke with Honeysett to hear more about her writing. She has an interesting perspective on her writing process and how she wants the finished product to relate to the reader.
ERT: Why did you choose to write a novella?
Honeysett: Something that a novella can do is explore things without becoming tiresome. When you have a longer book, you’re depending on some kind of momentum to carry you through that long reading experience. When I’m writing something shorter, I want the reader to feel immersed, and I appreciate that I can experiment with form or explore ideas more than characters or plot without asking for a huge reader commitment.
How does the title Fictions fit with the content and purpose of your novella?
The concept behind the book is it tells these little versions of short stories that the narrator has written and is ambivalent about because her submissions get rejected. She is going back-and-forth in the text between talking about these stories and talking about what is happening in her life or what was happening in her life at the time. Sometimes, it is clear how one of those events influences the other, but sometimes not. The character, though, tries to figure out a way to combine them.
Why do you mix the serious with the funny?
You can’t feel too sorry for somebody whose short stories are getting rejected. It’s not a big deal, but it’s also her life, and the rejections over and over again are crushing. But not for the reader. And that’s what humor is for, to get us through our lives. After all, she doesn’t have cancer. I don’t know that it would be fun to read or to write about people who greeted their setbacks with only sadness or humiliation.
Mostly, your readers are not writers or artists. Why did you think they would be interested in this character — this writer dealing with what she sees as being inadequate?
Everybody understands inadequacy and failure. Hopefully, everybody can see the humor in repeated humiliation, and my character is concerned about aspects of life that matter to everybody, like family and love. Also, hopefully, I’ve told the story in a way that is accessible for people who are not writers or artists,
You called the book Fictions, but you wrote it as if it’s the character’s memoir.
Even people who write memoirs would say that when you construct a story, you also construct characters. Even if they have a real origin, the author is making decisions about what to write down and what to create. Fictions, my book, is a lot about what decisions you make when you are telling your life stories.
What’s your next project?
I’m working on a full-length novel. I know I just said there are things you can do in a novella without wearing out the reader, so my novel will have to be different.
You and your husband lived in Ireland for 10 years. When you moved back to the U.S., you chose Evanston as the place to settle. Why was that?
First, we chose the Chicago area and then looked at various suburbs. On those excursions, we went to a playground, a coffee shop and a library and walked around those areas. When we came to Evanston, there was freezing rain. It was just miserable. It could have been the worst possible experience, but it seemed like there were things happening here. It just felt like a lively progressive suburb that didn’t feel too divorced from the city. And we wanted our son to go to a high quality, diverse public school. Evanston was our match.
For readers interested in obtaining Fictions, if you buy it at Booked in Evanston, Honeysett will personally autograph the book at your direction before you pick it up. Booked: 506 Main St., bookedevanston.com, 847-868-8047. Honeysett also writes a newsletter where she reviews books: ashleyhoney.substack.com.
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