In the Spotlight: Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Ashley Kalagian Blunt is the author of two books, How to Be Australian, a memoir, and My Name Is Revenge, a thriller novella and collected essays. My Name is Revenge was a finalist in the 2018 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2019 Woollahra Digital Literary Awards. Her Armenian travel memoir was shortlisted for the 2018 Impress Prize for New Writers and the 2017 Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award and received a 2015 Varuna PIP residency. Ashley has appeared at Sydney Writers’ Festival, Story Club, Little Fictions, the National Young Writers’ Festival and Noted Festival, and is a Moth StorySLAM winner.
I first discovered Ashley’s work when I was sent a copy of My Name is Revenge to review and was delighted to be offered the opportunity to review her new memoir, How to Be Australian and interview her for Write or Die Tribe. Ashley and I chatted about the prevalent themes of cultural heritage, identity and fitting in, within her work, and she shares some amazing advice on her writing process for budding writers.
Firstly, congratulations on the book! It feels like this was a very cathartic writing experience for you. You mention throughout about approaching the challenge of writing your first book (My Name Is Revenge, 2019) and I’m curious about the timeline. Did getting My Name is Revenge published help you feel confident about the publishing journey for How to Be Australian, and was it important to you that one came before the other?
Absolutely, before My Name Is Revenge came out, I’d been writing and working towards a career as an author for almost ten years, and those years were full of rejection and uncertainty. I wrote four manuscripts before Revenge. Eventually, I accepted that I would keep writing because I loved it, even if my work had no larger audience than my writers’ group. When Revenge found a home with Spineless Wonders, it was hugely encouraging.
But in fact, Revenge wasn’t the book I describe writing in How to Be Australian. During those years I was working on the manuscript Revenge grew out of, a travel memoir of Armenia called Full of Donkey. Publishers liked the book, but they didn’t think there was enough interest in Armenia to inspire sales. I took everything I’d learned in the process of that project and started How to Be Australian. In the midst of that, I had the idea for Revenge. It ended up being published first mostly because it’s much shorter.
Identity, culture, fitting in – these seem to be strong themes for you, especially around your Armenian heritage and keeping these stories alive. Could you talk a little more about why these were important for you to explore on a more personal level?
One of my main motivations for writing is to develop a deeper understanding of the world around me, which is bound up in a better understanding of myself and ultimately the human condition. This naturally leads to writing about identity, culture and belonging, which are at the core of who we are.
I’m drawn to this in part because of my upbringing in Canada. I’d lived in three provinces by the time I was four. At age ten, my family left Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and moved to Vancouver Island. I arrived believing life would be much the same; we were still in western Canada. My grade five classmates didn’t see it that way. They asked where my cowboy boots were, why I wasn’t out milking the cows. When I was fourteen we moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, back to the prairies, and I anticipated being warmly accepted by my classmates. But they branded me as a weirdo interloper from the west coast. Since then, I felt like my identity was up for grabs.
When I moved to Australia, I realised how much I wanted to feel at home. The search for belonging can only be a personal story but at the same time, it’s one of the most universal experiences.
As a non-Australian living in Australia, I found myself relating a lot to the different challenges you mention (especially around navigating the coffee scene, finding work and tall-poppy syndrome!), so I’m curious, have you had a different response to the book from Aussies versus non-Aussies?
I’m so glad to hear that! I was pretty confident that ex-pats, migrants and even visitors would see aspects of their own journeys in the story, so that’s very rewarding to hear.
One of my favourite things since moving to Australia – other than caramel slice – has been my many conversations with Aussies about their country. I wrote this book for Australians, in the hope of reflecting this quirky, baffling country back to itself and sharing some of the delight and puzzlement I’ve experienced over ten years here. What’s been most exciting is how well born-and-raised Aussies are connecting with the book. Readers have been reaching out to say both how much they’ve enjoyed it, and how much they’ve learned about their own country. One kind reader, who described himself as ‘as an Aussie for almost nine decades’ wrote to say the book made him both laugh and cry, and then invited me to visit any time I’m in Bendigo, Victoria.
How to Be Australian is a deeply personal book, and you talk a lot about your marriage, revealing some honest truths that I think many will identify and empathise with when it comes to their own relationships. I get the impression that your husband, Steve, is quite a private person, so how did he feel about being written about?
You’re absolutely right, Steve is very private. He’s also fully supportive of my career ambitions. It helps too that Steve and I live in very different worlds, and my writing life doesn’t overlap with any part of his life – meaning it’s unlikely his colleagues are going to read the book, for example.
Before I sent the finalised manuscript to my editor, I asked Steve to read it. He wasn’t all that keen to (‘Why do I need to read it? I was there’) but I wasn’t comfortable publishing a memoir about our marriage without him knowing exactly what it said. He requested I cut a couple of lines, but was otherwise fine with it.
I really loved how you spoke openly about your own emotional and mental health journey, and navigating this in a way that worked for you. I also really loved how you did it with a wonderful touch of humour! Was it important for you to normalise this experience in your writing and do you think we need more literature normalising things like seeing a psychologist?
Once I realised how much of a role my mental health needed to have in the book, it became essential that I write it in a way that was true to my experience. In doing so, I was also reflecting back the experience of so many female friends who’ve struggled with similar mental health challenges and been equally uncertain about how to navigate them. Even though there’s far less stigma than in past decades, it can still be hard to talk about these things. I actually found it easier to write about my experiences than to discuss them with friends.
I included a scene with a psychologist I visited because I felt that, while there’s a lot of scenes with psychologists in pop culture, none reflected the experience I had. When I went to my first appointment, I assumed – based on so many TVs show and movies – that I’d spend the hour unpacking all my issues in a heartfelt and lengthy monologue peppered with incisive and revealing questions from the psychologist. Instead, she spent the time teaching me cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) techniques and explaining various handouts I was supposed to work on at home. This proved to be exactly what I needed. But at first, I found it so disorienting, I had the vague feeling I’d done something wrong. The more pop culture normalises CBT techniques and photocopied handouts, the better – and hopefully the easier it will become for people to seek help when they need it, and not months or years later as I did.
Lastly, with two published books under your belt, I’d love to hear about any writing tips, advice, or personal processes you have that help you write that you can share
I am brimming with writing tips and advice! Here are three key things I’ve learned.
First, I used to think someone – a publisher, a manuscript assessor – could read my work and tell me whether I should even bother with writing. Did I have potential, or not? Ten years and six manuscripts later, plus five years working in the writing community, I’ve realised that writing is a process of continual improvement. For years my writing was terrible, and gave little indication of the writer I’d become. Write, get feedback, read books about writing, take courses, repeat. Your skills will continue to develop, and you’ll figure out what works for you, what type of stories suit your voice, and where your writing might find a home. There’s only one thing that can determine whether or not you should keep going – do you want to?
To develop your skills, feedback is key. One of the most challenging aspects of writing is gaining insight into how readers experience your work. When you write, you have insider knowledge of all the rich detail, including your characters’ emotional interiority, either because you were there or because you imagined it. But readers only have what’s on the page. If friends and family are honest, they might say your writing isn’t working, but they’ll struggle to say why. For me, finding a group of writers who could give me insight into what wasn’t working on the page made the biggest difference. I found my group through my state writers’ centre, and I highly recommend connecting with yours for all kinds of writerly support.
Finally, even after two published books, writing remains a messy and confounding undertaking. I’ve gained greater insight into how to make a piece of writing work, and what publishers are looking for, but it’s still often difficult wrangling an idea into a coherent piece of prose. So I keep a note on my desk that reads trust the process. After six manuscripts, I’ve figured out what my process is – and that it always involves a chaotic, sprawling first draft. Halfway through that torturous draft is often when I’m tempted to abandon the project and move on to something else. But if I push myself through (provided my driving interest is still there) and finish a complete draft, I know things will get easier. Figuring out your own writing process will help you build confidence, which in turn helps the writing come more easily – even on the days when everything feels likes a confounding mess.
Ashley Kalagian Blunt is the author of two books, How to Be Australian, a memoir, and My Name Is Revenge, a thriller novella and collected essays. My Name is Revenge was longlisted for 2020 Davitt Awards, shortlisted for the 2019 Woollahra Digital Literary Awards, and a finalist in the 2018 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award.
Ashley’s writing appears in Griffith Review, Sydney Review of Books, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, the Big Issue, Westerly, Kill Your Darlings, the Canberra Times, and more.
About Elaine Mead
Elaine is a freelance writer and editor from London, currently residing in Tasmania. She is passionately interested in the ways in which we can learn from our experiences to become more authentic versions of ourselves, and believes in the power of words to connect. She's also obsessed with showing you photos of her Dachshund puppy. You can find her on Instagram @cestelaine
