Mohawk writer Alicia Elliott on how her own experiences shaped character in 1st novel

Mohawk writer Alicia Elliott’s first novel is receiving a lot of attention.

The book is called And Then She Fell. Along with some great reviews on the website Goodreads, the Brantford author has also just won this year’s Amazon First Novel Award, which comes with a $60,000 prize.

She recently spoke with CBC K-W’s The Morning Edition host Craig Norris about the book.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The audio of the interview can be found at the bottom of the article.

Craig Norris: When you found out, how did you feel?

Alicia Elliott: When they called my name at the ceremony, my mind just kind of went blank and I was like sitting there kind of like almost paralyzed for a second because I was just like, so in shock and disbelief. 

And people continued looking at me and coughing, so I was like, I guess I have to go up.

Norris: What do you hope something like this does for your work and your career as an author?

Elliott: It’s so hard to say what effect awards have. I mean, I think it’s important. I know it’s validating for me to have won this because I especially have so much respect for the judges. So the fact that they chose my book means so much to me.

And I think, because I’m on my second book, so I have some experience with how books are received and things like that, I think it’s just really good to kind of know that the book is being understood and received.

I know you mentioned Goodreads. Some people definitely don’t get it. Totally fine. I knew that I was writing a book that was challenging in certain ways of narrative and of expectations and things like that. 

So knowing that, getting this award for it regardless, was just really validating because I knew I was taking all these chances and I wasn’t sure whether people would think they paid off or not. So it’s great to hear that it has.

Norris: So let’s get to the book. Tell us a bit about And Then She Fell.

Elliott: It’s a novel about a woman named Alice who was raised on Six Nations of the Grand River reserve and she has had a really difficult time.

Her dad passed away when she was young, so it’s just been her and her mom and she’s kind of fallen into a codependent relationship with her when she meets Steve, who is going to be her husband. 

And so, they get married and at the start of the book, they already have a baby.

Her Mom has also passed away, so she’s kind of in the strange situation where she’s living in Toronto now amongst people she doesn’t really know. She’s never lived off the reserve and she’s with Steve and this place where there’s money, where she didn’t have money before and is having a really hard time, I think, fitting in and understanding how she fits into this world because he’s an academic and she graduated high school, but she was working at the bingo hall when they met. 

So, you know, there’s this kind of awkwardness and in terms the differences between them that only gets kind of exacerbated as she starts to kind of hear things talking to her while she’s caring for the baby or images are flashing where she thinks she’s seeing something. 

She’s having strange dreams and trying to figure out what this all means as she’s trying to write in honour of her father. So all of these things kind of mixing together and moving in and out of what’s real and what’s not is kind of where the book goes.

Norris: It gets slotted into the horror genre. I think there’s more to it than that though, right?

Elliott: That’s where I think it’s kind of risky because so often people want books that are very easy to slot into genres. And my kind of literary fiction, it kind of does a little bit of thriller stuff on some horror, some speculative fiction. So it kind of does a lot of different things. 

I think sometimes when books are not easily identifiable, booksellers or publishers get a little antsy, like … what do we do with this? How do we market this? 

And so, I’m totally fine with people being marketed as horror, but it’s definitely, I wouldn’t say it’s like all out horror. It’s not like A Nightmare on Elm Street, or something like that. Although there are dreams, it’s not the same.

Norris: What do you hope people take away and what do you hope they really think about when they read And Then She Fell.

Elliott: Well, when I started to write the book, I was writing it about what I had perceived as my mother’s experience with mania and psychosis … And as I was researching for the book, before I sat down to fully write it, I also had a manic and psychotic episode. 

When you’re inside of psychosis, you can understand what’s happening around you. It’s just like the psychosis is like a transparent layer that’s over the top. So you can see both things happening simultaneously and understand them. But also what’s happening with your mania and psychosis makes sense when you understand where it’s coming from. But people on the outside don’t have that knowledge, and so they think it makes no sense. But to you, there is an interior logic. 

So having that knowledge, I was able to kind of better understand Alice and what she was going through. And having come out of what was, for me my biggest fear, which was inheriting my mother’s illness, I was like, when you come out of that, you don’t know when you’re going to have another episode. You don’t know if your life is going to have meaning, if you’re going to be OK with what happens. 

And so for me, it was important to write for Alice what I had wanted someone to say to me, which is that you still have meaning. Your life still has meaning. You’re still valuable despite the fact that the world is telling you you’re not. 

And so all of that really kind of went into the book. I hope that when people read it, they understand better what it’s like to be inside that experience and what it’s like to be perceived by people who don’t understand that experience.

Norris: Was it therapeutic for you to get it on the page?

Elliott: I think so. I think it was different from my own experience, what I wanted for Alice. I hope that maybe reading this, other people who have people in their lives who’ve experienced this, may understand better how to give people what they need to be able to feel comfortable coming out of that and feel like they’re still valuable.

Norris: What’s next for you?

Elliott: Right now I’m working on another novel. It’s coming kind of slow, but it’s, well, I’m hoping it comes faster, but it’s basically a novel that’s kind of about toxic female friendship, spirituality, humans, you know, legacy and belief. So it’s fun.

Elliott will be appearing at the Riverside Reading Festival at the Walter Williams Amphitheatre in Lyons Park in Paris, Ont., on June 29.

LISTEN | Mohawk author Alicia Elliott on her book And Then She Fell:

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