Issue 95: 8 Questions with Eshani Surya

I’ve interviewed some amazing authors in the past, and I’m so excited to announce a new nicoledonut interview series called 8 Questions: sprinkles of an author’s journey from writing through publication. (Of course, this was driven in large part by donut imagery. A huge thank you to the talented Sarah Turbin for designing the accompanying header!)

He says she’s alive and well because when she is sad, she knows to cry. He says she’s alive and well because she knows her body in ways few people ever will. He says she’s alive and well because she is able to sit here with someone who loves her.

Eshani Surya's debut novel, Ravishing, follows two Indian American siblings who become ensnared in the promises of a beauty tech company whose revolutionary face-changing products come at an immense cost. I read this over my honeymoon (more to come on our wedding in a future issue!), ironically at a wellness resort. Surya captures the push and pull of siblings and coming of age dynamics, the weight of grief and cultural alienation, and the lengths to which people go to transform themselves. One thing that stuck out to me was the hard-earned tenderness for the characters, both in how they see each other and themselves.

Eshani and I met at a generative writing workshop a few years ago, and it’s been incredible to see—and now share—her publishing journey. Here’s Eshani on depicting living with chronic illness in her novel, embracing the sticky spots in writing, and interrogating traditional markers of success.

1. What was one thing you really wanted to get right in Ravishing? How did you go about it?

Ravishing speaks to existing with chronic illness, specifically ulcerative colitis (a subset of inflammatory bowel disease). Much of the content around chronic illness comes from my own life, as I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in 2015 when I was in my last year of college. I’ve navigated hospitals, doctor’s offices, and insurance companies for about a decade now. I’ve also had to navigate how chronic illness affects my daily world and how I participate in my most important relationships. So, while the book is clearly fiction, elements of me have certainly made their way into it and made the novel more honest.  

I do want to note, though, on this idea of getting something “right” in writing: the experience of ulcerative colitis can vary person to person. I’ve been part of many online groups related to IBD and have spent time learning about other people’s histories, belief systems around illness, and overall existences. Some of that has crept into the book as well, but not all of it. It’s possible that someone with ulcerative colitis/IBD may read Ravishing and feel that it’s not emblematic of how they move through the world. That feels normal and important to me.

I’ve gotten writing about chronic illness “right” for what it means to me in this era of my life. But a large part of disability justice is understanding that there is no inherent “rightness” to how those of us with illness talk about it, experience it, and navigate it. Instead, we should do our best to amplify a variety of voices. 

2. Writing is a big part of our lives, but it’s not the only part. What else was happening in your life as this book took shape? What did a typical writing day look like for you?

I started writing the book in 2020, during the pandemic. At that time, I had a day job as an academic advisor and coach at a college. We had moved to a remote modality, so I no longer had a commute. That, along with the realities of social distancing, gave me a lot of evening time to focus on a draft. Later, when I received the Mae Fellowship, which came with monetary funding, I left that position and moved into a more flexible work situation, where I worked part-time or contract at multiple places. That allowed me to put more time toward revision. Now, though, I’m back in academic advising and program coordination in university life, so my writing is often occurring in the more limited swaths of time before and after my day job commitments.

In addition to employment and my reading/writing, I also have a robust network of loved ones and a decent slate of other activities to do. Engaging with life outside of writing keeps me grounded in the world as it is, which is a boon for writing sincere characters. I spend time with my husband and our friends and our families. I am on the board for the Philly local non-profit Blue Stoop. I seek out opportunities to support others in our community. And when it comes to hobbies, I appreciate a good video game (I’m working through the 34 point-and-click Nancy Drew computer game titles now), creating or engaging with visual art, trying out new restaurants (Philly has some great ones—a recent favorite was Little Walter’s), baking, and traveling (we’re going to the south of Spain for the holidays this year).

3. Did you have any creative ruts along the way? How did you unstick yourself?

Many, many ruts! One of the worst I remember is getting stuck on how my characters would find out about the scientific secrets of the beauty product the brother has been marketing. I wrote a deus ex machina-type chemist who came into the narrative for a brief moment to info dump and then did nothing else. It wasn’t elegant.

We must embrace getting stuck, though. Sticky spots require a shift in vision. They’re the manuscript telling you that you need to be more open, thoughtful, and creative about what you’re doing craft-wise. Write through them, and they will become less sticky; for example, with the chemist, I left him in and moved forward. As I worked on other parts of the book, I gave myself permission to think, to dream, to imagine. And the more time I gave myself, the more I could brainstorm a variety of possibilities that could shape the book. Eventually, I landed on a possibility that patterned in well with the rest of the book, and was able to go back and make some substantial edits that worked. 

4. What’s an edit that you received that you’ve now carried into your future work?

Roxane Gay edited my novel directly, and as you might imagine, understood the book wholly—which also meant seeing its flaws. One edit she requested was getting more specific about why the brother, Nikhil, makes the choices he does to promote the problematic beauty product.

The character believed he had “radical” reasons to do this promotion, but it wasn’t yet on the page. I wrestled with how best to give him his voice. He needed to speak about his politics and philosophies, but he also needed to feel like a real character moving through space. To accomplish this, I thought about ways to intersect his ideologies with the choices he made/how the plot unfolded, his reactions to his setting, and his ways of interacting with others.

Essentially, I needed to infuse his ideologies so deeply that they became driving forces in his scenes. By doing so, he became a more realized character, as well as one who is more legible and interesting to readers—and I exercised an aspect of character development that I’ll definitely be using in future projects. 

5. What was something that surprised you about the publishing process?

I worked in publishing briefly after college, circa 2015, so I had a surface level sense of how a book moves through the editorial, production, sales, and marketing/publicity stages. I knew things could get held up and that timelines could change. I also knew that nothing is guaranteed in terms of reviews and such. So, I felt semi-prepared.

That being said, a lot has changed in the last decade, particularly in terms of media and social media marketing. For example, I remember when it was very common to write a lot of personal essays about your book. But now, there are fewer outlets for those and they’re much harder to place. 

What was most surprising about the process, though, was just being on the other side of it as the author. I had always assumed that because I had some publishing experience, I would be better about trusting the process and believing everything would turn out as it should. That’s harder than it sounds. Despite being fiction, this book holds so much of me in it in so many ways—especially the parts about chronic illness—and I felt nervous about it going out into the world. Luckily, my team was very aware of how nerve-wracking the debut process can be and was supportive even in my worst worry spells.

In the end, I think being scared was an important thing. I thought about why I was scared of failure, and this has made me interrogate my own relationship to traditional markers of success. In truth, other people’s attention isn’t as affirming as finding joy in making. Understanding that brings me closer to the steadiness of the art, rather than the fleetingness of popularity. 

6. Any acknowledgements (parasocial relationships, music, snacks, hobbies etc.) that you’d like to shout out here that didn’t make it into the published book?

I do need to thank my shower for its service. I, like many people, do my best thinking under running water. And for book revisions I needed to do a lot of thinking, which meant a lot of showers. I should also thank the enormous pan of brownies that I made in September 2024 and gobbled down as my main meals for a few days while I was doing some final developmental edits. That really got me through, to be honest. 

7. Name 3 books or writers more people should read

In no particular order or genre, but each is related to my work:

• Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (very valuable for thinking about communal care)
• The Blue Maiden by Anna Noyes (an atmospheric book about the complexities of women’s relationships to each other)
• Hum by Helen Phillips (for more fiction about changing faces and the dangers of technology)
• Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery by Annie Liontas (vital reading to understand how disability can have a profound effect on so much, but especially our sense of self, our beliefs about our paths forward, and our romantic relationships)

That’s four, but I hope you’ll forgive me for that.

8. What’s a question I should ask the next author?

Ask them to assign their most recent book a drink. Ravishing is the mango matcha that I get from a local coffee pop-up (follow them on Instagram @kafidupeco) that started this year.

The South Asian-inspired pop-up is actually just outside someone’s house in my neighborhood. It’s a passion project for him, and because he doesn’t have professional grade equipment or employees, it takes a long time for the coffee to actually get made. Which is wonderful, because it forces everyone who visits to slow down, let their weekend morning unravel, and observe/interact with their neighbors. Anyone can come sit, even without buying anything, so it’s a lovely monthly third space. Ravishing is really interested in communal care and relationship-making, so I’ve been very excited to visit as often as I can.

The drink itself also signifies the book. The mango juice, which is the same brand my mom used to buy when I was young, gestures at my experiences of being Indian in the US. At the same time, with the way matcha has gone mainstream has often led to either an obsession with being as “authentic”/“traditional” as possible or a divorcing of matcha from its history and cultural significance. Similarly, the characters in my book are trying to figure out what their relationship with their own cultural signifiers are. 

You can find Eshani at her author website and on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky. Check out her upcoming events here! Order Ravishing anywhere books are available, but please shop local when you can.

Creative resources

• From November 21–22, artists and cultural communities across the country will design and develop events for a nationwide wave of creative resistance called Fall of Freedom. Discover events or host your own.
• Cozy Mystery Novels: A Starter Pack
• If you’re participating in National Novel Writing Month, check out First Draft November for check-ins, daily accountability, and story-shaping questions.
• Mason Currey’s advice regarding my favorite Ira Glass quote about if your ambition outstrips your talent: “I guess what I’m trying to say is that you are actually in an excellent position for a writer—if you can let go of the idea of ‘getting better’ and instead let yourself organically and authentically experience what’s happening in your life, what you’re reading and thinking about, and what part of that stew feels like it ought to be expressed—eventually—in a novel or a short story or a poem or an essay.”
• Eshani Surya is teaching a series of no-fee, online classes with Blue Stoop called EMBODY, SPEAK, RELATE, celebrating her novel, Ravishing. Half of the seats are set aside for BIPOC writers and disabled writers, in honor of the book’s characters.

Recent reads & other media

I was extremely locked in for Spooky Season this year. In cozy romances, I read The Kiss Curse by Erin Sterling and A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna. Carrie by Stephen King was my and E’s annual horror book/movie club pick, and both were really phenomenal (we watched the Brian De Palma version).

In spooky movies, I watched Good Boy, Suspiria (1977), Practical Magic, and Interview with the Vampire. Blade and KPop Demon Hunters was a surprisingly good double feature focusing on mixed species slayers. I found Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein to be a relatively faithful adaptation of the book. While there was some heavy-handed dialogue, I thought Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi were great, and I must stan GDT for his dedication to practical effects.

E and I spent the day after our wedding eating a lot of pizza and finishing Andor. It’s as amazing as everyone says it is, and it’s a shame Diego Luna didn’t get nominated for an acting Emmy. We also watched One Battle After Another and Roofman.

With so much more time freed up, I loved being in the zone of reading shorter books in 1-2 days, including Yearbook by Seth Rogen, Audition by Katie Kitamura, and Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier (one of my favorites of the year). Some friends and I did a book club for Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, which has its film adaptation coming out at the end of the month. (We all loved that apple scene, IYKYK.)

Recently read short stories: Two amazing, surreal, and haunting short story collections, Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima and Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

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~ meme myself and i ~

Attempting to catch up while eating croissants. Iced coffee after seven seconds. I want to do everything all at once. Five minutes after I said I was over it. Just two cats having some fun. My number one coping mechanism.