Blue Heron, a local Winona coffee shop, hosted Professor Beth Oness as a speaker in their Laureate Writer Series on Oct. 8, 2025. Community members as well as students showed up to listen to Oness read an excerpt from her book and talk about what it was like to write it.
Oness read her short story that takes place in Winona in 2003 when the United States and its allies invaded Iraq. Her story follows a police officer whose son is off fighting in Iraq, and whose daughter butts heads with him politically. She says that the themes of this story are still applicable today, which is why she chose this part to read.
“You know, it’s funny—I tell people sometimes that you don’t need to research things. Write them, and then you check the reality of it. But sometimes, you know, life helps you with the reality of it too,” Oness said. While the characters in her story were ultimately made up from her imagination, some aspects of her story were inspired by real life. Her story is a combination of real events that really happened to her and figments of her mind she thought would mesh together well to make a powerful story. Another aspect of her story that was drawn from real life was how at the end of her story, the main characters are able to watch the invasion of Iraq on the news on television.
“We know the media has always been flawed to a degree, but there was, you know, at least some feeling that what you were getting was real back in 2003. And I’m sad to say, the detail at the end of this story is true— I remember literally sitting in my basement on Wabasha Street and watching the beginning of the war. And you couldn’t see anything, it was dark, because we were starting to bomb them at night. But it was devastating to me,” Oness said. Watching the beginning of the war on television is part of what inspired her to write her story about how war is not a black and white, right or wrong concept; there are a lot of gray areas, and people often do not stand entirely on one side of an issue.
One attendee was third year writing major Kaylee Nickisch. “I’ve been coming to these events for a few months, just because I’m a writing major…But Dr. Oness is my professor, so I decided that I should come and support her,” Nickisch said. “I really liked when she answered questions at the end and talked about the inspirations for her book— how you take from life and use that when you’re writing, how it comes a little bit at a time.”
Another attending student was third-year psychology major Jamie Lezala. “I like how her story makes you, first of all, think in general—but also think about different perspectives and people. It made me think when she talked about how we’ve also had this kind of same moment in history so many times,” Lezala says. She found it interesting to learn about the parallels between the invasion of Iraq and modern-day political events.
Beth Oness’s story engages the audience at Blue Heron and beyond. Her detailed and purposeful prose captivated those in the audience and made them think about different perspectives and events that can apply to our lives today.
