Loyola Alum’s Novel Adapted for Film by Director Bong Joon-ho and Returns to Read
Loyola Alum Ed Ashton is the author of the novels Three Days in April (HarperCollins, 2015), The End of Ordinary (HarperCollins, 2017), and Mickey7 (St. Martin's Press, 2022). He returned to Loyola on Friday, March 25th to give a reading and talk about his writing life, sponsored by the Modern Masters Reading Series with a generous grant from the Center for the Humanities. Ashton read a section from Mickey7, a novel currently being adapted for film by director Bong Joon-ho and Plan B Entertainment, with Robert Pattinson set to star as the titular Mickey Barnes.
During the talk, Ashton shared advice and anecdotal stories about publishing, writing
sci-fi, and the tenacity and hard work required. He also showed a power point that
included the first short story he turned in as a student many years ago in Professor
Karen Fish's Introduction to Poetry and Fiction class, marked with a C++. At the conclusion
of the event, students bought books and waited in line for an autograph. Allie Lijewski
’22, "found it deeply inspiring."
Ashton graduated from Loyola in 1991 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. In addition,
during his time at Loyola, he took every creative writing course on offer as well
as two semesters of Independent Study with Professor Fish. In the summer of 1989,
he received a fellowship from the Center for the Humanities, which supported the creation
of the novella September Dogs. He was also a four-year member of the men's varsity swim team and a teammate of
current Loyola head coach Brian Loeffler, serving as a team captain in 1990. He currently
serves as a scientific lead for Philips, where he studies new therapeutic approaches
in cancer and neurological diseases.