Sheila Heti.

Sheila Heti’s new novel, How Should a Person Be?, is dedicated to Margaux Williamson, a main character who is the best friend of the book’s protagonist—Sheila—and, not exactly by coincidence, is Ms. Heti’s best friend in real life as well. Last night, at a launch party for the book at powerhouse Arena, the real Ms. Heti spoke into a microphone as the real Ms. Williamson sat in the front row.

“When I showed Margaux the first draft of this book,” she said, “I thought she was going to say, like, ‘This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read.’”

How Should a Person Be has the subtitle “a novel from life,” and it consists, in part, of a compilation of fictionalized emails and interview transcripts. Ms. Heti recounted the experience of showing Ms. Williamson her manuscript in real life, a process that is also documented in the novel. “It’s interesting to have characters that tell you that you did the wrong thing,” Ms. Heti said.

In a sweet but earnest voice, Ms. Heti read from the prologue, delivering a meditation on genius, blowjobs and bagels with an aura of seriousness despite frequent laughs from the audience.

A Q&A followed, and audience members seemed determined to flaunt that they’d already read the book; the novel was published in Canada in 2010, but struggled to find an American publisher. One man prefaced his question by asking, “Are you okay?,” noting that the book contains a great deal of suffering and pain.

“I’m okay,” Ms. Heti assured the audience.

When asked whether she plans to keep writing fiction, Ms. Heti said yes with no hesitation. “I don’t have anything against fiction,” she said.

All of the questions were from men until, someone from the audience shouted, “A girl!” The final question came from one of the audience’s female members (she had not yet read the book) who boasted that she had “a good wrap-up question.”

“How should a person be?” she said.

Ms. Heti looked skeptical. “That’s a good wrap-up question?”

“The book is not called, ‘How a Person Should Be,’ it’s called How Should a Person Be?” Ms. Heti said. She explained that, for her, the questioning of this is more important than any answer could be. The inquirer appeared less than satisfied, and Ms. Heti said, somewhat apologetically, “Well, buy the book!” and hastily concluded the reading, stepping away from the microphone to take a long sip of beer out of a red Solo cup.

“Q&As are so mortifying,” one audience member remarked.

Later, The Observer spoke with Ms. Williamson about her role as a character in her best friend’s novel. “It was very, um, educational. Not just reading the book but also talking for so many hours,” Ms. Williamson told us. “It’s painful but I couldn’t imagine my brain without it right now.”

“When you read about the character Margaux in the book, do you feel like you are reading about yourself?” The Observer asked

“I don’t even remember what’s real and what’s not real,” Ms. Williamson said. “I had never heard any of the recordings and then finally I listened to them and it was right out of the book, verbatim. I completely forgot that was real and it’s hilarious, and it was kind of a joy to listen to.”

Ms. Heti mentioned a similar haziness between the novel and her life. “I think about the book more than I think about those years,” she told us.