Suspend Your Disbelief

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Celeste Ng

Editor at Large

Celeste Ng is the author of the novels Everything I Never Told You  (2014) and Little Fires Everywhere (2017). She earned an MFA from the University of Michigan (now the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan), where she won the Hopwood Award. Her fiction and essays have appeared in One Story, TriQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, the Massachusetts Book Award, the American Library Association’s Alex Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


Articles

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More on 20 Under 40 (and one over 80!)

by Celeste Ng

The response to The New Yorker‘s “20 Under 40” list continues. Dan Wickett and Steven Gillis, co-founders of indie, non-profit publisher Dzanc Books, polled “nearly 100 independent publishers, agents, editors, bloggers and reviewers” to compile an alternate “20 to Watch” list—with no age limit: As the staff of The New Yorker went to the sources they knew best when creating their list, and most of the authors they reviewed have either been published in The New Yorker or with major New York publishing houses, so we focused on writers publishing with independent houses. We realize that our list reflects its […]


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Literary Agent: The Cocktail

by Celeste Ng

Just in time for the scorching heat that’s blasting much of the east coast, food blog Umamimart offers a recipe for the “Literary Agent,” a cocktail that’s “a cross between a Whisky Sour and a Hemingway Daiquiri.” But it’s not the kind of agent you think. Says the blog: Writer, adventurer, ravenous drinker, hunter, early supporter-turned-critic of Fidel Castro, exuder of much machismo, and all around man’s man and true bon vivant–these are all the various adjectives and aspects of Ernest Hemingway’s life that most recall when describing the man. But there’s one more aspect that’s lesser known, and has […]


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On Breaking Up With Books

by Celeste Ng

It happens to all of us, despite our best intentions: sometimes, you cannot bring yourself to finish that book. You know which one I’m talking about—the one that’s been sitting on your desk or nightstand or coffee table for months, a bookmark protruding from its pages. You mean to do it. You just… can’t. Over at The Millions, Sonya Chung has a great essay about the books she hasn’t finished—and why. My commitment to finishing books in the past was probably related to the above – fear of ensuing guilt and shame. Failure, too, I suppose. And perhaps at this […]


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Tin House: Buy to Submit; Dzanc: Buy to Donate

by Celeste Ng

Tin House Books has a new way to encourage you to support bookstores. GalleyCat reports: Between August 1 and November 30, 2010, Tin House Books will accept unsolicited manuscripts with one special condition–the submission must include a receipt that proves the author has purchased a book at a bookstore. Any manuscript sent without a receipt will be returned unread. The new policy is part of Tin House’s “Buy a Book, Save a Bookstore” campaign. The Tin House Books website notes: Writers who cannot afford to buy a book or cannot get to an actual bookstore are encouraged to explain why […]


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"To travel paths that were unknown to me. To unlock new ideas to me. To be told a story. To entertain myself."

by Celeste Ng

Why do people read fiction? That’s what one user asked recently on Metafilter, a popular community weblog: I don’t understand human behavior. Why do people read and watch fiction books and dramas? It seems like a waste of time. The question garnered over 50 responses—most of which were elegant and eloquent explanations of the value of fiction: from Ash3000: To know that a character is like us, and their inner life includes the same cringing that ours does – or, conversely, to know that they are utterly free of our thinking habits – provides an avenue wherein we can compare […]


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1. Write novel. 2. ??? 3. PROFIT!

by Celeste Ng

For many aspiring writers, that’s the big question: How do you get from #1 to #3? No one can guarantee that you’ll actually profit, of course, but certain steps make it much much much more likely that your work will get out there and find an audience. Though I’m certainly no expert, I’ve been asked many times by students and friends-of-friends how to revise the manuscript, how to find an agent, how to find a publisher. Now Mediabistro—an expert if ever there was one—offers a new series of how-to videos, answering just those questions. Their series “I Just Wrote A […]


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Typewriter, meet computer.

by Celeste Ng

At last, a middle ground between those who love their computers and those who prefer typewriters. Sort of. Artist Jack Zyklin has found a way to connect a typewriter to a computer: The USBTypewriter is a new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence. Lovers of the look, feel, and quality of old fashioned manual typewriters can now use them as keyboards for any USB-capable computer, such as a PC, Mac, or even iPad! For the curious, Zyklin’s website offers a demo video and a schematic of how it works. And for those wanting to take the plunge, you […]


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Fact Checking Fiction?

by Celeste Ng

Like many writers, I often get caught up in details. While working on my novel, I found myself checking the phases of the moon for a particular night, the temperature and weather for a particular day, whether Post-It Notes had been invented by 1977 (no), and when those annoying fasten-seat-belt warning lights became standard in cars (earlier than you’d think). Yes, fiction is made up—but sometimes, if I find myself setting an event in a particular place at a particular time, I feel obligated to get the facts right. Now the Canadian literary journal Taddle Creek is taking fact-checking to […]


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Fighting (Writerly) Fatigue

by Celeste Ng

Maybe it’s summer—too sunny out to work inside!—or maybe it’s just the 80º+ weather in Boston, but I’ve been feeling a little… tired. Just in time, Paperback Writer has a post on how to combat fatigue—physical, mental, and, most importantly for writers, creative: Creating on demand, always being on, always being told we’re not good enough, we’re not successful enough, and we’re not doing enough. I’ve been working this gig for twelve years now and I can tell you this much: the pressure never ends. I understand the siren song of all the hype that’s attached to things like social […]




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