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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Book Review Bingo

by Celeste Ng

Boston Examiner Michelle Kerns has come up with the perfect way to monitor clichés in book reviews: Book Review Bingo. Just because I’m a sucker for you guys, I’ve taken all the work out of it: you’ll find, below, eight Bingo cards specially designed for the cliché-intolerant among us. I even gave you a freebie — see the middle square? It’s the “Cliché -free” zone. Print them out. Distribute them among your reading fellows. See who can get to Bingo first. Or — depending on which publication you’re reading — who can get a blackout first. Okay, we here at […]


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ESPN Short Fiction Contest

by Celeste Ng

The Millions alerted us to this contest for sports-themed short fiction, sponsored by—of all people—ESPN. Now, I love my Red Sox and my Cavaliers, but I would never call myself a sports girl. So I was skeptical of the whole idea of “sports fiction.” But I recently served on the admissions board for the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, reading applications for waitership positions, and I was surprised to see a number of well-written, compelling, and honestly interesting sports-related stories. The key? They weren’t about sports per se; they were about interesting people who happened to be involved in sports, and […]


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Do the Write Thing for Nashville

by Celeste Ng

You may have missed it between the Times Square Car bomb and the giant uncontrolled oil spill that’s taking over the Gulf Coast. But last week, the Cumberland River flooded much of Nashville, covering the city with over 10 feet of water, closing institutions like the Grand Ole Opry House, and killing more than 25 people. A group of publishing professionals, Do the Write Thing for Nashville, is working to raise money for flood victims by auctioning off signed copies of books, manuscript critiques by agents and editors, writing retreats, and other lit-related swag. So far, the group has raised […]


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Tim O'Brien-arama

by Celeste Ng

The classic The Things They Carried is being re-released in honor of its 20th anniversary, so unsurprisingly, Tim O’Brien keeps popping up in my radar lately. Besides being a powerful writer, O’Brien is also a great teacher, and in his recent interviews he offers useful thoughts for writers of all levels. In this interview for Beyond the Margins (with Grub Street program manager Sonya Larson), O’Brien discusses the writing of The Things They Carried, how being a father changed his writing, and recent literary works by soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan: I have read a number of books and […]


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Book Covers in the eBook Era

by Celeste Ng

Imagine you’ve walked into a bookstore, browsing for something new. Besides an explicit recommendation, how do you decide what to read? If you’re like most people, you reach for a book that looks interesting… based on the cover. Mokoto Rich of the New York Times discusses how the e-book era may prevent us from judging a book by its cover and the ramifications that has for authors: Among other changes heralded by the e-book era, digital editions are bumping book covers off the subway, the coffee table and the beach. That is a loss for publishers and authors, who enjoy […]


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The Case Against Writing Manuals

by Celeste Ng

In The Atlantic‘s 2010 Fiction issue, Richard Bausch makes a powerful argument against writing manuals: Now, I’m not speaking about books dealing with the aesthetics of the task, or with essays about the craft and critical analysis of examples of it—and we have several very fine volumes in that vein (Charles Baxter’s Burning Down the House and John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction come to mind)—no, I’m talking about straight how-to books, most of which claimed to offer shortcut advice, practical instructions on “writing your say the genre,” and even in some cases “secrets” of the novelist’s or story writer’s […]


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Dating Advice as Writing Advice

by Celeste Ng

Over at The Elegant Variation, Marisa Silver guest blogs, drawing some parallels between love and writing: On love: 3. You will never know your partner. 4. You should never know your partner. 5. You will never know how things will end up. On writing: 3. People will ask you what your work means and you will try to explain it to them, but you won’t really be able to explain it even if it sounds like you are saying something intelligent. 4. You should not be able to explain it. There should always be something ineffable and mysterious about it, […]


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Strand Tote Bag Contest

by Celeste Ng

You’ve seen it a million times: that iconic tote bag with The Strand logo on it. Recently, The Strand partnered with the School of Visual Arts, TOON Books, Drawn & Quarterly, and Fantagraphics Books to host a tote bag design contest. Over 800 emerging artists submitted their representations of The Strand Bookstore, and a panel of judges, including Pulitzer Prize–winner Art Spiegelman, selected three winners. Check out a slideshow of all the entries, just the finalists, or the three winners. The image by the grand prize winner, Zak Foster, will be featured on a new tote bag, available in-store and […]


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Amazon Gives $25,000 Grant to Lambda Literary Foundation

by Celeste Ng

You know how in the movies, every super-villain has a sweet side? Like a cat to dote on, or a lovely patch of garden to tend, or a puppy to kiss—in between ordering assassinations or blowing up planets or stages in the Master Plan to Take Over the Universe. Well, Amazon’s got one too, and it goes beyond being sweet: it’s actually doing good. The Lambda Literary Foundation, the country’s leading national nonprofit organization for the LGBT literary community, recently announced that it has received a grant of $25,000 from Amazon.com: The grant will support the Writers’ Retreat for Emerging […]


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Electric Literature's Short Story "Trailer"

by Celeste Ng

Literary journal Electric Literature has put out a wonderfully weird animation based on one sentence from Jenny Offill’s short story “The Tunnel,” from Electric Literature No. 3. It reminds me of a mix between Alice and Wonderland and Monty Python, both whimsical and serious, but take a look for yourself: This video is actually the latest in a series: lots more are available on Electric Literature‘s website. But the videos aren’t just a gimmick; they’re an integral part of the journal’s mission. The editors write: Electric Literature’s mission is to use new media and innovative distribution to return the short […]




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