Suspend Your Disbelief

Contributor Types

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

Shop Talk |

Jim Crace's Last Book

by Celeste Ng

We love our debut novels here at Fiction Writers Review. As a site devoted to emerging writers, we love calling attention to the start of a literary career and the promise of a new voice. But here is some news of a very different sort: recently, veteran author Jim Crace made news by announcing that his next novel will be his last. The Independent reports: “Writing careers are short,” [Crace] expands. “For every 100 writers, 99 never get published. Of those who do, only one in every hundred gets a career out of it, so I count myself as immensely […]


Shop Talk |

Reading Rainbow Resurrected?

by Celeste Ng

Six months ago, we here at FWR (and many others) mourned the end of long-running PBS show Reading Rainbow. Now, rumor has it that Reading Rainbow may make a comeback. Host LeVar Burton recently tweeted: You heard it here first… Reading Rainbow 2.0 is in the works! Stay tuned for more info. But, you don’t have to… If you can complete that sentence, you’re probably one of the millions who can’t wait to see this show—which encouraged kids to love books and reading—back on the air. No further details have been released yet, but we can hope, right? Via.


Shop Talk |

2010 Asian American Short Story Contest–DEADLINE EXTENDED

by Celeste Ng

Hyphen Editor Neelanjana Banerjee reports that due to excellent response to the 2010 Asian American Short Story Contest, the contest deadline has been extended to April 12, 2010. As a reminder, the contest is open to all writers of Asian descent living in the United States and Canada, and there is no required theme. This year’s judges are Alexander Chee and Jaed Coffin. Ten finalists will receive a one-year subscription to Hyphen and a one-year membership to Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and one grand prize winner will also receive $1,000 and publication in Hyphen. Read our earlier post about the […]


Reviews |

Long for This World, by Sonya Chung

by Celeste Ng

The cover of Sonya Chung’s debut novel, Long for This World (Scribner, March 2010), shows a young woman gazing out over a wide ocean, raising a camera to her eye. Chung’s main character is a photographer, but that’s not the only reason this cover is so apt. The novel unfolds like a collection of intimate snapshots, telling a story of loss and unexpected renewal.


Shop Talk |

In Defense of Comic Novels, Part II

by Celeste Ng

Recently we discussed a Times article about why comic novels often get overlooked when it comes to literary awards. Over at BlackBook, author and Columbia professor Sam Lipsyte adds his thoughts on the status of funny fiction today: Do you feel that literary fiction is afraid to make people laugh these days? I think there’s a worry that if it’s funny then perhaps there’s something slight about it. That it’s not as important as a deeply researched, earnest, historical novel, or a kind of humorless tale of contemporary life. I think there possibly was a moment in the ‘60s and […]


Shop Talk |

March Madness for Books

by Celeste Ng

So it’s March, which means that if you work in an office, all you probably hear are things like “Northern Iowa upset KU?!” and “Can you believe Cornell is still in this thing?” and “OMG all this is really f*ing up my bracket.” If, like me, you could not care less about college basketball but secretly wish that you, too, could have the thrill of completing a tidy little chart and enjoying some head-to-head competition, The Morning News has a solution: the Tournament of Books. Yes, the very concept of a matchup between books is a little silly—especially when the […]


Shop Talk |

The End of Publishing: The Video

by Celeste Ng

We’ve had book trailers and vooks and now… a video about the end of publishing. (Or is it?) DK (Dorling Kindersley) Books put this clever video together for a sales conference: The Penguin website offers some insight into the creation of the clip: We asked DK to give us a list of facts and statistics about publishing in 2010, and where they see it going in the future, and then our scriptwriter, Jason LaMotte took this information and wove the facts into the current script.


Shop Talk |

President Sends Fan Mail…to Novelist

by Celeste Ng

As if we didn’t already know Obama was the Reader-in-Chief, here’s further proof: recently, President Obama sent a fan letter to author Yann Martel. Galleycat reports: Today novelist Yann Martel posted a piece of fan mail he received from President Barack Obama. The president wrote: “My daughter and I just finished reading Life of Pi together. Both of us agreed we prefer the story with animals. It is a lovely book–an elegant proof of God and the power of storytelling.” Martel’s response? If there was a way of tattooing it on my back, I would. What amazes me is the […]


Shop Talk |

In Defense of Comic Novels

by Celeste Ng

In the art world, comedy seldom gets its dues: if it’s funny, many assume, it can’t also be “real” art. At the Oscars a couple of years back, Will Ferrell, Jack Black, and John C. Reilly lamented the plight of “A Comedian at the Oscars”: “the saddest man of all / Your movies may make millions, but your name they’ll never call.” Something similar happens in literature, Erica Wagner points out in the UK’s Times: Comic novels — let’s call them terrific novels that happen to be funny — tend to fall through the cracks, especially where prizes are concerned. […]


Shop Talk |

Day Jobs of Famous Writers

by Celeste Ng

If you’re reading the FWR blog furtively, hunched in your cubicle over your TPS reports, this post is for you. You are not alone: almost all writers need a day job to support their art. Lapham’s Quarterly reveals the day jobs of some famous writers, such as Charlotte Bronte, Franz Kafka, and William Faulkner in trading-card format. Or quiz your friends: Which novelist helped create the modern London police force? Which novelist made only $1838 per year in today’s dollars? If these writers could turn out masterpieces like As I Lay Dying and In the Penal Colony and the Chronicles […]




Literary Partners