Celeste Ng

I loved growing up in Shaker Heights, and I really miss it. ”

Growing up, I loved looking at the photos in my mother's old Betty Crocker cookbook: the chocolate cakes, the cookie house, even the cheese balls and fondues. ”

My mother wrote a teen column for the South China Morning Post in the 1950s when she was growing up in Hong Kong. Her name was Lily Mark, but she sometimes wrote under her confirmation name, Margaret Mark. That was how she met my father. ”

Every writer needs new material now and then, whether it's traveling to Japan, volunteering at a food bank, learning a new language, or trying a new food. ”

I wanted to write a book about people who have the best intentions and think - really, truly think - that they're doing the right thing. And then they realize that when those ideals come knocking at their windowsill, a lot of times they will suddenly disavow those ideals. ”

In the case of 'Everything I Never Told You,' my goal was to make the experiences of a family that had always felt marginalised feel accessible and understandable even to people who'd never been in that situation. ”

Books by women, people of color, LGBTQ authors, differently abled people, and non-Americans are a great way of broadening horizons and building empathy. ”

My husband really treats my writing like it's a job - and he reminds me of that when I have those low moments where I think I should just quit and become a waitress. ”

The competitions between fiction and nonfiction, short and long, electronic and paper, are not battles in which there can be only one victor. After all, we exist in a world where more kinds of writing than ever are greeted with interest and enthusiasm. ”

I began using the #smallacts hashtag on Twitter shortly after the 2016 election as a way to resist. To resist the intolerance growing in our nation, to resist an upcoming administration that I believe threatens to pull us backward and strip rights from those already marginalized. ”