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Celeste Ng

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Celeste Ng
BornUnited States
OccupationNovelist, writer
Alma materHarvard University
University of Michigan
GenreFiction
Website
www.celesteng.com

Celeste Ng (Chinese Name: 伍綺詩) is an American writer and novelist.[1][2][3] She has released many short stories that have been published in a variety of literary journals.[4] Ng's first novel, Everything I Never Told You, was released on June 26, 2014 and has won many awards such as Amazon Book of the year[1] as wells as praise from critics. Ng's short story Girls at Play won a Pushcart Prize in 2012.

Early life and education

Celeste Ng was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[1] Celeste Ng's parents moved from Hong Kong, China in the late 60's.[1] Her father, who passed away in 2004, was a physicist at NASA in the John H Glenn Research Center (formally known as the NASA Lewis Research Center).[3] Celeste’s mother was a chemist who taught at Cleveland State University.[3]

When Ng was ten she moved from Pittsburgh to Shaker Heights, Ohio [3] with her parents and sister (who is now an engineer).[5] She attended the schools in the Shaker Heights City School District, from Woodbury elementary all the way up to Shaker Heights High School.[3] While attending Shaker Heights High school, Ng was involved with the student group on race relations for three years as well as being a co-editor of the schools literary magazine, Semanteme.[3] She graduated from high school in 1998.

After graduating high school, Ng went on to study English at Harvard. She then attended graduate school at University of Michigan where she earned her Master of Fine Arts in writing, now the Helen Zell Writers’ Program. While attending the University of Michigan, Ng won the Hopwood Award for her short story, What Passes Over.[3][6]

Ng now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and son.[3] While on a book tour for Everything I Never Told You, Ng stated that her favorite book when she was little was Harriet the Spy.[5] Currently her favorite book is The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.[3]

Career

Ng was a recipient of the Pushcart Prize in 2012 for her story Girls, At Play.[7] Ng's fiction has appeared in One Story, TriQuarterly, Subtropics, and more. Her essays have appeared in Kenyon Review Online, The Millions, and elsewhere. Ng taught writing at the University of Michigan, and she's also taught at Grub Street in Boston.[8] Ng also was an editor of blogs at the website Fiction Writers Review for three years.[8]

Her debut novel, Everything I Never Told You: A Novel, is a literary thriller that focuses on an American family in 1970s Ohio.[9][10] The novel had four drafts and one revision before completion which took 6 years. While working on her first novel Celeste has stated that she pulled from her own experiences of racism as well as her family and friends.[11] The book, which the Los Angeles Times described as an "excellent first novel about family, love, and ambition," won Amazon book of the year in 2014.[1][12] Everything I Never Told You has also translated into 15 languages.[4]

Ng is working on her second novel which is to be set in Shaker Heights, Ohio and will be about two families one being a mother and daughter that will challenge the boundaries in the town.[5][11]

Bibliography

  • Everything I Never Told You: A Novel. Penguin Press. 2014. ISBN 159420571X.
  • GIRLS, AT PLAY - PUSHCART PRIZE 2012 ANTHOLOGY (XXXVI 2012 ed.). 2012. ISBN 978-1888889635. [4]

References