Before my son was even born, he already had two shelves of books.
— Celeste Ng
Spend enough time wrangling a toddler, and you get good at being kind but firm. Like your child, you must be doggedly single-minded when it matters.
In 2011, I didn't read a single book.
Now that I have a child of my own, I'm in awe of - and deeply grateful for - the time my parents spent in taking me to bookstores.
Whenever I travel, I seem to get sick - it's probably inevitable when you're on a plane every single day.
I play music on my phone to fall asleep when I'm on the road and as an alarm clock to wake me up, so I need it nearby - but there are never outlets by the bed in hotels!
Gore isn't required for a good story, but adversity is.
If someone were to call me 'the next Amy Tan,' it would not be because - or not primarily because - we have similar themes or subjects or styles. Let's be honest: it would be because we are both Chinese American.
What's the best way to ensure a supply of good books in the future? Support up-and-coming writers now.
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.
Reading feeds writing: it presents you with new ideas to engage with.
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.
There's a great joy in writing about a place you know very well, but there's also a lot of responsibility in trying to be accurate. It's a lot like writing about a relative: you can see both their strengths and their shortcomings, and even as you want to be honest, you want people to see the good that's there as well.
Local politics is just as important as national - and often easier to influence.
As the Trump administration takes office - and we see acts of racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination around the country - ask yourself, 'What's important to me? What do I care about? What have I benefitted from that I want to pay forward?' Then look for ways to spread help and hope.
Of course, as a kid, I had no idea what was practical: I wanted to be a paleontologist, then an astronaut.
I moved to Shaker Heights from Pittsburgh, PA, just before I turned 10.
My husband's parents were both English teachers for decades.
As a historically voracious reader - pre-baby, I averaged a book every week or two, and when I was a kid, I'd routinely read a book a day - I never understood how some people could not read. When I heard people say they didn't have time to read, in my head, I simultaneously pitied and ridiculed them: there was always time to read.
It's so easy, as a writer, to get stuck in your own head, to live in the little worlds you create. To forget that there are people out there reading your work, people who may be deeply affected by what you do, that you are writing not just for yourself, but for them.
My parents used books as bribes: if I got straight A's on my report card, they would buy me one book. This was completely unnecessary, as I always got A's, and they bought me books all the time anyway, and we all knew it.
I lose pens a lot, so I don't use fancy ones.
Narratively speaking, innocent misunderstandings are disappointing. Arbitrary events are also disappointing. The stories that really grab our attention involve not accidents but people doing things on purpose - to get things they desperately want.
Let's stop reflexively comparing Chinese writers to Chinese writers, Indian writers to Indian writers, black writers to black writers. Let's focus on the writing itself: the characters, the language, the narrative style.
Somewhere in the Commandments of Reviewing must be written, 'Thou shalt not compare Asians to non-Asians.'
Every single day, authors read at bookstores and libraries - and coffeeshops and bars - all over the country. And these readings are amazing: you get to hear the book in the author's own voice, ask questions, and meet the writer. For free.
Buying new books supports the writer by providing both a royalty and an audience; a writer whose book sells well has a better chance of selling another.
My parents did give me a lot of books - biographies of Marie Curie - and I did read them, because I was interested.
I am a first-generation Chinese-American; my husband is white. We have a little boy, so I think a lot about what it's like when people from different cultures and backgrounds start families, and how the world sees them. Most of my friends are in interracial relationships, and I just wonder what the world is going to look like for their children.
For me, any story I tackle begins with the human relationships and not the plot.
If you see harassment happening, speak up. Being harassed is terrible; having bystanders pretend they don't notice is infinitely worse.
It's easy to feel helpless - like you can't fight the tide. But remember: small actions can have a huge impact, and one person like you can inspire others to action.
I don't think I know a single person who's a minority who hasn't experienced some form of discrimination at one time or another.
Short of the dishonest, the illegal, and the cruel, there's only one thing my son could do that would really disappoint me: not liking reading.
Spend too much time alone with your own words, and your writing grows anemic, in dire need of a transfusion.
I resisted Twitter for a long time. To me, it was synonymous with networking, which in my mind means unceasing self-promotion and superficial small-talk with strangers. A little like wading into a river with a raging current - and I'm a terrible swimmer.
The first bookstore I loved wasn't a little independent gem nestled in a neighborhood: it was a modest Waldenbooks in our local shopping mall.
I keep a writer's notebook and also put all my daily schedules and to-do lists in it.
Stories work better when not everyone gets what they want.
Comparing Asian writers mainly to other Asian writers implies that we're all telling the same story - a disappointingly reductive view.
I'm ashamed to admit that I very seldom read poetry, even though many of my friends are poets.
A good poem is an amazing thing: a perfectly distilled, articulate moment. It opens you up - sometimes slowly, like the blooming of a flower, and sometimes with a quick knife-slice.
I am not a contest-enterer by nature. But contests - and their entry fees - are often the main way literary journals raise money to, you know, publish their issues. So entering contests helps support the journal, which also helps support the writers they publish.
My parents came to America in the late 1960s because my father studied for a Ph.D. in Indiana. My mother joined him later. We had ancestors who came over at the turn of the century. One worked in a laundry, as is typical of Chinese-American immigrants.
I don't think of myself as a mystery or thriller writer, honestly. I am in awe of mystery writers and don't think I have what it takes to write such a book.
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.
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.
I was fortunate to have many teachers who encouraged me - one of the first was Dianne Derrick, my 5th grade teacher at Woodbury Elementary. She challenged us to write creatively and praised my work, but most importantly, she treated writing like it was important.
