Celeste Ng

Celeste Ng (born July 30, 1980, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is an American writer who authored several best-selling novels, including Everything I Never Told You (2014) and Little Fires Everywhere (2017). Her work often includes elements of mystery, family drama, and social commentary.

Ng was born to parents who emigrated from Hong Kong in the 1960s. Both were scientists, and, when Ng was about 10 years old, they moved the family from Pittsburgh to Shaker Heights, Ohio, for new jobs. Her father joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a physicist, and her mother became a chemist at Cleveland State University. Ng spent her youth writing plays, poems, and stories. In high school she had a play produced at the Dobama Theatre in Cleveland Heights, and she served as a member of the school’s Student Group on Race Relations, in which she held discussions at local elementary schools on subjects such as discrimination and stereotyping. Ng studied English at Harvard University and graduated in 2002. She subsequently enrolled in the creative writing program at the University of Michigan and earned an M.F.A. in 2006.

After graduating, Ng worked briefly at a tech startup and freelanced as a copy editor while submitting stories to literary magazines and working on a novel. Her breakout piece, the short story “Girls, at Play,” was rejected some 17 times before it was published in Bellevue Literary Review in 2010 and received a Pushcart Prize in 2012. Two years later Ng published her first novel, Everything I Never Told You. Set in a fictional Ohio town in the 1970s, the story centres on a Chinese American family and the sudden death of their eldest daughter. The novel explores themes of grief, anti-Asian racism, and family ties. Upon its publication Everything I Never Told You garnered enthusiastic reviews and received multiple literary awards. After Amazon picked it as the best book of 2014, its popularity exploded.

Discover the fascinating events that shaped the world, straight from our editors.

SIGN UP

By clicking “Sign Up”, you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Ng followed up that success with a second novel, Little Fires Everywhere. The book begins with a striking image of a house aflame and then rewinds to examine the relationship between two families: the Richardsons, an affluent white family, and the Warrens, a mother and daughter with a mysterious past. Interlocking subplots converge in a broader discussion of how privilege factors into motherhood. The novel proved to be another hit, and a television adaptation—produced by Ng and actors Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon, among others—was released in 2020. Ng’s third novel, Our Missing Hearts (2022), was also well received by critics. It reflects contemporary social issues in its dystopian vision of an America where the government censors school curricula, books, and other media it deems unpatriotic.

In addition to her novels, Ng authored a number of short stories and essays, which appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, and the Kenyon Review. She was the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (2016) and the Guggenheim Foundation (2020). Outside her writing, Ng cultivated an active social media presence, sharing details of her personal life and advocating for social justice causes. According to Ng, most of the anti-Asian racism she describes in her novels is drawn from her own personal experience. She leveraged her platform in order to combat bigotry; after the election of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump, Ng popularized a Twitter campaign called #SmallActs to inspire support for marginalized groups. In 2020 she partnered with the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books to launch grants for adults from diverse backgrounds interested in publishing careers.