Today, we hear from Whitney Scharer and Celeste Ng about their friendship, how they’ve supported each other through the years as writers, the work they do in their communities to support other writers and their careers, and how they plan to keep working in the new year. Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform. To find Ng’s and Scharer’s latest books as well as many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page. Excited about Whitney and Sonya’s new conference? Give them feedback here: https://0c9d64fvmv6.typeform.com/to/EX9NG3ec Want to join our January write-a-thon? Go here for more information: 7amnovelist.substack.com/p/join-our-january-group-write Finally, are you looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page. Whitney Scharer’s first novel, The Age of Light, based on the life of pioneering photographer Lee Miller, was published by Little, Brown (US) and Picador (UK) in February, 2019, and was a Boston Globe and IndieNext bestseller and named one of the best books of 2019 by Parade, Glamour Magazine, Real Simple, Refinery 29, Booklist and Yahoo. Internationally, The Age of Light won Le prix Rive Gauche à Paris, was a coups de couer selection from the American Library in Paris, and has been published in over a dozen other countries. Whitney is the recipient of a 2020 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Fellowship in Fiction, and has been awarded residencies at the Virginia Center for the Arts and Ragdale. She teaches fiction in the Boston area and is a co-founder of the Arlington Author Salon, a quarterly reading series. She lives with her husband and daughter in Arlington, MA, where she is at work on her second novel. Celeste Ng is a novelist who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her first novel, Everything I Never Told You (2014), was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of 2014, Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2014, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen publications. Everything I Never Told You was also the winner of the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the ALA’s Alex Award. It has been translated into over thirty languages and is being adapted for the screen. Her second novel, Little Fires Everywhere (2017) was a #1 New York Times bestseller, a #1 Indie Next bestseller, and Amazon's Best Fiction Book of 2017. It was named a best book of the year by over 25 publications, the winner of the Ohioana Award and the Goodreads Readers Choice Award 2017 in Fiction, and has spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list. Little Fires Everywhere has been published abroad in more than 30 languages and has been adapted as a limited series on Hulu, starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington. Her third novel, Our Missing Hearts, was published in October 2022 in the US, Canada, and the UK, and was an instant New York Times bestseller. Celeste and Whitney together attempting to imitate their author photos! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com
