Renowned author of the novel Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng, visited Sage Hill School to share her own story on Feb. 10. The Sage Center Speaker Series ended its 2026-27 program with Ng speaking to both the freshman class and parents during her evening discussion in the Kazu Fukuda Black Box Theater.

“I was always drawn to storytelling, and I think that part of it was my parents. Even though they weren’t writers, they did love to read,” Ng said.

Growing up in a family of scientists, Celeste Ng stood out as a budding author. Ng felt her upbringing added a unique sense of individualism to her stories that reflected herself within her characters. Because, as a child, Ng found that most of the novels she read contained characters that did not resonate with or represent her.

“Growing up in the 80s and then the 90s, there were not a lot of books about Asian Americans. And I had to give my mom credit, because I think she recognized this much earlier than I was aware of,” Ng said.

From a very young age, Ng had the privilege of options. Her mother selected any novels she could find about Asian American authors, which meant that Ng saw these figures in literature on occasion. However, these characters still were not like her.

From immigrants challenged by culture shock in The Joy Luck Club to stories of those in Japanese internment camps, none of them reflected her Pittsburgh experience. She wanted her books to bridge that gap in storytelling.

However, Ng shares that even though the experiences she read about weren’t necessarily hers, they were still a part of her journey through the literary world and the real one.

“I still connected with Laura Ingalls. The characters didn’t seem to resemble me, but I would feel the kinship with them because of something that they were experiencing. So in that sense, I saw myself a lot,” Ng said.

Because everyone has something in common with each other, you just need to search for it.

As an author, she set out to do both: create stories that represent diversity among youth and cross boundaries of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and human identity. She believes that people can identify with a character even if they do not necessarily look like them.

“Your story is absolutely important,” Ng said. “I’m a firm believer that everyone’s story matters and that if you don’t share those stories, nobody else is going to get to hear them.”