Award-winning writer. Friend of ambitious people living with limitations.

My name is Esmé (pronounced EZ-may). I’m a writer. My debut novel, The Border of Paradise, has received accolades and kind words from places such as LitHub, NPR Books, and the Chicago Review of Books; I was selected by Granta for their once-a-decade Best of Young American Novelists list of 21 authors under 40; in 2018 I received the prestigious Whiting Award. I write essays that have been published in the Believer, Catapult, The New Inquiry, Lenny, Hazlitt, and Salon, and am working on a collection of essays about schizophrenia for Graywolf Press, which is the result of having won the 2016 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. I write short stories, one of which was selected for Best American Short Stories 2018. And I create work here that I hope will help you on your creative journey, including a workbook-and-audio program about creating from one’s obsessions and themes (find that in the Shop).

This website is the place to be if you want to know more about my literary life—links to pieces I’ve published, information about my novel and forthcoming essay collection, dates for forthcoming literary events, press clips, and so forth. Dig in.

But… you can also find me at The Unexpected Shape, where I provide resources for ambitious people living with limitations to build resilience, excellence, and legacy. I offer a free series of emails called Encouragement Notes, as well as entry into a supportive, thriving Facebook group made up of fascinating and resilient people of all sorts. A popular workshop has become a short, sweet, and effective email course, A**-Kicking with Limitations. My signature online course, Rawness of Remembering, is a much-loved program that teaches the skills needed for restorative journaling through difficult times.

Hop on over to The Unexpected Shape, or stay a while here. Do both! Either way: welcome.

 

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P.S. To find links to articles about me and podcasts I’ve been on, as well as media-ready photographs and contact information, please visit the Press page.

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I’d love to stay in touch with you.

For from-the-heart letters about life, resilience, and creativity, sign up for With Love & Squalor. Each letter also contains links to excellent writing from around the web, a collection of Five [Extraordinary] Words, and occasional discounts and previews of upcoming works and creations. Signing up will also nab you the Productivity Journaling with Limitations e-book, a nifty tool to help you dive into analogue planning while living with limitations.

Instagram

  • ‘Tis I, the Queen of Wands. #blockshoptextiles #queenofwands
  • For a few years now we’ve been having a holiday party before people leave for the end of the year, and now I look forward to it; yesterday I felt well enough to hug and love upon friends from all sorts of areas of my life. Here is @jasminepics, bestselling romance author extraordinaire (who had TWO BOOKS COME OUT THIS YEAR, can you IMAGINE), holding @lkoturner’s chub of a darling @chancetheturner. & it felt like such a fortunate occasion, & one with pickled okra & Harbison cheese & @lmcintire’s much-heralded rugelach.
  • My top nine photos of the year (as dictated by the number of Likes from y’all): it was a year devoted to wrapping up The Collected Schizophrenias, which went through its final edits, fact-checking, copy edits, proofreading, etc., and finally received a cover; it was a year in which I was in the Best American Short Stories 2018; a year in which I inadvertently-but-intentionally screamed LOOK AT ME through new media photos, a feature in Poets & Writers Magazine, & a completely revamped website (soon to launch). ⠀ ⠀ It was also a year in which C and I continued to love one another, seventeen years into our relationship; a year in which I won a Whiting Award, the ceremony at which Toni Morrison was meant to give the address (but could not due to inclement weather).⠀ ⠀ Finally, it was a year that felt like it lasted a hundred million years, even though nothing personally catastrophic occurred in the grand scheme of things, but I still remind myself that it is okay to have found 2018 difficult, to need time to sort through things, to need therapy, to be a bit a bit of a gloppy mess. ⠀ ⠀ I’m ready to leave 2018 behind, & to call in 2019. Bring in the new year. 🎉 ⠀ (If you’re interested, you can grab your own top nine image grid at http://www.topnine.co)⠀ ⠀
  • I am finding my way into the new novel, & it is such a pleasure; so far its only 11k words or so, but I’m riding the momentum of it, & perhaps being an author is truly who I am now. Perhaps (perhaps?) it is who I have always been. ⠀ ⠀ This month and the next month are the calm before the new book comes out, and then I’ll be traveling around the country, meeting people & reading aloud & pushing my body to its limits, hoping that I can stay in one piece enough to do the things I’ve promised. It’s tremendously exciting and wildly terrifying. There are things that I know—exciting things that I can’t share yet—and things that I don’t know, such as whether I’ll have a New York Times book review. Emails about the book from people who’ve read advance copies are dribbling into my inbox, & they make me want to weep with joy. I want to hire a virtual assistant for a few hours a month, but don’t know where to look (if you have the chops & the gumption, please do slide into my DMs). ⠀ ⠀ I had a flare this past week after not having a flare for months. & so I’m behind on a lot of things. I hate that these flares are so unpredictable and so awful: at the same time, I have accepted them as a part of my life. ⠀ ⠀ ALSO: my redesigned website is on the verge of being finished. When it goes up, A**-Kicking with Limitations, my short-and-sweet email course, will be GONE FOREVER. This is your last chance to grab it. Link is bit.ly/akwl-class or in profile.
  • I’ve read Poets & Writers for—gosh, I don’t know how long. I remember obsessively checking the PW bulletin boards when I was applying to MFA programs, back when I was still working at the mood & anxiety disorders brain imaging lab and the bipolar lab at Stanford; I say that to be featured in the magazine itself is a dream come true, but to be honest, I didn’t even know that I could dream it. And here I am with my best girl, my Daphne, photographed by the brilliant @jacquelyntierney in my home, in the new issue, alongside such brilliant, brilliant writers such as @nifmuhammad & @morganapple0 & Yiyun Li & so many more. It’s really something. & thank you, @poetswritersinc, for thinking of me. I’m flabbergasted. ⠀ ⠀ #encouragerssociety #poetsandwriters #esmeweijunwang #jacquelyntierney
  • (Photo from @exitlessblue) Want to support me & my work? Interested in learning ways to journal through difficult times that I’ve honed through years of crisis & trauma? Want to take advantage of the biggest sale of the year, to gift to yourself or someone else (to gift, DM me)? esmewang.com/rawness, coupon code JOURNALPOWER (link in profile)
  • I am so stoked. I haven’t seen the physical copy yet, but rumor is that there’s a big photo that @jacquelyntierney took inside of Daphne & me! & goodness, what BONKERS GENIUS COMPANY to be in!
  • (📷: @camilemesserley) Last night, at the @KadistKadist museum/gallery, I read the entirety of the essay “Perdition Days” from The Collected Schizophrenias at an event (named after the book) co-organized with @triple_canopy. The event included pieces of art themed after illness and the body, as well as a screening of Barbara Hammer’s “Sanctus” on 16 mm and a conversation between Corrine Fitzpatrick and myself after my reading. The reading and conversation was live-streamed and recorded, and will be made available after it is made captioned. Thank you so much to Jordan, Corrine, Triple Canopy, and Kadist; thank you to everyone who came.
  • Our tree is up. We are debating over whether there’s enough tinsel—we use old-fashioned tinsel, the kind with lead in it that isn’t made anymore (the Pawlowskis use it in The Border of Paradise!), & we‘ve decided that we shall reevaluate when it’s night-time, though my father-in-law has cheekily said over text that “there is never enough tinsel, & is there such a thing as too much?”

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