What You’ll Find Inside
In each issue, you’ll explore:
Thought-provoking essays on resilience and creativity
Original artwork
Poetry and reflections for self-discovery
Unique prompts to inspire your writing and journaling
alongside Esmé and celebrated guest contributors, such as:
R.F. Kuang, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface
Jenny Odell, New York Times bestselling author of How to Do Nothing
Exclusive Benefits for Paid Subscribers
Esmé’s writing is made possible by her students and paid subscribers. By becoming a paid member, you’re supporting her work and helping bring more meaningful art into the world.
As thanks, paid subscribers receive:
A monthly Fireside Chat with Esme - Enjoy these beloved, interactive Zoom sessions on creativity, often featuring special guests
Plus, enjoy an expanding library of curated resources, including:
E-books with creative prompts for journaling and self-discovery
Guides for writing with chronic illness and during challenging times
Desktop wallpapers to inspire you daily
The Very Best Notion Hub for Writers 🔥
(Estimated Value: $490)
About Esmé Weijun Wang
Pronounced EZ-may
Esmé Weijun Wang is a New York Times bestselling author, award-winning mental health advocate, and sought-after speaker whose work shines a light on resilience amid life’s limitations.
She is the author of The Collected Schizophrenias (2019), a collection of essays exploring life with chronic illness and mental health challenges, and The Border of Paradise (2016), a novel that NPR and Electric Literature named one of the year’s best. Selected for Granta’s prestigious Best of Young American Novelists list, Esmé’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and NPR, and she has shared her story on platforms like the Today Show and CBC.
Living with chronic and mental illness herself, Esmé dedicates her work to ambitious writers and creatives navigating their own limitations. She speaks internationally to reduce stigma and foster open conversations around mental health, ambition, chronic illness, and disability.
Esmé provides her writing students with tools to build resilience, find purpose, and share their voices within the literary canon.
What Readers Are Saying
"Esmé's newsletter is filled with a gentleness that I don't normally find with other newsletters. Her ability to stay candid while also finding a way to utilize language in such a fascinating way is amazing to me. If you've ever heard Esmé speak, you'd also find that she maintains the same gentleness with her writing. I will never unsubscribe."
—NATASHA B.
“I freakin’ LOVE your newsletter. Well done.”
—JUSTINE T
“[Wang’s] elegant essays are strongest at their most personal — when she writes, with clinical precision, about what it feels like to believe that she’s dead, or to slip the boundary between our world and a sci-fi movie on TV — but they also confront major questions about psychiatric care with meticulous even-handedness.”
—THE WASHINGTON POST
“[The Collected Schizophrenias is] resoundingly intelligent, often unexpectedly funny, questioning, fearless and peerless, as Wang makes for brilliant company on 13 difficult walks through largely uncharted territory.”
—LOS ANGELES TIMES
“Wang’s prose is beautiful and restrained, and her generous, precise characterization makes every perspective feel organic and utterly real in the face of increasingly theatrical circumstances. The result — the story of an American family stretched and manipulated into impossible shapes — is an extraordinary literary and gothic novel of the highest order.”
—CARMEN MARIA MACHADO (NPR BOOKS)
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