alchemy day 🔥: 20% off yearly subs
I'm happy to let you know...
Hi loves,
If you’ve been considering purchasing a yearly subscription to The Unexpected Shape, this week is the time to do it! It’s 20% off—$57 instead of $70 per year, and I promise to make that year worth your while.
The Unexpected Shape is a Substack Featured newsletter, podcast, and community for thoughtful softies, hosted by New York Times-bestselling and award-winning author Esmé Weijun Wang. Every week, I send weekly inspiration for ambitious people living with limitations such as chronic illness, caretaking responsibilities, and/or disability.
“This Substack is like a safe space full of grace and gentleness. Esmé provides so many wonderful resources for writers. She focuses on supporting those living with limitations and chronic conditions, which can easily become discouraging and overwhelming in a fast-paced world. Esmé advises and guides with a nurturing hand that also challenges (see You Don’t Have to Write Everyday to Be a Writer and Everyday Creativity: Small Actions with Big Impact). She also writes poignant essays that make my heart twinge.” —Tiffany Chu, Fellowship of the Inklings
You’ll receive access to occasional subscriber-only posts if you're a paid subscriber. You’ll also get to participate in our Fireside Chats (online chats about things like matters of being a working writer, creativity, and living with limitations, including the occasional special guest) and the comments section. It’s a steal this week for 20% off the regular price, and you’ll be supporting my work as a writer by subscribing.
About Me ❤️
I’m a writer, teacher, and speaker. My first book, The Border of Paradise, is a novel that garnered me a spot in Granta’s one-a-decade list of twenty Best of Young American Novelists. My second book, The Collected Schizophrenias, is a New York Times-bestselling essay collection, as well as an award-winner of accolades such as the Whiting Award, the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, and the Northern California Book Award for Nonfiction. I’m currently working on an epic novel about a queer, chronically ill woman who inherits a haunted luxury hotel. I’m the founder of The Unexpected Shape Writing Academy, an online writing school that includes a full curriculum and guest lectures by brilliant folks such as Leslie Jamison, Eula Biss, Hanif Abdurraqib, and Suleika Jaouad. I live with multiple chronic illnesses, my husband (who is recovering from cancer), and a small dog named Daphne. I’m also on Instagram @esmewwang.
Readers say this about me… ✏️
“[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)
“The Border of Paradise is shaped by darkness and the kind of delicious story that makes for missed train stops and bedtimes, keeping a reader up late for just one more page of dynamic character-bouncing perspective… It is the author’s stunning introduction to the literary world.”
NEW YORK TIMES
"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 tome. 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.
Whether you decide to subscribe or not, thank you for being here. I’m grateful.
Esme, unfortunately I can’t take advantage of this generous offer for now because I’m struggling at the moment. But, I hope that this will change and I’ll be able to support your writing financially. In the meanwhile, just wanted to encourage you by saying that I love your writing and that I’ll be happy to share!