Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. We are here with the incredible Celeste

in. I've been really, really psyched to have this conversation. Celeste, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

I have read all of your books, Little Fires Everywhere, and your new book are

Missing Hearts, which my son and I read together. And I will tell you Celeste,

it just feels like all of the things that I'm working out in my life or on this

podcast or wherever in my little heart, all the things I'm wrestling with,

whether it's in my family or in my personal life or in my public

self or in activism or in motherhood, you're just always working it out in your latest book,

which makes me know you're always wrestling with something like five years before I am.

Makes me so grateful to you. And each of your books just feels like this,

it's not answers, but just beautiful explorations of these questions in the form of a character's

life and love and struggles and decisions. I saw this teacher say on Twitter the other day that

she was so sick of, of students saying that nonfiction was real and that fiction is fake,

that she now says that nonfiction is learning through information and fiction is learning through

imagination. Oh, I love that. Isn't that great? So your imagination has taught me so much, Celeste.

So thank you for your work in the world. Oh, thank you. That is maybe the nicest thing

that a writer could hear. I write my books always because not because I have answers at all,

but because I'm working through those same questions, like you said. And so to hear that,

you know, that the books reached you and like resonated with things that you're also wrestling with,

that is really the nicest thing that a writer could hear. Well, let me just introduce you

formally for maybe the three people who are listening who don't know who you are. Celeste is the

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