Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood’s Author Journey
By Annalynn Mueller, junior English Major
March 7, 2024
Pictured above: Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood
Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood always knew she wanted to be a writer. Her time at SOU grew her love of writing and she was able to hone her writing skills through her English classes and Creative Writing workshops. These courses prepared her for a process that she repeated constantly throughout her career: writing, receiving feedback, and revising. Abbigail’s undergraduate experience taught her how “to self-sustain the love [she has] for language regardless of external validation and dismissal.”
While Abbigail always felt as if she was a writer, the title of author did not come to her right away: “Author is a social title, something others use to identify you once you have published. It didn’t matter to me whether or not I was going to be an author, I was going to find an outlet for whatever I had pent up inside me.”
After SOU, Abbigail went on to the MFA program in fiction at Columbia University, where she discovered how to make language her outlet. After graduate school in New York City, Abbigail moved to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam where she now lives with her husband and daughter and works on her novels and other writing. She has both fiction and non-fiction pieces that have been published by TIME Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Salon, Cosmopolitan, Lit Hub, Electric Lit, Catapult, Pen America, BOMB, among others.
“My entire education is foundational to the writer I’ve become.”
– Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood
Abbigail’s thesis project later became her debut novel, If I Had Two Lives. Published in 2019, this novel tells the story of a young girl who grows up in a military camp in 1990s Vietnam and immigrates to New York as an adult where she learns what it means to be loved, how to define home, and how to live in the “aftermath of ruins.”
Her second novel, Constellations of Eve, was published in 2022 and is described as a “philosophical fable of art and fate.” The protagonist, Eve, exists in multiple realities and grapples with finding her ambitions and destiny. Abbigail is currently revising a third novel.
“I love how self-contained a book is—as a physical object, it is only a bit of tree bark and ink, and yet it encompasses worlds, transcends time, opens doors.”
– Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood
Publishing these two novels has been a challenging yet rewarding process for Abbigail. She states that publishing takes an emotional toll; “Every stage involves your work getting rejected, first by agents, then by publishers, and finally if you’re lucky enough, by readers.” She thinks that “a writer’s full-time job is getting rejected—if you can get used to this, you could have a long writing career.”
Abbigail loves being a writer for the freedom it gives her, as well as the process of “making something out of nothing.” Abbigail’s writing routines have changed drastically since she had her daughter. Recently, she has intentionally dedicated a few mornings a week to writing. Her writing ritual includes “coffee, ambient music, and a focus app that blocks distractions for the allotted hour or two.” Writing can be a complicated process, and often Abigail finds herself writing as a way of working through difficult thoughts and feelings: “I write to find out what I already know but hasn’t surfaced to a conscious level.” Because of this, she sometimes finds herself struggling with the writing process, but shows up and commits to her routine even when experiencing writer’s block.
When asked to give advice to aspiring writers and authors, Abbigail shared that “Perfectionism stunts growth. Don’t try to be an author—I’ve seen people attempt to network, find agents before their work is ready. It’s not only a waste of time, it’s detrimental to your process. Your book, poem, or story, doesn’t care if it has an agent or editor, it just wants to exist.”
In her free time, Abbigail enjoys spending time with family and friends, watching films, and eating ice cream. More information about Abbigail’s projects and inspirations on her website.
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