#### What do you share with the world—and what do you hold back? How do you talk about family secrets or childhood trauma with strangers? And what happens when you bring more of your most personal experiences to your work? This week, we go deep on the power of getting personal—and the choices we have to make along the way.

Before we start, Sara and Katel break some bad news: Jenn’s not here today, and it’s looking like she won’t be able to join us for the rest of the season. We’re sending some big hugs her way, but we have _so_ much to talk about right now, we’re gonna keep on going.


Our guest today is the incredibly kind, talented, and just plain fucking rad writer and editor Nicole Chung. She’s the author of the new memoir, _All You Can Ever Know_—which is on sale T O D A Y ([ugh just buy it already](https://books.catapult.co/products/all-you-can-ever-know-pre-order-by-nicole-chung)). It chronicles her story of transracial adoption, growing up in a white family in small-town Oregon, and finding her birth family while starting to raise her own children. Reading it made us laugh and cry and fall even more in love with Nicole.

In addition to being an author, Nicole is also the editor-in-chief of _[Catapult](https://catapult.co/)_, a literary magazine, and the former managing editor of _[The Toast](http://the-toast.net/)_, everyone’s favorite weird-funny-feminist site. We had _so_ much to talk with her about.

**Follow Nicole** : [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nicole_soojung) | [Insta](https://www.instagram.com/nicolesoojung/?hl=en)

> It was difficult to start sharing such personal stories about my family and about adoption and about racism that I’d experienced. And it’s not necessarily that I needed someone externally to validate them or to say, “this is legitimate, this really happened, this is important,” but I think just a little human kindness and, like, honestly went a very, very long way. The Toast was a fantastic community… Every time I wrote something there—I mean, both the goofy stuff like “If John Cho Were Your Boyfriend” and the more serious pieces on race or adoption or family—the response was overwhelmingly positive and supportive, and it was just really a privilege and a honor to get to edit and publish and write for that community at The Toast. I think it did make me braver.

> **—Nicole Chung, author, _All You Can Ever Know_**

#### Links from the interview

- Nicole’s longread about [writing while grieving](https://longreads.com/2018/03/01/how-to-write-a-memoir-while-grieving/)

- The long history of [Oregon’s racist exclusion laws](https://longreads.com/2018/07/12/oregons-racist-past/)

- Love for Nicole’s editor, [Julie Buntin](https://twitter.com/juliebuntin) at Catapult

- Nicole’s [writing at The Toast](http://the-toast.net/2016/06/09/the-best-of-nicole-chung/), including [If John Cho Were Your Boyfriend](http://the-toast.net/2015/03/24/john-cho-boyfriend/)

- _[All You Can Ever Know](https://books.catapult.co/products/all-you-can-ever-know-pre-order-by-nicole-chung)_, on sale now

#### Also in this episode

Chatting with Nicole got us thinking a lot about what it means to share your story with the world—in your writing, in a talk, or, say…on a podcast. So we dive into some of our own stories, and t